So, in the Georgia Senate runoff election between Perdue and Ossoff in January, 2021, guess which counties had the highest PERCENTAGES of absentee votes in the state?
Cobb County - 11.77%
Fulton County - 10.34%
DeKalb County - 10.33%
Gwinnett County - 9.35%
Another aspect of the Georgia changes which make absentee voting more difficult:
A decrease of just 3.25% in absentee voting alone (not any other form of voting), applied evenly across all Georgia counties (blue and red), would have reversed the winner of the 2020 GA POTUS race.
If nothing else has changed except for 3.25 out of every 100 people who voted absentee in the 2020 election not voting, with the totals from every other form of voting remaining exactly the same, Trump would have won the state by 284 votes.
If I can figure this out, and I’m basically just a random dude, you’d better believe that GOP politicians and the strategists and consultants working for them know it and in know it in more fine grained detail.
Since the GOP is trying sanitize the new Georgia voting law, here are a few hard numbers to put things in a little clearer context.
The law makes the process of casting absentee ballots harder and, thus, will likely depress absentee votes.
Where were most absentee votes cast?
(Corrected)
The five Georgia counties that had the highest percentage of the state's absentee votes cast were Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Chatham Counties.
Which also, coincidentally, made up a higher % of GA's absentee votes than it made up of GA's total votes.
2020 US Presidential Election in Georgia
Cobb County:
11.28% of GA's absentee votes
7.88% of GA's total votes
Fulton County
11.16% of GA's absentee votes
10.50% of GA's total votes
Let’a take a minute to understand the broader context surrounding the new Georgia voting law. Let’s take a minute to look at the world from the perspective of a Republican politician from Georgia
It’s not a pretty place.
Indulge me for a trip down recent memory lane.
2016 - Trump wins Georgia by 5.09 points. Which sounds fine except for the fact that it’s freaking Georgia! And Romney won the state by 7.82 points just four years earlier. No need to panic, right?
2018 - Wrong! Brian Kemp wins the Governorship but by a puny 1.4 points. In the 2014 election, Nathan Deal won the Governorship by 7.8 points and THAT was close. Something’s not right.
2018 - The GOP won the Lt. Governor race by only 3.2 points (GOP won by 15.98 points in 2014).
You know, if the GOP had put as much energy and effort into reaching out to black voters as they’re putting into these “election security” (voter suppression) efforts, there might not even be a nationally viable Democratic Party.
If the GOP had continued the efforts that Ken Mehlman had started back in the mid-2000s, it would have made some significant inroads with black voters. Even if they had taken their own advice in the 2012 “Autopsy” report, it would be better positioned today.
Actually trying to get people to vote for you is considerably easier than trying to pass hundreds of laws across dozens of states aimed at trying to make it harder for people to vote.
Plus, by courting votes, unlike enacting suppression laws. you don’t get your state boycotted.
Which course of action do you think would have been better for the @GOP’s long term viability as a party?
A) Make serious and sustained efforts to make inroads with black voters?
OR
B) Make a serious and sustained effort to make it harder for some of them to vote?
Put it this way. A Quinnipiac poll showed that the overwhelming majority (80%) of black voters thought Trump was racist. But he made some outreach efforts to black voters. And he did slightly better with blacks in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Trump started his 2016 campaign by insinuating that a significant portion of Mexicans crossing the border illegally into the US were rapists. But his campaign made concerted efforts to reach out to latino voters. And he did notably better with the group in 2020 than in 2016.
There are six counties in Georgia that, between the 2012 election and the 2016 election, experienced a double digit drop in voter registration despite NOT having a drop in population.
I’m not sure why this is.
Wheeler County, GA went from having 3,464 registered voters in 2012 to 2,705 registered voters in 2016 (-21.91%). The overall population slightly rose.
Lamar County, GA went from 11,649 registered voters in 2012 to 9,786 registered voters in 2016 (-15.99%). The population rose.
Catoosa County, Georgia had 41,328 registered voters in 2012 but 34,831 registered voters in 2016 (-15.72%). But the overall population rose.
Appling County, Georgia had 10,955 registered voters in 2012 but 9,242 registered voters in 2016 (-15.64%). The population slightly rose.