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      Special Grand Jury in Georgia Trump Inquiry Concludes Its Investigation

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      A hearing will be held to determine whether the report will be made public. Any criminal charges would have to be brought by a regular grand jury.ATLANTA — Eight weeks into Donald J. Trump’s latest run for president, a special grand jury investigating Mr. Trump and his allies for possible election interference in 2020 concluded its work on Monday. But the panel’s findings remain private for now, including whether it recommended criminal charges against the former president.The special grand jury was dissolved days after producing a report that was reviewed by the 20 judges on the Superior Court of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta. Its members were sworn in last May.“The court thanks the grand jurors for their dedication, professionalism and significant commitment of time and attention to this important matter,” Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the panel, wrote in an order dissolving it.A hearing will be held on Jan. 24 to determine whether the report will be made public, as the special grand jury is recommending, according to the judge’s order. Special grand juries cannot issue indictments, so any criminal charges would have to be sought from one of the regular grand juries that consider criminal matters in the county.Regular grand jury terms last two months. Defendants who are indicted can request speedy trials that begin by the close of the term that follows the two-month period in which they are indicted. Because of those protocols, most charges would most likely be brought at the beginning of the next grand jury term in early March, or further down the road.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5An immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Grand jury in Georgia’s Trump 2020 election investigation finishes work

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      Grand jury in Georgia’s Trump 2020 election investigation finishes workFulton county district attorney to decide on any indictments after special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses over six months The special grand jury convened by prosecutors in Atlanta to investigate whether Donald Trump committed crimes in his effort to reverse his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in Georgia has finished its work.Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, who was overseeing the panel, issued an order on Monday that dissolved the special grand jury, after it completed a final report on its inquiries.The decision whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury will be up to the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.🚨By order of Judge Robert McBurney, the Georgia special purpose grand jury investigating 2020 election interference by Trump and his allies is dissolved. The grand jury voted to make its report public. A hearing will be held on Jan. 24 to determine if it will be published. pic.twitter.com/mMBE7b2nEY— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) January 9, 2023
      Over the course of about six months, the special grand jury has heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, including numerous close Trump associates and assorted high-ranking Georgia state officials.The case is among several around the country that threaten legal peril for the former president as he seeks a second term in 2024.Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments but instead can issue a final report recommending actions to be taken.On 3 January 2021, Trump, the then US president, pressured the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in a phone call to “find” enough votes from the state’s electorate to overturn then president-elect Joe Biden’s victory there that Trump had refused to concede.The call was recorded and released and sparked widespread outrage, including calls for a second impeachment. That did not happen but Trump ended up confronted with a historic second impeachment for inciting the insurrection three days later, where his supporters broke into the US Capitol in Washington to try to stop the official congressional certification of Biden winning the presidency from Trump.After news of the call with Raffensberger broke, Bob Bauer, then a senior Biden adviser, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.”Georgia law says that grand juries are “authorized to recommend to the court the publication of the whole or any part of their general presentments” and that the judge must follow that recommendation. The special grand jury voted to recommend that its report be published.There will be a hearing on 24 January on whether to publish the special grand jury’s report and the district attorney’s office and news outlets will be given a chance to make arguments.Willis opened the investigation in early 2021. Willis is focusing on several different areas: phone calls made to Georgia officials by Trump and his allies; false statements made by Trump associates before Georgia legislative committees; a panel of 16 Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors; the abrupt resignation of the federal prosecutor in Atlanta in January 2021; alleged attempts to pressure a Fulton county election worker; and breaches of election equipment in a rural south Georgia county.Lawyers for Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney, confirmed