Georgia voters want and deserve a free, fair and accurate election
A record-setting number of midterm Georgia voters — more than 2.8 million — cast ballots during early voting, which closed Friday.
This high engagement is a critical and encouraging indicator of voters’ enthusiasm and confidence in the process.
This is what Georgians want — high confidence, high participation. As Election Day is now upon us, it is the duty of our government, the candidates for office and our leaders to resist any action that will sow doubt and cause confusion.
After a long and noisy campaign season, we are set to select a new governor and a slate of state constitutional officers. A nationally watched race for U.S. senator is also on the ballot, which will help determine the balance of power in Washington, D.C. The stakes are high.
As remarkable as it is to count 500,000 more Georgians as participants in early voting during a midterm election, this surge in voting likely reflects what The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s most recent polling captured.
More than 8 in 10 Georgia voters polled described themselves as enthusiastic about voting in this election. Three in four poll respondents expressed confidence that the midterm election “will be conducted fairly and accurately.”
Trust in system is a testament to bipartisan efforts
It is important to note that the healthiest democracies across the globe have this in common: voters participate in large numbers, and they do so with the expectation that their votes will be counted accurately and their choices will be honored.
It is a simple calculation. Trust yields high participation. Distrust yields apathy and disengagement. Trust is critically important in a race like this one, where the surge in voting is also likely a function of general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, a fact that was also captured in AJC polling.
That Georgia voters generally trust our election system is partly a credit to the bipartisan effort over the past two decades to modernize our process and machinery. Over the years, local and state election officials have worked tirelessly to improve accuracy, security and speed. Georgia had reason to overhaul voting.
Voters recall past election cycles where long lines in metro Atlanta, especially in Fulton County, discouraged voters and made casting a ballot more difficult than it should’ve been. There were also notorious delays in tabulating votes, where determining a winner would take days to settle. Both threatened trust over the years. Both have been fixed over the past few election cycles.
It stands to reason that those efforts to fix and the experience of Georgia voters are the reason trust has remained consistent and participation is high.
There has been an understandable fear in recent years that attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s elections would erode voter trust.
Election monitors must not interfere with voters’ will
Since losing the 2020 election, President Donald Trump has consistently spread conspiracy and falsehood about Georgia’s election results. The president still claims to have won Georgia in 2020. In an Oct. 16 campaign rally in Dalton, Trump claimed U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff was “never elected.”
Over the two years of Trump’s second term, he has used the power of his office to attempt to prove the disproven: that his political enemies, enabled by noncitizen voting, have rigged elections he lost.
While the Trump administration has been sending subpoenas to election workers in California, attempting to alter mail in voting (his preferred voting method) in several states and is pressuring election officials across the country to hand over sensitive voting data, the administration has not targeted Georgia in recent months.
Still, state and local elections administrators in Georgia and in other states are on alert.
As the AJC has reported last week, federal election monitors will be in Georgia on Election Day. Customarily — and across administrations of both parties — federal election monitoring has been one of many commitments aimed at protecting the rights of voters.
On Election Day, those monitors should honor their role, as prescribed by law and custom, to observe. They must not interfere.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has famously and succinctly captured what Georgia voters are owed: a system where it is, in his words, “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
In the hours between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday, when polls are open and votes are cast, Georgians deserve to do so with confidence that their voices will be heard, and their choices will be honored without intimidation or interference.
We should wake up Wednesday celebrating record voter turnout and giving thanks that we live in a state and nation that protects the will of “We the People.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman Jr. wrote this editorial on behalf of and in consultation with the AJC Editorial Board, which comprises President and Publisher Paul J. Curran Jr., Leroy Chapman Jr., Standards Head Samira Jafari and Opinion Editor David Plazas.
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