‘It’s huge’: Top Georgia election official makes explosive prediction about early voting turnout
Fox News
Georgia’s top election official believes that half of the state’s voters will have already cast ballots by Election Day.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke with Fox News Digital late Tuesday afternoon, by which point more than one in four state residents had voted.
“It’s huge. Almost every day has been a record breaker,” he told Fox News Digital. “If you look at the kind of turnout we’re having day after day…we’ll probably be at almost 4 million of early voting by the time we finish next Friday.”
“I think it is a testament that voters trust our systems here in Georgia.”
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As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 2 million people had voted early in-person or absentee in Georgia.
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s campaigns have spent enormous time and resources in Georgia, a state the ex-president lost by less than 1% in 2020.
Early voting there runs from Oct. 15 through Nov. 1.
Raffensperger’s interview also came roughly an hour before the Georgia Supreme Court ruled against Republicans’ bid to reinstate a slate of new ballot security measures ahead of Election Day.
The six rules included requirements for all machine-tabulated ballots to receive a hand count by county officials to ensure the totals matched, and a provision that only ballots deposited in drop boxes with video surveillance would be counted.
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Supporters of the bill, which included Republican Party officials, argued they were necessary guardrails to ensure voter confidence.
Democrats blasted the rules as an effort to sow doubt and confusion in what’s expected to be a close election in Georgia.
Raffensperger, however, was among several GOP state and county officials who also opposed the rules.
“I think right now it really would cause major challenges because all the poll workers have been trained with the systems we have in place, which was really following state law,” Raffensperger told Fox News Digital.
He pointed to the Purcell principle, a precedent established by the Supreme Court that states the courts cannot change election rules too close to an election.
“Well, we’re two and a half weeks away from Election Day. So when you think about how close we are to Election Day, it’s just too much, too late,” he said.
The Georgia Supreme Court is expected to hear the Republican National Committee’s appeal in the suit but rejected its request for an expedited decision, meaning the prior ruling that deemed the measures “illegal, unconstitutional, and void” will remain in place through Election Day on Nov. 5.