On Tuesday, voters in Georgia and Alabama cast ballots in primaries to determine their respective parties' local, state, and federal nominees for November. In Georgia, it was the first spate of federal elections since the passage of last year's controversial new voting bill, S.B. 202. The bill's opponents called it "Jim Crow 2.0," but voters this week turned out in record numbers.
S.B. 202, the "Election Integrity Act of 2021," was passed by Republican state lawmakers in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Many states, including Georgia, changed voting rules during that election cycle in attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Often, these changes were made by judges, and were challenged by local election officials, who, in some cases, struggled to comply with expanded early voting hours or more generous deadlines for returning ballots.
