Georgia shatters voting record, officials say new election laws’ liberal critics proven wrong

Georgia, a critical swing state, demolished its record for ballots cast on the first day of early voting, state officials said.

Voters in the southern battleground cast 328,000 ballots on Tuesday. The previous record for the first day was 136,000 in 2020.

“Over 300,000 votes cast today! That’s 123% higher than the old record for the 1st day. Great job counties & voters,” Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer for the state secretary of state, said on X.

Georgia will award 16 electoral votes and is expected to play a key role in who wins the White House. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016, but President Biden took it in a narrow upset in 2020.

Mr. Trump, claiming fraud, urged state Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes in the state for him to win, sparking a criminal investigation and indictment.

GOP election officials who rejected Mr. Trump’s claims at the time said they also took steps to ensure the election was secure. They wanted to shore up trust in the system.

They took a victory lap over Tuesday’s high vote totals, saying it vindicated state efforts to secure the election system with the Election Integrity Act of 2021.

The law, which beefed up voter identification rules while expanding early voting, was pilloried by Democrats as a voter suppression law, particularly provisions against handing out free food and water to voters in line.

Major League Baseball even moved its All-Star game out of the Atlanta area in protest.

Mr. Sterling said the first-day vote tally proved the critics wrong.

“For those that claimed Georgia election laws were Jim Crow 2.0 and those that say democracy is dying … the voters of Georgia would like to have a word,” he wrote.