ATLANTA — A state holiday that once honored Confederate General Robert E. Lee could take away a day of early voting in some Georgia counties in the Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.
The timing of the holiday became an issue after Republicans passed a state election law last year that halved Georgia’s runoff calendar. The law also gave voters less time to apply for absentee ballots, enacted stricter identification requirements, and significantly reduced the number of ballot boxes available.
Civil rights activists and Democrats have heavily criticized the law after it was passed, arguing that its impact on runoff voting rules and procedures will marginalize Georgians in many counties.
The run-off, set in motion when no candidate received at least 50 percent of the vote in last Tuesday’s election, will take place on December 6. The mandatory early voting deadline is five days from November 28th to December 2nd. But it’s now restricted to weekdays, with the only possible Saturday barred by a 2016 law.
Georgia is not allowed to conduct early voting on the second Saturday before a runoff election if the preceding Thursday or Friday is a public holiday. The Saturday, November 26, in question is two days after Thanksgiving and one day after a national holiday that once commemorated Robert E. Lee’s birthday. In 2015, Georgia dropped the Confederate tribute but retained the state holiday.
Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who serves as Georgia’s top election official as secretary of state, previously suggested that voting this Saturday, Nov. 26, could be a possibility, but attorneys in his office later concluded that in the contradict the state holiday.
Counties have the option to offer three additional days of early voting for the runoff, but state law prohibits them from holding them on the Saturday before an election. Metro Atlanta’s largest counties will vote Tuesday on whether to add those days.
Democratic groups have already begun urging counties to expand ballot access as much as possible under the new law. On Monday, Marc Elias, a Democratic elections attorney, sent letters to several counties in Georgia on behalf of the Democratic Senators’ Campaign Committee, encouraging election officials across the state to begin polling as early as November 22.
Gerald A. Griggs, the president of the Georgia NAACP, criticized the disruption of early voting by the Civil War-era homage.
“A Confederate holiday should not prevent the protection of democracy called voting,” Mr Griggs said on Twitter on Sunday. “This holiday must be abolished.”
Last year’s election law added another scheduling challenge to an already contentious runoff: the state’s runoff was cut from nine weeks to four weeks. That means both campaigns have to mobilize voters and plan events in half the time they used to. And the runoff campaign also coincides with Thanksgiving and the early days of the holiday season.
Hillary Holley, executive director of Care in Action, the policy arm of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, slammed the early voting dates, calling them “a tongue-in-cheek” to Georgia’s racist past.
She added that a fewer polling Saturdays would make it harder to attract key sections of the Democratic electorate, including blacks, young voters and low-income Georgians. Her organization is urging county polling stations to extend polling hours from the current eight hours to 12 hours each day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m
The eight-hour election day leaves the counties with “a huge influx of voters on election day and that’s just unsustainable,” Ms Holley said. “Counties don’t need that. And our voters don’t need that.”