before he was questioned by the special grand jury in August that they were told he faces possible criminal charges. The 16 Republican fake electors have also been told they are targets of the investigation, according to public court filings.Of all the legal threats Trump is facing, is this the one that could take him down?Read moreTrump and his allies have consistently denied any wrongdoing. The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former chief of staff to Trump Mark Meadows and Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, also all testified before the grand jury.It is unclear if Trump himself could face charges based on what the jurors determine.It is far from the only investigation into Trump. The Department of Justice is examining election interference that as well as Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, and both cases have been handed to special prosecutor Jack Smith.Smith is also expected to decided whether to bring charges against Trump and others over the government secrets discovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.TopicsDonald TrumpGeorgiaUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats Face Obstacles in Plan to Reorder Presidential Primary Calendar

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      The party is radically reshuffling the early-state order, but Georgia and New Hampshire present challenges.Democratic efforts to overhaul which states hold the first presidential primaries entered a new and uncertain phase this week, with hurdles to President Biden’s preferred order coming into focus even as several states signaled their abilities to host early contests, a key step in radically reshaping the calendar.But in Georgia, Democrats face logistical problems in moving up their primary. And New Hampshire, the longtime leadoff primary state, has officially indicated that it cannot comply with the early-state lineup endorsed by a D.N.C. panel, under which the state would hold the second primary contest alongside Nevada.That panel backed a sweeping set of changes last month to how the party picks its presidential nominee, in keeping with Mr. Biden’s vision of putting more racially diverse states at the beginning of the process.Democratic nominating contests have for years begun with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Under the new proposal, the 2024 Democratic presidential primary calendar would begin in South Carolina on Feb. 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and then Michigan on Feb. 27.Those states — several of which played critical roles in Mr. Biden’s 2020 primary victory — had until Thursday to demonstrate progress toward being able to host contests on the selected dates. According to a letter from the co-chairs of the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan have met the committee’s requirements for holding early primaries.Both Georgia and New Hampshire are more complex cases.In the letter, sent on Thursday, the committee’s co-chairs recommended that the two states be granted extensions to allow for more time to work toward meeting the requirements of the new calendar.“We expected both the New Hampshire and Georgia efforts to be complicated but well worth the effort if we can get them done,” wrote Jim Roosevelt Jr. and Minyon Moore, in a letter obtained by The New York Times. They added, “We are committed to seeing out the calendar that this committee approved last month.”Under the new D.N.C. proposal, Georgia would host the fourth Democratic primary in 2024. A onetime Republican bastion that helped propel Mr. Biden to the presidency, Georgia also played a critical role in cementing the Democratic Senate majority and has become an undeniably critical battleground state. Atlanta has been vying to host the Democratic National Convention and is considered one of the stronger contenders.President Biden, if he seeks re-election, could decide against filing in the New Hampshire primary, a state where he came in fifth place in 2020.David Degner for The New York TimesBut there are challenges in moving up Georgia’s Democratic primary. Republicans have already agreed to their own early-voting calendar, keeping the order of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, and rules from the Republican National Committee are clear: States that jump the order will lose delegates, and party rules have already been set (though the R.N.C. is in a period of tumult as its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, faces a challenge to her leadership).In Georgia, the primary date is determined by the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. Officials from his office have stressed that there is no appetite to hold two primaries or to risk losing delegates.“This needs to be equitable to both political parties and held on the same day to save taxpayers’ money,” Jordan Fuchs, Georgia’s deputy secretary of state, said in a statement this week.Georgia Democrats hoping that the money and media attention that come to an early primary state might persuade Gov. Brian P. Kemp, a Republican, to intercede for them may be disappointed, too.