Three positive election-related developments came out of Georgia on Tuesday. Citizens cast more than 328,000 ballots by the first day of in-person early voting, surpassing the previous one-day record of 136,000 in 2020. A state judge blocked a requirement that county officials hand-count every ballot before reporting results. And former president Donald Trump urged his supporters at a rally in Atlanta to cast their ballots early — a major shift from his anti-early voting stance four years ago.
In September, a pro-Trump majority on Georgia’s State Election Board had voted 3-2 to require county officials to count all ballots by hand. Leaders of both parties had criticized the move as an unjustified obstacle to the timely reporting of results. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney agreed with them on Tuesday, holding that the board did “too much, too late” by requiring the hand count without providing officials with instructions on how to implement the new rule. His temporary injunction can’t be appealed until after the election.
Judge McBurney had already helped bring order to Georgia’s election Monday when he said county officials are not permitted under state law to withhold their certification of election results. This forecloses a possible gambit that some Trump allies had been considering to thwart Democrats from formally receiving the state’s electoral votes should they win.
As for Mr. Trump, he is now encouraging Republicans to vote early instead of waiting until Nov. 5. “If you have a ballot, return it immediately,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday in Georgia, reading from a teleprompter. “If not, go tomorrow or as soon as you can.” Democrats might not be excited that the GOP is getting into the swim with early voting.
From the standpoint of legitimizing the vote, however, bipartisan buy-in is good news for the process. Perhaps nothing can prevent Mr. Trump from crying fraud if he loses, but it will at least be harder now that he has personally embraced early voting.
To be sure, the record first-day early vote in Georgia (which included absentee as well as in-person ballots) was not typical of the nationwide trend. More than half of likely voters have told pollsters they plan to vote before Election Day, but just 5.5 million Americans have done so thus far, down from 27 million at this point in 2020, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. And yet 2020 was an outlier because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which made it outright dangerous for many people to go to the polls in person. The lower early voting totals are most likely a sign of political normalization rather than reduced turnout.
Although the judge’s twin rulings make post-election chaos less likely in Georgia — one of seven states that will likely determine the outcome — they certainly do not rule it out there or elsewhere.
Americans should still prepare to be patient through what could be an extended post-election period, in which the president-elect and other winners might not be known for days. Two other swing states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, have not reformed rules that prohibit officials from starting to process mail-in ballots before Election Day, even if they arrive well in advance.
Divided governments in both states failed to fix this provision. It slowed down the count in 2020 and could do so again.
Election-related litigation isn’t just probable; it’s already happening. Republicans have filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina to challenge the legitimacy of overseas ballots. This has prompted backlash among military personnel and their spouses.
Every day brings reports of hanky-panky from the swing states. For example, in Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters asked authorities on Tuesday to investigate text messages anonymously sent to thousands of young people, warning them against voting in a state where they’re ineligible. The texts ominously speak of penalties of up to 3½ years in prison for voting improperly, even though Wisconsin allows students attending college in the state to vote either at their home address or where they attend school.
These messages might not be illegal, but the apparent intent — to confuse and frighten potential voters — is anything but benign.
A final piece of positive — even inspirational — voting news, also from Georgia: One of the state’s early voters on Wednesday was 100-year-old former president Jimmy Carter, still participating in the American experiment of self-government despite having been so ill last year that he sought hospice care.
Unsurprisingly, the Democrat voted for his party’s candidate, according to his son Chip Carter. More important is the example Mr. Carter set: that civic engagement is a lifetime commitment.
