Early voting in battleground Georgia brings in over half of 2020 total turnout

Record early voting in Georgia, a key battleground state ahead of November, has already brought in more than half of 2020's total turnout since it began last week.

“So over 50% of the turnout for 2020 has already voted in Georgia,” Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling wrote Friday in a post on social platform X. “So for people like Joe Biden & Stacey Abrams, you were wrong saying we had voter suppression here. It’s easy to register & vote in Georgia…and really hard to even try to cheat. Great job by our voters & counties.”

As of Saturday morning, more than 2.6 million people in the Peach State have already voted, according to data compiled by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's (R) office. In 2020, just under 5 million voters cast their ballots in the state.

A majority of the ballots this year came from in-person voting rather than mail-in, which was more prevalent during the 2020 election due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, Georgia broke its record for casting more than 300,000 ballots on the first day of early voting. The number quickly surpassed 1 million within the first few days.

Raffensperger predicted that Georgia will be right under 4 million early voters when the early voting period ends on Nov. 1.

New election rules in the state have drawn heavy criticism across the spectrum, from poll workers to Raffensperger, who warned that chaos would be unleashed with the eleventh-hour changes. But proponents said the rules served to better safeguard November’s contests in the first major election since 2020, which saw unbridled and unfounded claims of widespread fraud.

The secretary of state has also pushed back on claims from some, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) about potential voter fraud linked to its machines.

President Biden won Georgia by a razor-thin margin against former President Trump in the 2020 election.

With just over a week left until Election Day, Trump is leading his Democratic rival, Vice President Harris, in the state by just over a point. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ's aggregate of polls shows Trump with 48.9 percent support compared to Harris's 47.6 percent.