President Biden and other Democrats acknowledged this week that the Nov. 8 midterm election ran smoothly and led to very few complaints or reports of voter intimidation or voter suppression, after they sounded the alarm for months that Republican election integrity reform efforts risked disenfranchising voters.
Biden said at the White House Wednesday, after the results showed Republicans failed to meet expectations, that Election Day was largely free of “interference,” even as some states saw record-high voter turnout.
“The states across the country saw record voter turnout. And the heart and soul of our democracy — the voters, the poll workers, the election officials — they did their job and they fulfilled their duty, and apparently without much interference at all — without any interference, it looks like,” Biden said.
“And that’s a testament, I think, to the American people,” he added.
2022 MIDTERM ELECTION RESULTS
President Joe Biden takes questions Nov. 9, 2022 about the midterm elections, which he said were run “without any interference.”
(Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
David Axelrod, a long-time Democrat operative and director of Chicago University’s Institute of Politics, added Wednesday in a tweet, “Despite the raft of Trump-inspired conspiracy theories, 2020 was the most scrutinized and certifiably honest election in U.S. history. Yesterday’s elections went down with remarkably few complaints. This is a STRENGTH of our democracy, to be celebrated and preserved!”
Axelrod had previously called Georgia’s election reform efforts “voter suppression laws,” and called on companies to “reconsider investments” in Georgia out of protest.
Those comments are a far cry from warnings over the last year that new election integrity laws passed in Republican-led states were right-wing attempts to suppress Black votes and were akin to “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
In Georgia, which passed the Election Integrity Act last year, voters set an all-time record for midterm early voting turnout. More than 2 million early ballots were mailed and more than 200,000 in-person votes were cast on the Friday before Election Day – a 6% increase from the state’s early voting numbers in the 2020 presidential election.
WHITE HOUSE MUM ON WHETHER BIDEN REGRETS CALLING GEORGIA ELECTION LAW ‘JIM CROW 2.0’ AFTER RECORD EARLY VOTING
A voting sign is seen before a Democratic Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock (D-GA) Get Out the Vote rally at Bearfoot Tavern on Nov. 7, 2022 in Macon, Georgia.
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that there were no reports of threats or illegal behavior at any polling places as of Tuesday afternoon, and said the election went off without a logistical hitch. The paper said the longest wait time for lines to the polls were just over 10 minutes, but most lines were much shorter.
Biden last year characterized Georgia’s election law as “Jim Crow 2.0″ and a blatant attack on the Constitution,” a sentiment echoed by others in the Democratic Party. Biden’s Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging the law, but so far has not succeeded in overturning it. The controversy escalated to the point that Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game from the state.
However, after what appears to be one of the Peach State’s most smoothly executed and successful elections, Democrats’ fears seem unfounded.
GEORGIA SENATE RACE HEADS TO RUNOFF, DOW SLIPS, AND HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE IN SOME AMERICAN STATES
Republican Governor Brian Kemp speaks at a press conference on Nov. 7, 2022 in Atlanta after a midterm election that Democrats say went smoothly.
(Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
The DOJ, which sent attorneys to monitor polling locations in Fulton, Cobb and Gwinnett counties to monitor possible civil rights violations, declined to comment on whether they had received any complaints.
The NAACP, which launched a new program for reporting voter intimidation Election Day, did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment on how many incidents were reported.
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Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.