“The governor has no role in this process and does not support the idea,” Cody Hall, an adviser to Mr. Kemp, said on Wednesday night.The situation is fraught for different reasons in New Hampshire, which has long held the nation’s first primary as a matter of state law. Neither the state’s Democrats nor its Republicans, who control the governor’s mansion and state legislature, are inclined to buck the law, playing up the state’s discerning voters and famed opportunities for small-scale retail politicking.That tradition puts New Hampshire’s Democrats directly at odds with the D.N.C. mandate to host the second primary in 2024. Officials in the state have signaled their intent to hold the first primary anyway, risking penalties.In a letter to the Rules and Bylaws Committee before the deadline extension, Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, wrote that the D.N.C.’s plan was “unrealistic and unattainable, as the New Hampshire Democratic Party cannot dictate to the Republican governor and state legislative leaders what to do, and because it does not have the power to change the primary date unilaterally.”He noted a number of concessions New Hampshire Democrats would seek to make, but urged the committee to “reconsider the requirements that they have placed,” casting them as a “poison pill.”The early-state proposal is the culmination of a long process to reorder and diversify the calendar, and Mr. Roosevelt and Ms. Moore said later Thursday that the tentative calendar “does what is long overdue and brings more voices into the early window process.”D.N.C. rules stipulate consequences for any state that moves to operate ahead of the party’s agreed-upon early window, as well as for candidates who campaign in such states.If New Hampshire jumps the line, Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, assuming he runs, could decide against filing in the New Hampshire primary, a state where he came in fifth place in 2020.While few prominent Democratic officials expect, as of now, that he would draw a major primary challenge if he runs — making much of the drama around the early-state calendar effectively moot in 2024 — a lesser-known candidate could emerge and camp out in New Hampshire, some in the state have warned.The eventual calendar is not set in stone for future elections: Mr. Biden urged the Rules and Bylaws Committee to review the calendar every four years, and the committee has embraced an amendment to get that process underway.And there are still a number of steps this year.The Rules and Bylaws Committee is expected to meet to vote on the proposed extensions. The D.N.C.’s. winter meeting, where the five-state proposal must be affirmed by the full committee, is scheduled for early February in Philadelphia, and there is certain to be more jockeying ahead of that event.“The first real inflection point is the meeting of the full D.N.C.,” Mr. Roosevelt said in an interview late last month. More

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      ‘It’s not about winning an election’: Stacey Abrams’ legacy in Georgia

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      ‘It’s not about winning an election’: Stacey Abrams’ legacy in Georgia Abrams did not win the vote, but she created the conditions for increased voter turnout among key parts of Georgia’s electorateAfter a critical runoff election that helped Democrats cement their majority in the US Senate, Georgia’s status as a political battleground with national influence has become more apparent. Georgia now boasts a highly engaged electorate that continues to turn out in record numbers election after election.While various factors contribute to this, many in Georgia point to the state’s grassroots coalition, built over the last decade, that sought to register, engage and educate voters like never before. At the helm of this coalition sits former state House minority leader and two-time gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.Star Trek makes Stacey Abrams president of United Earth – and stokes conservative angerRead moreThroughout the south, Black women have a long history of organizing their communities to redefine and exercise political power. Abrams is one of the latest in a long line of Black women, which includes civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker, who are building upon this legacy and joining in the marathon of the fight for democracy.Despite two losses in her race for governor, Abrams’ impact has continued to shape Georgia’s political sphere. Abrams, the founder of two of Georgia’s largest voting rights organizations, Fair Fight and New Georgia Project, embarked on a mission nearly a decade ago to expand and engage the state’s electorate by courting voters whose voices had long been ignored.“The state [Democrats] were at a crossroads,” said Kendra Cotton, the CEO of New Georgia Project. “We were either going to continue down that path of pursuing the white moderate, or we were going to move and be all in on the path of expanding the electorate and really trying to educate and intentionally engage Black folks, Brown folks and young folks, into participating in the electoral process at a higher level.”Through a multi-racial, cross-movement, grassroots campaign, Abrams and her allies developed a political infrastructure that increased turnout among Black, Asian, Latinx, low-income and youth voters, who tend to vote for more progressive candidates. Organizations like Black Voters Matter, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, and New Georgia Project, all led by Black women, served as pillars within a growing coalition, reaching communities across the state to register and engage record numbers of voters.At the close of the 2022 runoff election, Georgia had over seven million active voters, according to the secretary of state’s office. Of that seven million, 18 to 24-year-olds represent the largest voting population.While it is clear that Abrams is not the only force behind Georgia’s growing electorate and a renewed focus on voting rights throughout the nation, Cotton said she serves as a “flashpoint” in the history of American politics that many were able to galvanize around.