Record numbers of voters cast their ballots in Georgia last November and volunteers are scurrying around the 6th Congressional District registering scores of new voters ahead of the June 20th runoff.

Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, says increased access to the ballot has a lot to do with activist groups pushing against a state more inclined to put limits on registration and early voting.

Republicans, who hold majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly and every state constitutional office, have found resistance along the way to every attempted change, no matter how subtle, to voting procedures. A voter ID law passed in 2005 was tied up in court for years on claims that it would suppress black votes, but when it finally went into effect minority voting actually increased.

The legal action continues to this day. What effect will it have on the Georgia's 6th District runoff? Read this week's AJC Watchdog column to find out.

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Senator Jon Ossoff waves to a crowd of supporters during his Rally For Our Republic event on Saturday, July 12 inside the Kehoe Iron Works building at Trustees Garden in Savannah, Ga. [Photo by Sarah Peacock for the Atlanta Journal Constitution]

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Rebecca Ramage-Tuttle, assistant director of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia, says the the DOE rule change is “a slippery slope” for civil rights. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

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