Even though early voting turnout in Georgia primary elections is trending higher than usual, many Republicans likely will sit out now and in November due to election integrity frustration, experts say.
And that could flip the state from red to blue, giving Democrats control, some told The Epoch Times.
What’s more, their reluctance to vote due to persistent worries about election integrity could affect the balance of power throughout the nation, analysts have predicted.
“About 70 percent of Republicans believe Donald Trump when he says the election was rigged and stolen,” said Georgia elections expert Charles Bullock. He teaches political science at the University of Georgia.
That thinking probably cost Republicans control of the Senate, he said.
“So to the extent that voters buy into that, Republicans may have the same experience they had in the [Georgia] Senate runoffs in January of 2021, where there was a much bigger drop-off in Republican participation.”
Control of the Senate came down to the two races in Georgia that went to runoffs after no candidate reached a majority in the Nov. 4, 2020, results.
Republicans held both seats and both were flipped by Democrat challengers.
In the runoff, incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R) was defeated by Jon Ossof, who received 54,944 more votes. Perdue, now running for governor, had beaten Ossof in the November 2020 election by 88,000 votes. But it wasn’t enough to avoid a runoff.
Republican Kelly Loeffler also lost the seat she'd been appointed to fill after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R) retired due to failing health. She was beaten by pastor Raphael Warnock, now running for re-election.
What made the difference—and changed the balance of power in the U.S. Senate—was Georgia Republicans’ decision to stay home, Bullock said.
The Senate has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, but Vice President Kamala Harris (D) is able to cast a tie-breaking vote.
“The [geographic] areas where you saw the biggest drop off [in voter turn-out] between November 2020 and January 2021 runoffs was in heavily Republican areas,” Bullock said.
And that feeling persists, he said.
“There are a lot of Republicans—who despite the elections laws [that were passed in Georgia] which were supposedly going to make elections more secure—have serious doubts about whether or not the 2022 elections will be fair,” Bullock said.
He believes the worry is unfounded, citing three recounts of ballots in Georgia, including one by hand.
But “these are people who wear red hats with the letters MAGA on them, and that’s what Donald Trump tells them.”
Dorothy Harpe has been knocking on doors in working-class Georgia neighborhoods near Atlanta for months as part of her volunteer work for the Republican Party.
She’s not sent to homes with any particular party affiliation and she’s not supposed to try to persuade people to vote for any candidate.
She’s just assigned to ask how they’re feeling about the election and the issues, and she can encourage them to vote.
“Most of the ones that I spoke with, they said they felt like the election was stolen, and they didn’t feel secure about the elections, so they might not go vote,” Harpe said.
“But what I was trying to tell them was that this shouldn’t stop them from going voting.
“I say, ‘Go vote anyway! Don’t get discouraged because of what happened in the past. You got to move on from the past and move on into the future. So just go vote!”
Her own experience voting in 2020 is enough for her to believe there was widespread, coordinated cheating, she says. But that won’t keep her from voting this year, or ever.
After the first week, 167,588 voters had cast ballots across the state’s 159 counties, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Elections Division.
About 58 percent of those stopping in to vote in person requested Republican ballots, and 41 percent asked to vote in the Democrat primary. The rest asked for ballots only with nonpartisan races.
Voters in Georgia do not register by party.
“Nonpartisan ballots are just for the few nonpartisan races,” said Walter Jones, spokesman for the elections division. “Some people prefer to vote that way, rather than a party ballot, which also includes the nonpartisan contests.”
Of the 64,978 absentee ballots requested by voters, 13,032 had been returned to voting officials in the first week. About 47 percent of those were Republican ballots, and 51 percent were ballots with Democrat races only.
Absentee ballots must be returned by mail or left in a ballot drop box by May 13. Voters who requested an absentee ballot also can choose to vote in person during early voting or on Election Day.
Altogether, 180,620 ballots had been cast in the first week, with 57 percent on Republican ballots, and almost 42 percent on Democrat ballots.
There were 7,004,034 active voters in Georgia, as of December 2021, according to state elections officials.
When Harpe chats with voters at their doorsteps, they complain not only of election integrity worries, but also of crime, describing break-ins and thefts in once-safe neighborhoods.
Inflation is a big concern for voters, as well, Bullock said. From his vantage point as an analyst of all things political in Georgia, Bullock sees voters increasingly worried about the rising prices of gas, groceries, and other necessities.
“So that’s [the message] Republicans are pushing, and that’s part of a broader message of what Republicans would say is due to the failure of the Biden administration,” Bullock said.
“Democrats have been pushing [and] will continue to push [expanded] access to Medicaid” under the Affordable Care Act, he said.
And in response to tightened election laws in the state, Bullock said, “Democrats will say Republicans are trying to suppress the vote.
“That was a major issue that Stacey Abrams ran on four years ago, and seemed to work to turn out Democratic voters, particularly Democratic voters who didn’t vote that regularly.”
For Republicans who decide to vote, “in essence, President Trump’s [complaints], along with his supporters’ grievances, from the 2020 Presidential election are on the ballot,” said analyst Peter Bergerson, a political science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.
Bergerson has been studying and commenting on national politics for 50 years.
At her voting precinct, poll workers don’t always ask for I.D., she says, even though it’s required under Georgia law.
“I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes!” she told The Epoch Times.
Harpe retired as housekeeping supervisor at an Episcopal church in downtown Atlanta. She’s always identified as conservative. Her parents were Republican, and her grandparents, too.
That’s “because of the way my grandfather raised us,” she said.
“We were raised to work for what we had, without trying to depend on someone else to give it to us. We were raised to respect your elders, respect your neighbors, go to church, do the right thing. Don’t run with the bad crowd.”
“The Democrats always seem like they want you depending on the government. And you should not depend on the government.
“You should go and work and not wait on a hand-out, not wait on the food stamps, not wait on the Section Eight [government-subsidized housing].
“The Democrats believe in keeping you poor, and the Republicans are the party that make you rich.”
That’s caused friction with people who say she should vote Democrat, because that’s what people of her race are expected to do, she says. They’ve called her ugly names that she won’t repeat.
“They always say, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to be something you ain’t,’ or ‘You think you’re better than somebody else.’ And I say, ‘No, that’s not the way I feel. I just don’t want to be depending on these programs.’”
She’s disappointed by Christians in favor of abortion.
Take incumbent U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock is likely to face expected Republican-primary victor Herschel Walker in November.
“I see [supporting abortion] as a problem for a pastor,” Harpe says. “A pastor is supposed to be speaking life to people, not death. He’s supposed to be a man of God.”
She feels the widespread cries of racism throughout the country are little more than political plays.
She yearns for an end to that, and hopes that Republican victories in the midterm primaries will put the U.S. back on track for a more unified future, one based on truth, not politically motivated falsehoods, and a dependence on government.
“It’s not about race,” she said. “It’s about control. Democrats started handing out all that free stuff, and black people took a hold of that free stuff. They stopped working so they could get the free stuff.
“You‘d be surprised how many black people like [former] president Trump,” she said, and she hopes he’ll run again, win, and bring back his policies.
“He tried to tell us it’s corrupt and crazy up there [in Washington, D.C.], and we wouldn’t listen to him.”
“That’s what’s going to bring back this country—the truth. We’re sick of the B.S. And I think it will come out. What is done in the dark always comes to the light. It will. Trust me.
“I just want to see the country back together, like it was before.”