“We weren’t buying into Abrams as a candidate, but into the vision that the future of the elections really does lie within its young folks and Black and Brown people who have been the backbone of this nation for generations, but didn’t fully know how to assert the power that they had.”Santiago Mayer, founder and executive director of the youth-led voting organization Voters of Tomorrow, says that Abrams served as an inspiration for his organization and his work as a youth organizer working to support and amplify the voice of young voters.“The work of getting people to vote and make their voices heard is simply one of the most important jobs anyone can do because it guides our future,” said Mayer. “Stacey Abrams showed us how to carry that legacy and build upon it, and what we can accomplish when you help those whose voices have been neglected so long really make an impact and generate real action.”Young Black voters in Georgia reached a new record during the 2020 election, with 500,000 Black voters aged 18 to 29 turning out. This greatly contributed to the overall growth of Georgia’s Black voters. In total, the number of Black voters in the state increased 25% from 2016 to 2020, as Asian and Latinx voters experienced a 12% and 18% increase, respectively.Still, as Georgia’s electorate expanded, so grew opposition. After the 2020 election, Georgia took the national stage as Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the election. Abrams was a focus of GOP ire, receiving attacks from Trump and his allies and Governor Brian Kemp and his allies.Following unfounded claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election by Trump and his allies, Kemp and Georgia’s GOP seemingly developed a solution to a problem that never existed. The result was a comprehensive and strict new voter law that impacted everything from who’s allowed to help voters register to where resources can be distributed to voters waiting in Georgia’s notoriously long precinct lines.Kemp and other GOP officials also worked to mark Abrams as an election denier because of her claims of voter suppression throughout the state in 2020.Nonetheless, Abrams was one of the key players in expanding Georgia’s electorate in 2022, delivering a key democratic victory during the presidential election to the chagrin of Trump.Because of the state’s highly engaged voting rights coalition and clear voting rights infrastructure helmed by Abrams, voters and activists alike were equipped to navigate a system that placed new barriers on the path to casting a ballot. They moved in step with uniform messaging, spreading out across the state and guiding voters through the ever-changing electoral landscape of Georgia.And the results were clear. With concerted efforts to encourage voters to vote early to mitigate potential issues this election season, nearly 3 million people cast early votes, a record for the state. The turnout, experts say, illustrates the gradual progress critical to enacting the lasting change necessary for strong political shifts.Stacey Abrams on Republican voter suppression: ‘They are doing what the insurrectionists sought’Read more“Party building on a state and a national level takes time and resources to build an apparatus to harness those shifts into real political change, and we can’t forget that,” said Dr Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. “[Abrams] was able to help galvanize Georgia democrats, build a bridge between various groups of constituents and really energize the electorate.”While Abrams did not necessarily bear the fruit of this energized electorate during her two gubernatorial campaigns, many Democrats, both on a statewide and national level, did. Most notably, Georgia voters played a significant role in the 2020 election of Joe Biden, the first democratic candidate to win Georgia’s electoral votes in two decades.“Any time you see [senators] Ossoff and Warnock and President Biden in Washington, you are looking at the work of Stacey Abrams,” said the Rev Al Sharpton.Whether because of policy, party, gender or race, Abrams did not find success in her bids to be the next governor of Georgia. However, her ability to mobilize voters, expand political power and develop a political infrastructure actively redefining the South will not soon be forgotten. As Cotton explains, “The gains that we have now cannot be divorced from the vision that she had then.”In her only post-election interview earlier this month, Abrams revealed that while she may run again, she will maintain her role in the fight to redefine voter outreach, expand the electorate and amplify the voices of voters long ignored.“The work that I do and the work that I am so committed to is about engaging voters year-round because it’s not just about somebody winning an election,” Abrams said. “It’s about your life getting better and that should be our mission.”TopicsStacey AbramsThe fight for democracyGeorgiaUS politicsDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Georgia’s Top Election Official Calls for End to Runoff System

