Capitol Recap: Georgia continues hot pace of early voting

Turnout runs well ahead of 2018 midterms

It took 8 1/2 days for the first 1 million Georgia voters to cast their ballots in this year’s election.

Turnout at that point was 55% higher than at the same time in the 2018 midterms.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is seeking reelection, urged more voters to go to the polls during a Capitol press conference announcing the 1 millionth ballot cast.

“This isn’t a victory lap yet. We’re about halfway through the second quarter, but we need to encourage everyone to go out to vote and not discourage them,” Raffensperger said. “We need to let them know their vote will be counted and counted accurately, not that their vote will be stolen.”

If voting continues at its current pace, overall turnout is expected to easily surpass the 3.9 million Georgia voters who participated in the last midterm election four years ago. Turnout is still expected to fall short of the 5 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election.

Interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling credited a couple of Georgia’s recent elections — the 2018 contest for governor when Republican Brian Kemp beat Democrat Stacey Abrams by 1.4 percentage points and the 2020 presidential race when Democrat Joe Biden topped Republican Donald Trump by about 12,000 votes — for the early rush to the polls.

“Every voter — Republican, Democrat and independent — understands that their vote is extremely valuable in this state,” Sterling said.

So who is casting these ballots?

The two largest demographic groups have been women and those over age 65.

Black and white voters have punched above their weight, turning out in numbers beyond their respective shares of the population. Hispanic and Asian American voters have not, with each group accounting for about 1.5% of the vote after the first week.

In-person voters are driving the high turnout. Absentee ballots are coming in slower this year because the state’s new election law barred election offices from mailing out ballots until 29 days before the Nov. 8 election.

Early voting is available in every county in Georgia through Nov. 4.

Voters can find their early voting locations, Election Day precincts, absentee ballot application forms and sample ballots on the state’s My Voter Page at mvp.sos.ga.gov.

Credit: Courtesy of Secretary of State's Office

Credit: Courtesy of Secretary of State's Office

Fraudulent ballot found in Spalding

Somebody’s do-it-yourself ballot has sparked an investigation in Spalding County.

The ballot in question appears to be on lined notebook paper.

State election officials believe it may have been an attempt to cast doubt on the integrity of Georgia’s election.

On Oct. 19, election workers at an early voting location in Spalding discovered that while only 1,520 voters had checked in that day and the same number of ballots had been printed that day, the ballot scanner showed 1,521 ballots had been entered into the system.

Following established protocols, the workers found a ballot that “differed so significantly in appearance from the others that they assumed it to be a fraudulent ballot,” the secretary of state’s office said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The secretary of state’s office has opened an investigation.

“The ballot may have been created to add a vote for some candidates, or may have been an attempt to cast doubt on the integrity of election systems across the state,” the secretary of state’s office said.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Another woman says Walker pressured her to have abortion

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Herschel Walker faced a new accusation this past week that he pressured a woman to have an abortion.

Walker, who has advocated for an absolute ban on abortion, called the accusation “a lie.”

The woman, who said she feared reprisals if her real name was revealed, appeared at a press conference with attorney Gloria Allred as “Jane Doe.” She said she and Walker had been involved in a yearslong romantic relationship that began while he was playing in the 1980s for the Dallas Cowboys.

Allred — who has made a reputation representing women who have accused men of wrongdoing, including Herman Cain, Anthony Weiner and Tiger Woods — said that when Walker learned in April 1993 that the woman was pregnant, he “clearly wanted her to have an abortion and convinced her to do so.” The lawyer said Walker gave cash to the woman, who then went to a clinic in Dallas but decided against undergoing the procedure.

An “upset” Walker then pressured the woman to return to the clinic to go through with the abortion, Allred said. The following day, the lawyer said, Walker drove the woman to the clinic and waited in the parking lot for hours until she emerged.

After that, Allred said, he distanced himself from the woman and later sent her a note apologizing. That note wasn’t displayed at the press conference.

Allred did provide a photo she said showed Walker on a bed in the woman’s hotel room, as well as cards and letters she said he wrote her. Allred did not provide a receipt for the abortion when asked by reporters.

She also played a voicemail recording she said Walker left for the woman in February 1992 when he was competing in the Olympics for the U.S. bobsledding team. “I want to say I love you and I am thinking about you,” the message said.

The woman is the second to come forward anonymously to claim that Walker urged her to have an abortion after becoming pregnant by him. That other woman, who has declined to speak to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, told other news outlets that Walker paid for her 2009 abortion and urged her to have a second one. She refused, instead giving birth to a son.

Walker, during a campaign stop in Dillard, said the accusations were untrue.

“I’m done with this foolishness,” he said. “I’ve already told you this is a lie, and I’m not going to entertain it.”

Report: Fair Fight paid large legal sum to chair of Abrams’ campaign

Fair Fight Action, the voting rights organization that Stacey Abrams founded following her loss in the 2018 race for governor, paid at least $9.4 million to a law firm led by one of the Democrat’s close allies, according to an investigation by the news site Politico.

The money was part of the $25 million Fair Fight paid over two years in legal fees. Much of it apparently involved a court challenge the group brought in 2019 seeking changes to the state’s election system after Abrams claimed thousands of voters, a disproportionate number of them people of color, had been denied their right to cast ballots during the 2018 election.

