Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for November 5, 2024

Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who spent part of his youth in Augusta, Georgia and married Ellen Louise Axson, whom he met in Rome, Georgia, was elected President in a landslide victory on November 5, 1912.

Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his unprecedented third term as President of the United States on November 5, 1940.

Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States by a plurality vote on November 5, 1968.

On November 5, 2002, Sonny Perdue was elected the first Republican Governor of Georgia since Reconstruction, beginning the modern era of Republican dominance of Georgia state politics.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

It’s Election Day. At around 10 AM this morning, I’ll head to my voting precinct. Before I leave, I’ll log into the Secretary of State’s MVP system to make sure I don’t have any surprises there. Before I leave, I’ll check to make sure I have two forms of photo ID on me. Belt and suspenders. When I cast my ballot, I’ll ask how many total votes have been cast so far today.

Towns County had the highest percentage of registered voters turn out in early voting, according to AccessWDUN.

As of Thursday afternoon, Georgia voters have topped 50% in early voter turnout on the seventeenth day of early voting.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said 3,653,333 Georgians have cast ballots with 3,426,851 of those voting early.

Towns County leads Georgia in turnout with 68.9%, Oconee County is in second with 65.29%, followed by Rabun with 63.97%, Dawson at 63.88%, Forsyth with 63.04%, Union with 62.97%, Fayette at 62.73% and Greene with 62.23%.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision, holding that all mail ballots must be received by 7 PM today, according to the AJC.

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday ordered that Cobb County may only count absentee ballots received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

The court sided with the Republican National Committee, removing the relief a lower court ordered that originally gave more than 3,000 voters — all of whom had received their ballots late — a few extra days to return their ballots.

Cobb County saw a surge in the number of absentee ballot requests before the deadline. The requests came in too late for the state’s approved printing vendor, so the county had to switch to using its own printing equipment. But those machines were not working and had to be fixed, which caused the delay, a Cobb County Board of Elections attorney previously said.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones announced the ruling to cheers from the crowd at JD Vance’s Cobb County rally.

“We’ve only had a month of early voting, I don’t know why that’s a big deal,” he said of Cobb’s push to extend the deadline.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center had initially filed the lawsuit in Cobb County Superior Court asking the court to extend the deadline.

The state Supreme Court also ordered the ballots that come in late to be secured, and not destroyed, until further order. The ballots must be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day to comply with state law. Under the previous order by Senior Judge Robert E. Flournoy III, the ballots would have to be received by 5 p.m. Nov. 8 but postmarked by Election Day.

County officials said they were taking “extraordinary measures” to ensure voters receive the ballots, and they scrambled to ship the outstanding ballots through express and overnight mail. On Monday, the Cobb County Board of Elections said it will comply with the Georgia Supreme Court’s order but will wait to see the final ruling.

“We will anticipate the Supreme Court’s final ruling to see whether it ultimately allow these voters additional time to return their ballots or whether we must only count those received by the close of polls on Tuesday,” said Tori Silas, chairwoman of the Board of Elections and Registration.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance headlined a rally in Cobb County last night, according to 11Alive.

On Monday, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee JD Vance held the last of a slew of visits this year from the two major presidential tickets.

This was just one of the many campaign stops to the Peach State that shows how crucial Georgia has become in the race for the White House.

Vance spoke at Cobb Galleria a day after the other vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, made an appearance in metro Atlanta. The senator from Ohio made the last hours before Election Day count as he asked Georgians to vote for Donald Trump.

“I want every single one of you to get out there and vote for Donald J. Trump ten times.  Everybody get out there and vote ten times,” Vance teased, clarifying that he was asking the crowd to recruit nine other voters to the polls Tuesday.

During his speech, Vance repeatedly hit on Trump’s signature issue: immigration. And the promise of mass deportations was a big applause line.

“We’ve got millions upon millions of people who shouldn’t even be here who are being put in front of the line of American citizens,” Vance told about 500 people at the Galleria. “Pack your bags. You’re going back home in three months, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

State Rep. David Clark (R-Buford), who helped introduce Vance from the stage, also predicted a good night for Republicans on Tuesday.

“We’ll see tomorrow night, and I think Trump’s going to win big,” Clark said. “The turnout is going to be huge, and I’m excited.”

But as Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones said, now that campaigning is coming to a close, there’s only one more thing to do: Vote.

“The hay is in the barn,” Jones said. “There’s nothing left to do but go vote.”

More than four million Georgia voters cast ballots before election day, according to Fox5Atlanta.

More women than men

Female early voters in Georgia have outpaced male voters by double digits – something Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies see as a positive sign for Democrats, given their emphasis on abortion rights in the elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned during the Trump administration.

