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ATLANTA – In the first and only weekend of early voting in the Georgia Senate runoff, tens of thousands of voters cast ballots in the election pitting Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock against Republican challenger Herschel Walker, last Senate contest of the 2022 legislatures.
On Saturday, 70,050 Georgians went to the polls, using an extra day of early voting as a result of a lawsuit filed by Warnock, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the state Democratic Party. Republicans tried to block the effort in the courts but were unsuccessful.
Among those voting Saturday were Georgia residents who told The Washington Post that busy schedules made it impossible to vote during the week. The lines also included college students home for the Thanksgiving break who preferred to vote in person rather than rely on an absentee ballot.
Neither Warnock nor Walker captured more than 50 percent of the vote on 8 November, forcing the two into a run-off on 6 December. Democrats have already regained majority control of the Senate after picking up a GOP seat in Pennsylvania, but a Warnock victory would give them 51 seats and a committee edge, without the need for a power-sharing deal with Republicans .
Another 86,937 people voted on Sunday. That number combined with voters in select counties who voted before Thanksgiving and the 15,305 mail-in ballots accepted so far means a total of 181,711 voters had cast ballots by the end of the weekend.
By Monday evening, with all 159 counties offering early voting, even more voters had turned up. As of 4:45 p.m., an additional 239,160 voters had cast ballots, according to Gabriel Sterling, a senior official in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. In a brief interview, Sterling said Monday’s total could exceed 250,000 and that even more voters could turn up in the days closer to the election.
By comparison, more than 200,000 people had already cast a mail-in ballot on the first day of early voting in Georgia’s latest runoff election in January 2021. And more than 1.6 million had voted in the first week , which highlights the different political environment and state of Georgia. voting laws, which were revised in 2021 with new restrictions on how to vote.
The stakes were higher in January 2021, with two runoff elections on the ballot that decided control of the Senate.
Through in-person early voting, Georgians had to wait hours in line at many locations to vote. Among them was Warnock, who voted Sunday afternoon in Fulton County. The lawmaker stood in line for nearly an hour before he could vote for himself. Early voting ends Friday.
Warnock held several public campaign events over the weekend, while his opponent had none. Walker will return to the campaign trail on Monday, after not making a public appearance since Tuesday.
Before the election, a group of a dozen prominent religious leaders in the state urged black voters to vote for Warnock, arguing that Walker, a business executive and former college football star, is unfit for the job .
“We believe Herschel Walker belongs in the Football Hall of Fame, but nowhere near the United States Senate,” the faith leaders wrote in an “open letter to the African-American community in Georgia” released Monday.
“Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. he said that “nothing in this world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Senate,” the letter says.
Faith leaders argue that Walker has both “character” flaws and “strange positions on critical issues” that would make him an inferior lawmaker.
“While it may make white extremists in Georgia, out-of-state politicians and their close friend Donald Trump happy as people of faith, our priorities and expectations on issues come from a higher calling.” says the letter
Walker’s campaign had no immediate comment on the letter.
Warnock released a video over the weekend of speeches by Walker in which voters react in disbelief to the Republican’s comments about vampires, werewolves and “good air” from the United States displacing “bad air” from China, among other topics .
“Not only does it make no sense, but I don’t even understand what he thinks he’s saying,” one woman says in the video.
The announcement comes days after Georgia state officials were asked to investigate reports that, despite running to represent Georgia in the Senate, Walker is getting a tax break on his Texas home that was only meant to a main residence.
Georgia resident Ann Gregory Roberts filed a complaint with the Georgia Attorney General’s Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arguing that Walker is ineligible to register to vote in Georgia because his primary residence is in Texas And that by voting in Georgia, Walker has broken the law.
CNN first reported last week that public records show Walker is on track to get a Texas tax break this year, which would save him about $1,500 on a $3 million house in the suburbs of Dallas listed as his primary residence.
Walker took the tax break for his Texas home in 2021 and 2022 even after launching his Senate bid in Georgia, an official with the county tax assessor’s office told CNN. Tarrant
Walker, who previously played professional football for the Dallas Cowboys, lived in Texas for decades before registering to vote in Georgia in August 2021. He is well known in Georgia because of a storied football career in the University of Georgia.
In a statement, Amanda Sherman-Baity, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, said: “Every day Herschel Walker’s pattern of dishonesty and disturbing behavior continues, and is further proof that he has no intention of represent Georgians in the Senate. Georgia authorities should respond quickly to the call to investigate Walker’s latest scandal, and Walker himself owes voters an explanation.”
Wagner reported from Washington. Eugene Scott and Azi Paybarah in Washington contributed to this report.