Turnout plunged among Georgia voters who returned absentee ballots in 2020, with many of them sitting out this year’s election entirely without voting either by mail or in person.
While overall turnout in Georgia this year shattered records with nearly 5.3 million voters, absentee voters were more likely to stay home than voters who cast ballots early or on Election Day four years ago, according to turnout records analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
More than 347,000 voters who cast absentee ballots in 2020 didn’t participate in last month’s election, a 27% decrease in their turnout. If those voters had shown up at the same rate this year as everyone else who voted in 2020, roughly 123,000 more ballots would have been cast.
It’s unclear what caused the steep drop in absentee voter turnout since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when record numbers of Georgians voted remotely as they avoided crowded polling places.
After Donald Trump’s narrow loss to Joe Biden, Georgia Republicans passed a sweeping election law in 2021 that added new requirements for absentee voting and made it less convenient.
It’s also possible that Democrats were not as enthusiastic this year as they had been four years ago. In both years, two-thirds of absentee voters supported the Democratic candidate, but there were far fewer absentee voters in 2024. In 2020, 26% of all Georgia voters returned absentee ballots. This year, just 5% of voters cast absentee ballots.
“Georgia made it more costly for people to obtain a mail ballot, and we may be seeing the effects of that. We could have had even higher turnout in Georgia,” said Michael McDonald, director of the University of Florida Election Lab, who analyzes turnout data and trends. “Part of Trump’s victory in 2024 has to do with Democrats not showing up to vote.”
Absentee votes for each candidate decreased by an identical rate compared with 2020. Whether it was the choice of candidates, the 2021 voting law, or a combination of the two is not entirely certain.
Widespread absentee voting in 2020 boosted turnout by making it easier to return a ballot, said Barbara Smith Warner, executive director for the National Vote at Home Institute, an organization that advocates for voting by mail.
Record numbers of Georgians voted remotely in 2020 after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger mailed absentee ballot application forms to the state’s 6.9 million active voters before the primary election. Nonprofit organizations then mass mailed absentee ballot application forms before the 2020 general election, when 1.3 million of Georgia’s 5 million voters cast absentee ballots.
After the election, legislators restricted mailing of absentee request forms to voters as part of Georgia’s voting law, Senate Bill 202. The law also capped the number of ballot drop boxes in each county, required an ink signature on absentee applications, required more proof of ID, and shortened deadlines to request and return ballots.
“It’s not subtle. It’s a pretty direct attack” on voting by mail, Warner said. “This is a way to make it easier for people to vote. They made it harder instead.”
Multiple investigations have debunked allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. A handful of cases have been substantiated by the State Election Board, such as family members who filled out their relatives’ ballots and people who voted in both Georgia and another state.
Georgia is one of 28 states that allow any voter to cast an absentee ballot for any reason, and ID is required both for mail and in-person voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eight states and the District of Columbia mail ballots to all eligible voters.
Betsy Kramer, a member of the Georgia Republican Party’s Election Confidence Task Force, said she opposes such ready access to absentee voting. She supports the limitations in SB 202 and wants legislators to go further by requiring voters to provide an excuse before they can vote by mail.
“Voting should be something that you have to think about and put some effort into. It shouldn’t be so easy,” said Kramer, one of Georgia’s 16 presidential electors who voted for Trump at the state Capitol on Tuesday. “To vote, you need to be an educated voter.”
Voting rights advocates oppose restrictions on absentee voting because they say higher turnout results in representation that more closely reflects the will of the people.
States with higher usage of mail ballots generally had higher turnout in 2020, according to a study by Nonprofit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project.
Four states with vote-by-mail elections ranked among the top 13 highest-turnout states in the 2024 election: Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, according to the numbers from the University of Florida Election Lab.
About 68% of eligible voters in Georgia turned out in November’s election, the 15th-highest turnout in the nation.
By the numbers
5.3 million: Total turnout in Georgia’s 2024 election
27%: Absentee voters from 2020 who didn’t participate in the 2024 election
17%: In-person voters from 2020 who didn’t participate in the 2024 election
124,000: Projected turnout increase this year if absentee voters from 2020 had participated at the same rate as in-person voters
Source: AJC analysis of Georgia election data from the secretary of state’s office
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