Georgians voting absentee urged by election officials to drop ballots off at county drop boxes

As of Monday, more than 180,000 Georgians have turned in mail-in ballots. Voters who haven’t already mailed an absentee ballot should deposit it a county drop box. (Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

The political landscape has shifted greatly since the 2020 presidential election when a record number of Georgians voted absentee during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Four years ago after Election Day, then-President Donald Trump and his Republican allies sparked a wildfire of conspiracy theories regarding absentee ballot voting fraud as the reason he lost the election to Joe Biden in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes.

Mail-in voting will be an important aspect of this year’s Nov. 5 presidential election, which has so far seen a record early voting turnout of more than 3.2 million Georgians casting ballots in person at the polls, or 44% of all active voters.