So a lot of this early voting happened on Saturday that wasn't allowed previously that Republicans were fighting against. Then the Supreme Court and George said, no, you can vote that day. You opposed that, allowing voting on that day.
You thought it was antithetical to the law. What do you think now? Well, this was antibiotical the law. The law said you can't have voting on Saturday after Thursday for problematic reasons, to begin with.
You see, Saturday after Thanksgiving, counties had a hard time getting people to open up. They couldn't find poll workers because most people are with their families. It was passed in 2016 for that specific purpose.
It was passed with 80% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans. There was nothing weird about it. Now, as an election administrator, I always want to have as much voting available as possible, but we also have to follow the law.
Followed the law in 2022. But once the court said, you vote on Saturday, we work with the counties to provide as many resources as we could to make sure that people can vote. Can you help us understand?
I want our viewers and you to listen to something that Senator Warnock said about this push to not allow voting on that day and just want your response on the other side. Here he was a few days ago. We filed a lawsuit so you can vote on Saturday.
They filed a petition asking for emergency relief. What you want to ask yourself is, what do they want relief from? Do you want relief from people voting? What do you make of that? Well, he's trying to soak up his crowd to come out and vote and say they're being suppressed.
The reality was, I'm not going to do my Republican side of this. The Republicans said the only counties that are going to open up are going to be Democrat counties. And it's just not fair because it was going to be the Rich Republic merging Democrat counties like Folt into Cab Cobb and would have been opening and ended up those were the ones that did.
So I understand the political motivations behind the people doing that because you're not going to have the Republican county, Houston, Columbia, and Reagan opening up because they didn't have the money or the resources to do it.
So I think they were trying to keep the protein even and fair. Now, everybody, this week is mandated to have early voting in every single county, all 100. So, Gabe, let me just ask you. You say that you believe that it was wrong, but the courts did not decide that.
So I'm wondering what the disconnect is. It is they decided that it should open after Thursday. So what is the disconnect here? You don't support the action, even though the courts decided that?
Well, no, I'm supporting the action because the court said it. The reality was there were two interpretations of the law. Our interpretation, I think, was the best for the overall law. You have one Fulton County judge who wants to let you be elected in Fulton County who said, I'm going to go for this other interpretation law that, from our point of view, was a big stretch, but they did it, and the courts spoke, and then we the law, as the courts interpreted it.
Now, I still think their interpretation is wrong, and we can always have arguments around that. This was not done for anything other than following the law as written and passed by a majority of Democrats and Republicans alike.
They didn't like the outcome of what they did, which is probably unintentional, but that's the law. We don't get a choice in our office to decide whether or not to enforce the law or not. We always have to enforce it.
That's the situation. But once the court spoke, we said, Fine, open up Saturday. Now. Republicans. We stopped the appeals after the appeals court. We said you know what? They create too much confusion.
Let's just go forward and let these people vote on Saturday because that's what the appeals Court said. Now, the Republican Party went ahead and took it to the Supreme Court, which we didn't, do because we said it was going to cause too much confusion at this late date.
Gabe, I've got two questions for you. I was there on the ground in Georgia on Monday. A lot of people out there casting their votes. What do you think is driving this record early turnout? Well, the condensed timeline is going to be part of it, no question.
But historically in Georgia, we've always had four-week runoffs. My boss, Secretary Raffensperger, won a four-week run-off just four weeks four years ago in 2018. And the second thing is we're the only game in town.
We're the belle of the ball. With every political dollar, America is coming here. It is right now both on the left and the right. So we had people going knocking on doors this weekend on Saturday during the Iron Bowl in the Georgia Georgia Tech game, which they weren't from around here, didn't know anybody forgot to do that.
But they're going to go, every person. And I got another question about something that Georgia Democrats want investigated. And this is on some CNN reporting that Herschel Walker, the Republican in this race, is getting a tax break in Texas, saying it's his primary residence there.
There have been questions about whether he is running afoul of George's rules when it comes to establishing residency for not just voting, but for running for office. What is your sense of whether or not he is within the margins of what's right or if he is breaking some kind of rules here with this?
It's not our office's thing to investigate that. I know the devil's office has an official complaint, but there are ways to challenge residency inside the law. And it's kind of funny to do it at this late hour because I'm pretty sure there are a lot of optician researchers out there who have had this for a while.
But again, he's on the ballot. People are casting votes right now. It's up to the court to decide whether I qualify to meet this meeting or not. The one thing I will say about residency, it's squishy.
It's kind of like, what's your state of mind if you intend to be here as a resident, we treat you as a resident. But this happens in other jurisdictional cases sometimes to see if people are allowed to run for office in our state.
Yeah, I mean, it's recently as last year, 2021. He used it as a rental property and he and his spouse were receiving money for it. Can I ask you about George? Well, one thing quickly. Do you think that what happened on Saturday with the voting, you think it might change the outcome of the election?
Do you think it helps one side over the other? No, not necessarily. I think it probably was a little more Democrat. Out of the open counties. But I think now that we have the case open, it's going to Italy, even out, because it helps the election administration. After all, it's going to take some pressure off these five days and election day.
And finally, are you watching Arizona? Have you been watching Arizona to see what is going on there? What do you make of what happened with the legislature and certifying the sort of nuttiness that went on around it?
Out of morbid curiosity? Yeah, I think in Coaches County, those two have some very serious problems because they have a law that says if you're certified or you're committing a felony and they can't even find any lawyers to represent them on this one because I think it's just nutball, a crazy town that they're questioning.
That's why they're not going to certify their election.