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      Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, said that a newly tightened timeline for runoff elections had put added strain on election workers.ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, called for the state legislature to end the use of runoff contests during general elections on Wednesday, a potential move that would overhaul Georgia’s heavily debated system of choosing its leaders.Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican who oversees the state’s elections, cited the recently condensed timeline for runoff elections as one problem, saying that it had put added strain on poll workers. The runoff window was shortened to four weeks from nine under a major 2021 election law backed by Republican state lawmakers.“No one wants to be dealing with politics in the middle of their family holiday,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a news release. “It’s even tougher on the counties who had a difficult time completing all of their deadlines, an election audit and executing a runoff in a four-week time period.”Mr. Raffensperger does not have any legislative power and did not endorse any other specific changes on Wednesday. But his early support for eliminating the runoff system could influence how Republican state lawmakers approach the question.The Republican-controlled legislature would need a simple majority to alter or end the system, and then Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, would have to sign the measure. Republican leaders in the General Assembly and Mr. Kemp have not indicated yet whether they would support changes to the runoff system.Mr. Raffensperger also noted that Georgia is one of very few states that still use a runoff system for general elections. Louisiana is the only other state that requires a runoff in a general election if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote. The system is a relic of Jim Crow-era laws that aimed to limit Black voters’ political power.In recent years, however, Georgia Democrats have won several high-profile runoff victories, including that of Senator Raphael Warnock against Herschel Walker last week. That race had soaring turnout that led to long lines at precincts in heavily populated, Democratic-leaning counties. Democrats also successfully sued to hold early voting for an extra day on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Raffensperger said that his office would present several proposed runoff changes to the state legislature when it reconvenes in January. They include mandating that larger counties open more voting locations to cut down wait times, lowering the threshold needed to win an election outright to 45 percent from 50 percent and instituting a ranked-choice instant-runoff system that would not require voters to return to the polls after the general election. More

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      Unapologetic Black Power in the South

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      I’m a strong advocate of Black reverse migration — Black people returning to Southern states from cities in the North and West in order to concentrate political power.This reverse migration was already happening before my advocacy, and it continues. As the demographer William H. Frey wrote for the Brookings Institution in September, the reversal “began as a trickle in the 1970s, increased in the 1990s, and turned into a virtual evacuation from many Northern areas in subsequent decades.”There are many reasons for this reversal, primarily economic, but I specifically propose adding the accrual of political power — statewide political power — to the mix.One of the ways that people often push back on what I’m proposing is to worry aloud about the opposition and backlash to a rising Black population and power base in Southern states.Well, Georgia is providing a proving ground for this debate in real life.I heard so many people after the Georgia runoff in which Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker who said some version of “Yes, but it was still too close.”It seemed to me that those comments — and many others — missed the bigger point: Something absolutely historic is happening in Georgia that portends a massive political realignment for several Southern states.Georgia voters proved this year that the historic election of a Black senator from a Southern state by a coalition led in many ways by Black people was not a fluke.And that coalition sent Warnock back to the Senate in the face of fierce opposition. Not only did the Georgia state legislature and Gov. Brian Kemp do their best to suppress voters — a tactic almost always designed to marginalize nonwhite voters — but Republicans also turned out in droves to try to retain power that they see slipping from their grasp.Furthermore, in the general election, Black turnout was down. According to Nate Cohn, the Black share of the electorate fell to its lowest level since 2006.But then in the runoff, when the choice was narrowed and sharpened, the Warnock coalition bounced back, stronger and defiant.According to the Georgia secretary of state’s office, Black voters only account for 29 percent of registered active voters in the state. During early voting, Black voters outperformed. They went to the polls to prove a point. They voted to flex. According to a Pew Research Center report, the number of Black people registered to vote in Georgia increased 25 percent from 2016 to 2020, a far larger increase than any other racial group.Yes, many, like me, were offended by the presence of Walker as the alternative, and were voting as much to defy Walker as to affirm Warnock.But even there, I think we have to step back, take a breath, and