Fair Fight lost that challenge late last month in a federal district court.

Lawrence & Bundy served as lead counsel in the case, collecting the largest chunk of fees among the eight law firms that worked for Fair Fight.

Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, who heads Lawrence & Bundy, is a close friend of Abrams’ who also chaired her gubernatorial campaigns both in 2018 and this year.

The state’s legal expenses totaled about $6 million.

Experts questioned the arrangement.

Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, told Politico that Fair Fight needs to be transparent about how it spent its money.

“I think there are significant questions about this choice of firm and just why this lawsuit was so much more expensive,” she said. “And there may be perfectly valid, innocent explanations to both of those questions. But I don’t know what they are.”

Lawrence-Hardy’s experience in election law includes working on the recount team for Keisha Lance Bottoms’ Atlanta mayoral campaign in 2017, Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020 and Al Gore’s 2000 election recount team.

Dara Lindenbaum, the general counsel for Abrams’ 2018 campaign and later for Fair Fight Action, told Politico that even without her involvement in Abrams’ campaign, Lawrence-Hardy would have been a clear choice to lead the case.

Public Citizen, a nonpartisan consumer advocate, withdrew critical remarks that one of its representatives made about Fair Fight’s spending in the Politico story.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, originally told Politico that hiring Lawrence-Hardy’s firm was “a very clear conflict of interest, because with that kind of close link to the litigation and her friend, that provides an opportunity where the friend gets particularly enriched from this litigation.”

But the organization retracted the statement the day after the story appeared. “There is nothing unusual or troubling about organizational leaders hiring qualified friends or acquaintances to serve as legal counsel,” Public Citizen said.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Republicans prepare in case Abrams wins

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has been posting big leads in a number of polls, but some of his GOP brethren in the General Assembly are preparing in case Democrat Stacey Abrams notches a victory.

They’re getting ready to derail any Abrams initiatives that they may oppose, such as her call for a full expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act that Republicans have blocked in Georgia since that federal law took effect in 2010.

“The only thing I can tell you that would happen if she somehow pulls it off is the Legislature would fight to take more power away from the executive branch to bring true balance to the system of government,” state Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, recently told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Powell is saying in public what others are uttering in private.

One senior GOP official said that if Kemp loses, he expects the governor to “absolutely” call a special session of the General Assembly to clamp down on Abrams’ powers. Another put the likelihood of such a move at “100%.”

Republican legislators made a similar effort ahead of the 2014 election when they were concerned that Democrat Jason Carter might beat then-Gov. Nathan Deal. They gave the Legislature final approval on any plan to expand Medicaid.

Democrats say they will be ready if Republicans try to set any limits on Abrams, although there’s really little they could do outside of going to court.

“The rules are fine for Kemp, but if he loses, then the rules need to change,” Democratic state Rep. Scott Holcomb said. “Why do you think that is?”

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Abortion rights supporters go to court with challenge to fetal cardiac law

A Fulton County judge considered arguments this past week about the constitutionality of Georgia’s new abortion law, although he said he doesn’t expect to issue a ruling until after the Nov. 8 election.

Abortion rights supporters want Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney to block enforcement of the law, which bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.

They argue that the law, which took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal across the nation, violates the right to privacy guaranteed under the Georgia Constitution.

Solicitor General Stephen Petrany, representing the state, based at least part of his defense of the law on its “personhood” provisions, which grant legal rights to a fertilized egg in the womb at any stage of development.

“The right to privacy, such as it is, only extends so far as you’re not affecting anyone else,” Petrany said. “We think that’s just the ballgame.”

Political expedience

Abrams tightens her spending: Democrat Stacey Abrams is an accomplished fundraiser — recent reports showed that more than $58 million had been devoted to television ads supporting her campaign for governor this year. But Abrams appears to be reining in her cash outlays. Records show that the candidate cut down her broadcast expenses to $800,000 this past week after regularly putting down $2 million or more per week, including about $2.6 million the week before. Her campaign said this week’s spending rises to $1 million once you add cable advertising. Her opponent, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, reserved more than $2 million worth of ads this past week.
Kemp gains a pair of Democratic nods: Republican Gov. Brian Kemp picked up support this past week from the other side of the political divide. Joe Frank Harris, a conservative Democrat who served as governor from 1983 to 1991, issued an endorsement of Kemp. So did Shirley Miller, the widow of former Democratic Gov. Zell Miller.
Skipping the GOP middleman: Georgia Republicans have found a way to get around the Georgia Republican Party. The Republican Attorneys General Association recently transferred about $1.2 million to Gov. Brian Kemp’s leadership committee, but the money was meant for financing television ads promoting the reelection of Georgia’s AG, Chris Carr, at a lower rate than the group could have paid for the ads on its own. Another group tried a similar maneuver in funding a six-figure ad buy for Insurance Commissioner John King. In the past, that money would have probably passed through the state GOP, but many of the state’s leading Republicans have avoided working with the party after Chairman David Shafer shunned GOP incumbents in favor of primary challengers backed by former President Donald Trump.

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