Voters Stick to Pandemic-Era Habits, As Early Turnout Surges

Days into early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, states across the country have seen a surge of voters casting ballots at in-person voting sites and by mail, the latest sign that the 2020 election ushered in a transformation in the way Americans vote.

Through the first five days of early voting in Georgia, in-person turnout is up 70 percent compared with turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the secretary of state’s office. In North Carolina, absentee ballot requests are up 114 percent compared with requests in 2018, according to the board of elections. And in Florida, the total early vote is up 50 percent compared with the early vote in 2018.

Election experts say the signs suggest overall turnout will be strong. But they are quick to caution that it is still early in the voting calendar — many states are less than a week in and some have not started. With voters’ behaviors so clearly changed by pandemic-era rules, it is unclear whether this rush to vote will lead to record-breaking totals after Election Day on Nov. 8.

Still, one significant shift in how American elections are conducted has become clear: Election Day has become, and will most likely always be, election month.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/us/politics/midterm-early-voting.html

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What happens when Marjorie Taylor Greene tells a Georgia town you're a predator.

He knew there’d be trouble when he heard Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene utter his name. “He may pick you up for a ride,” Greene intoned in a live video in June. “Then he’ll dress in women’s clothing and read stories to your kids and sell sex toys to college students.”

Benjamin Gentry—who goes by Courtney Chanel Stratton as a drag queen and works at the Rome, Georgia, adult store the Love Library—was scheduled to perform at Rome’s inaugural pride festival nine days later, reading books to children. Greene represents Georgia’s 14th district, which includes Rome.

Greene showed a picture of Stratton on screen, the queen’s curly blonde hair framing sumptuous eyelashes and a glittering necklace. Off camera, Greene’s producer intoned, “His real name is Benjamin Gentry, and the bad news is that he’s a ride-share driver in Rome, Georgia.” She flashed a picture of Gentry’s Facebook profile on screen and suggested people send him a friend request. That same day, Greene, who is poised to win another term in Congress in next month, tweeted to her nearly 1 million followers, “Protecting your children from drag queen child predators is not a hate crime.”

Gentry learned what was happening quickly. The death threats began right away. “If I catch any one of these sick perverts around my grandkids, they will die,” a typical user wrote on Gab, the far-right social network. Gentry knew Greene’s claims about predatory drag queens were absurd. But it was less clear what to do about them.

“It’s not every day that you get targeted by a political figure, so it’s like, how do I handle this?” he told me. “It sent me into a really deep depression, and I just didn’t want to do anything. I’d just go to work and stay at home because I’m like, ‘What if I go out and someone attacks me?’”





https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/10/marjorie-taylor-greene-georgia-online-conspiracy.html

This will not end well.

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