soberly assess how historic his presence was. The power structure in Georgia was so shocked by what this Black-led coalition had done that they allowed Donald Trump to foist a thoroughly unqualified Black Republican on them, thinking that he would help them win back power.Georgia Republicans thought they could fracture the Black vote. They couldn’t. It held strong and united.There is a great, nearly inexpressible exhilaration in this realization as a Black citizen and voter. Black people and other minorities weren’t simply being called upon to tip the balance when white voters split down the middle. Every other Black senator in American history has been elected by a coalition led by white liberals. Warnock is the first elected by a coalition led by Black people.Black people were leading the charge in his election, and he was solid, bright and competent. This startling new reality of electoral politics demolished any lingering lies about inferior Black leadership or intemperate Black voters. Black voters want what any other voter should want: solid leaders who are responsive to them.Some may look at the defeat of Stacey Abrams in the governor’s race and see it as a sign of caution, that the “Old South” is alive and well. But I see it differently. Power will not be passively relinquished. Those with it will fight like hell to retain it. And in that power struggle, they will win some of the battles.Each election will depend on candidates and campaigns. The race between Kemp and Abrams is not a predictor of what is possible. Black voters in Georgia keep reminding themselves what’s possible when they focus their attention and effort as they did in this runoff.That kind of engagement — and the reward of winning — is psychologically powerful. Once a people taste power, state power, it seems to me that it will be hard to turn away from it. Having it begins to feel normal and expected.That is a reality that many in this country have feared for centuries. That is a reality that I now relish.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Why 51 is better than 50 in the Senate: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Raphael Warnock was re-elected to represent Georgia in the US Senate for the next six years. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution about the significance for Democrats of having an absolute majority in the upper chamber of Congress, rather than a 50/50 split

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      Losing Another Runoff, Georgia Republicans Weigh an Election Shake-Up

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      Some in the party said that additional changes to election rules were likely, after Senator Raphael Warnock’s victory put a new spotlight on a major 2021 voting law passed by the G.O.P.As Georgia Democrats won their third Senate runoff election in two years, the party proved it had crafted an effective strategy for triumphing in a decades-old system created to sustain segregationist power and for overcoming an array of efforts to making voting more difficult. Republicans, meanwhile, were quietly cursing the runoff system, or at least their strategy for winning under a state law they wrote after losing the last election.The various post-mortems over how Georgia’s runoff rules shaped the state’s Senate outcome on Tuesday put a spotlight on a major voting law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly last year. Some Republicans acknowledged that their efforts to limit in-person early voting days might have backfired, while others encouraged lawmakers to consider additional restrictions next year.With Georgia poised to remain a critical political battleground and with Republicans holding gerrymandered majorities in both chambers of its state legislature, some in the party said that additional election law changes were likely.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who oversees the state’s voting procedures, said in an interview on Wednesday that there would be a debate next year over potential adjustments to Georgia’s runoff laws and procedures after Senator Raphael Warnock’s victory.Mr. Raffensperger said he would present three proposals to lawmakers. They include forcing large counties to open more early-voting locations to reduce hourslong lines like the ones that formed at many Metro Atlanta sites last week; lowering the threshold candidates must achieve to avoid a runoff to 45 percent from 50 percent; and instituting a ranked-choice instant-runoff system that would not require voters to come back to the polls again after the general election.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said there would be a debate next year over potential changes to Georgia’s runoff laws and procedures. Audra Melton for The New York Times“The elected legislators need to have information so they can look at all the different options that they have and really see what they’re comfortable with,” Mr. Raffensperger said.