OAN Staff James Meyers
11:27 AM – Friday, November 1, 2024
Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is claiming that “voter suppression” is occurring in Georgia despite record turnout in the state.
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During Friday’s “CNN News Central,” co-anchor Kate Boldaun asked Abrams what she believes is causing the energy in early voting.
“While we are excited about who is showing up, we have to understand that turnout does not mean there is not voter suppression activity,” Abrams replied.
The ousted Democrat suggested that one of the reasons for the packed early voting lines is due to fact that Georgian’s can no longer use the “easier” method of voting by mail.
“People who are disabled, people who have lost their homes are facing harder times casting their ballots, but they refuse to be silenced. What we are excited about is that here in the state of Georgia, despite the government making it harder to cast your ballot, people are willing to fight to make it happen anyway,” Abrams continued.
Georgia implemented Senate Bill 202, which was adopted by the Georgia Assembly in 2021. It made multiple changes to absentee ballots. Before it was implemented, signature verification was the primary means of checking voter identity, according to the Fulton County website.
Absentee ballots could be requested up until the Friday before the election.
Additionally, the new bill mandates that Peach State voters provide their Driver’s License number or other forms of voter ID and must request their ballot at least 11 days before the election.
Meanwhile, Georgia voters have already broken turnout records, but Democrats have still opposed the new rules for the 2024 presidential cycle put in place by the state’s Republican lawmakers.
“I was just in Georgia. You know they passed a law that makes it illegal to give people food and water for standing in line to vote?” Vice President Kamala Harris told a rally crowd in Michigan earlier this week. “The hypocrisy abounds. Whatever happened to ‘love thy neighbor,’ right?”
In 2022, President Biden called Georgia’s election security laws “Jim Crow 2.0.”
After the 2020 election scrutiny in Georgia, several GOP lawmakers have implemented stricter security laws around the voting process.
Some of the measures included, expanding the ability to challenge voter eligibility, a rule limiting ballot drop boxes based on population size. Another measure was banning political organizations from handing out food and drinks to voters waiting in line within a certain distance from a polling place.
Despite the new measure, election workers are permitted to set up self-serve water stations.
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