One of Georgia’s main elections officials has demanded that President Joe Biden and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams apologize for previous claims of voter suppression.
The demand, from Gabriel Sterling, Chief Operating Officer of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, came after the state saw record early voting turnout ahead of the November midterms.
“How many turnout records do we have to break before Stacey Abrams and President Biden apologize to Georgia?” Sterling asked on Friday.
“We’re on track to break records in terms of voter turnout in every category,” the office of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger added.
“In 2018, 223,576 Georgians voted by mail for Governor. So far this year, we’ve received 239,789 requests for absentee ballots, 238,356 have been mailed out. We’ll exceed 2018’s total for mailed-in ballots. So far we’ve been breaking the early vote record set in 2018, and we’re approaching the early vote numbers in 2020,” the statement continued.
“Georgia voters continued to hit record breaking turnout on day three of Early Voting. As of Thursday morning, just under 400,000 Georgia voters have cast their ballot during in-person Early Voting, with 126,918 showing up on Wednesday, October 19th,” the statement added.
“Wednesday’s total marks a 63.3% increase from day three of 2018 midterm Early Voting and is only slightly under the total of day three of Early Voting in the 2020 Presidential election,” it continued, adding:
Georgia has had record Early Voting turnout since the first day of Early Voting this year, surging to nearly twice the number on the first day of Early Voting in 2018.
Yesterday’s total continues to surpass the previous midterm Early Voting records made in the 2018 midterm election, and the cumulative total is only 15,000 votes under the Presidential election cumulative total at this point in 2020.
The counties have worked tirelessly alongside our office to encourage Georgians to cast their vote early,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “County election directors are getting the job done and Georgians know it.”
Reports of long lines were rare, with some lines in the metro areas being reported. No substantial delays were reported yesterday.
Early Voting turnout is expected to increase during the last week of Early Voting. All counties will have mandatory Saturday voting this coming Saturday.