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.Republicans are not the only ones hoping to end Georgia’s requirement that a runoff take place if no candidate in a general election wins at least half of the vote. Democrats have long viewed the practice — a vestige of racist 1960s efforts to keep Black candidates or candidates backed by Black voters from taking office — as an additional hurdle for working-class people of color.Park Cannon, a Democratic state representative from Atlanta who was arrested last year after knocking on the closed door behind which Gov. Brian Kemp signed the state’s voting law, said that last Friday, she had driven for 30 minutes and then waited an hour to vote early in person.Runoffs, Ms. Cannon said, “are not to the benefit of working families.” She added, “It’s very difficult to, within four weeks of taking time off to vote, have to do that again.”Since the law was passed in 2021, Georgia Democrats have criticized the new barriers to voting that it set in place. During the runoff, Mr. Warnock, a Democrat, spared no opportunity to highlight the law and characterize it as the latest in a decades-long push to minimize the influence of Black voters and anyone who opposed Republican control.His stump speech featured a regular refrain reminding supporters that Georgia Republicans had sought to prohibit counties from opening for in-person early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, after the state’s Republican attorney general and Mr. Raffensperger concluded that doing so was in violation of state law. Mr. Warnock and Democrats sued, and a state judge agreed to allow for the Saturday voting.“People showed up in record numbers within the narrow confines of the time given to them by a state legislature that saw our electoral strength the last time and went after it with surgical precision,” Mr. Warnock said in his victory speech on Tuesday night in Atlanta. “The fact that voters worked so hard to overcome the hardship put in front of them does not eliminate the fact that hardship was put there in the first place.”Because of the new voting law, Tuesday’s runoff was held four weeks after the general election, rather than the nine-week runoff period under which Georgia’s high-profile Senate races in early 2021 unfolded. The nine-week runoff period that year had been ordered by a federal judge; runoff contests for state elections have always operated on a four-week timeline.Tuesday’s contest also included fewer days to vote and new restrictions on absentee ballots — and it ended with virtually the same result.The 3.5 million votes cast in Tuesday’s runoff amounted to 90 percent of the general-election turnout in the Senate race on Nov. 8. In 2021, when Mr. Warnock first won his seat, runoff turnout was 91 percent of the general-election turnout, which was higher because 2020 was a presidential year. The outpouring of voters in both years was orders of magnitude higher than in any prior Georgia runoff.A get-out-the-vote event on Tuesday near a polling site in Atlanta.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesThe booming turnout this year has led Georgia Republicans to insist that their voting law was not suppressive.“We had what I think was a nearly flawless execution of two huge elections in terms of turnout and in terms of accuracy and integrity,” said Butch Miller, a Republican leader in the Georgia State Senate who helped write the voting law and is leaving the chamber after losing the primary for lieutenant governor.Mr. Miller said he “didn’t care for” the way that some counties, including large Democratic-leaning ones in the Atlanta area, had opened for extra early voting days, a sentiment echoed by other Georgia Republicans after Mr. Warnock’s victory.The new law evidently had an effect on how Georgians voted. In the January 2021 runoffs, 24 percent of the vote came via absentee ballots that had been mailed to voters. On Tuesday, just 5 percent of the vote came through the mail, a result of restrictions on who could receive an absentee ballot and the shortening of the runoff period, which made it more difficult to request and receive a ballot within the allotted time period.The 2021 law also cut the amount of in-person early voting days to a minimum of five, but allowed Georgia’s counties to add more days before the state’s mandated early-voting week. The Warnock campaign pressed the state’s Democratic counties to open for early voting on the weekend after Thanksgiving, giving voters who were more likely to vote for the senator extra days to do so.But then Mr. Raffensperger sought to enforce a state law that forbids in-person early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, leading to Mr. Warnock’s successful lawsuit.Jason Shepherd, a former chairman of the Cobb County Republican Party, said the push to stop Saturday voting “wasn’t worth the fight” and served to energize Democratic voters.“You can be completely right and it can send the wrong message, because it plays into the Democrats’ narrative about voter suppression,” Mr. Shepherd said on Wednesday.In the end, 28 of Georgia’s 159 counties opened for extra in-person early voting days. Of those, 17 ended up backing Mr. Warnock and 11 went for his Republican challenger, the former football star Herschel Walker.Compared with weekdays, when the entire state was open for in-person early voting, relatively few votes were cast on the extra voting days. Just over 167,000 votes in all were cast combined on the Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, along with the Tuesday and Wednesday before the holiday, when just two counties opened for voting. By contrast, 285,000 to 352,000 votes were cast statewide on each day of weekday early voting.But voters who cast ballots during those extra in-person early voting days were likely to tilt heavily toward Mr. Warnock.The largest 14 counties to back Mr. Warnock — including seven in metropolitan Atlanta — all opened for extra early voting days. Just two of the 11 largest counties to back Mr. Walker opened for extra in-person early voting days.Maya King More