Former President Trump has also made recent appeals to women voters, promising in several events over the last few days to “protect women” and warning they are “under attack” by illegal immigrants under the current Democratic administration.

In Georgia, 56% of early voters were women, while 43.8% were men.

Black women outpaced Black men

Women made up 62.1% of Black voters who voted early in-person or absentee, while Black men trailed behind with 37.8%.

Black voters, women in particular, are still expected to favor Harris and the Democratic Party in broad numbers.

White voters made up the largest share

A 58% majority of Georgia’s early voters were White, according to Georgia Votes, a data aggregation site partnered with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

That was followed by Black voters with 26.4% of the early vote.

Hispanic and Asian voters combined made up roughly 6% of early voters.

High turnout in rural counties

Counties considered more rural in Georgia have seen more of their active voters cast pre-Election Day ballots than more Democratic-leaning areas around Atlanta.

The 20 counties ranked highest in terms of percentage of total active voter turnout so far were all won by Trump in 2020, despite Biden winning the state overall.

The bluer counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area are still significantly larger than those rural counties where turnout is high – but in a race that came down to less than 12,000 votes in 2020, every ballot cast is critical.

Most voters from Democratic strongholds

In terms of sheer numbers, the most early and absentee voters have been in Atlanta and its densely packed surrounding suburbs.

The top three counties in terms of turnout are Towns, Oconee and Dawson – all were won by Trump in 2020, but together the number of active voters who have cast ballots there already is just over 47,000.

By contrast, the counties of Henry, Cobb and Fulton – the third being home to the city of Atlanta itself – have seen less of their total active voting populations turn out before Election Day, but more than 861,000 ballots cast so far.

A Jones County poll worker was arrested on allegations of making a threat, according to the Macon Telegraph.

Nicholas Wimbish, 25, is accused of threatening poll workers with lewd and potentially dangerous remarks about a “boom toy” in a letter, the Justice Department said. Wimbish, of Milledgeville, could face a maximum of 25 years in prison if convicted.

Officials say Wimbish got into a verbal altercation with a voter while serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office on Oct. 16, according to a criminal complaint. Later that night, he researched what information about himself was publicly available.

He mailed a letter to the Jones County elections superintendent the next day, claiming to be sent from a “Jones County voter,” in an attempt to point the blame away from himself, according to a news release from the Justice Department.

The letter said: “Wimbish had ‘give[n] me hell and that Wimbish was ‘conspiring votes’ and ‘distracting voters from concentrating,’” the DOJ said.

It also said Wimbish and other poll workers “should look over their shoulder” and claimed he found their home addresses, the news release said.

The note further said he would fight young men and “get treason punishment by firing squad if they fight back.” It also threatened to “rage rape” female poll workers.

The letter concluded with, “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe,” the DOJ said.

Wimbish was charged with mailing a bomb threat, conveying false information about a bomb threat, mailing a threatening letter and making false statements to the FBI.

From 13WMAZ:

The release says the letter was written to make it seem like it came from the voter Wimbish had argued with, saying that Wimbish was disrupting voters at the polls.

They also say the letter threatened poll workers with physical and sexual violence, including that the alleged writer of the letter knew where the poll workers lived and had personal information about them.

Democrat Stacey Abrams rallied voters in Augusta, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

This time it was Stacey Abrams, two-time gubernatorial candidate and former state representative. She spoke to a packed house at Tip Top Taps in downtown Augusta on Monday evening.

“We keep thinking that this is a linear thing, that if we don’t get everything, we don’t get anything,” she said. “But this room is here because we know that as long as we keep working, as long as we keep fighting, we can win this whole thing.”

Several phrases were chanted including the popular “We’re not going back.” While that message was repeated on Monday, Abrams had the crowd think back to why voters sided with President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump in 2020.

“An election is an employment opportunity, and we looked at the résumé of somebody who bankrupted companies and bankrupted morals and bankrupted communities and we said ‘You’re fired,’” Abrams said. “We looked at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and said ‘You’re hired.’ We keep hearing about ‘Well, if she’s going to do it why hasn’t she done it?’ It took a little bit of time to clean up the mess he made.”

But while things like “locking up” Trump were mentioned by the crowd, Abrams pushed them away from that idea, saying that’s not their job. Instead, she urged the importance of not just voting but being visible, vocal, volunteering, and verifying others have voted.

“When they say ‘Well I voted, but things didn’t change. My rent didn’t go down. My gas bill didn’t go down,’ you can volunteer to say ‘No, no, no. Sometimes we’ve got to plant if we want to reap,’” she said. “Voting is not magic, voting is medicine. You’ve got to take that medicine again and again and again, and sometimes it tastes more bitter than whatever ails you. Sometimes it hurts worse than the pain you’ve got. But if you stop taking that medicine, whatever you’ve got is coming back and he’s bringing friends.”