In 2016, Chris Turner, a new father in Georgia, began a process familiar to many parents: He set about trying to plan his children’s education. His neighborhood schools failed to impress him; they were too rigid, with too much busy work. To his dismay, he found that despite the hefty price tags for private schools, “they didn’t feel fundamentally different than just a typical public school. Their environments were slightly better, the teachers were slightly better, maybe the curriculum was slightly better, but nothing was like fundamentally different in the way that it felt like everything else in the world was fundamentally changing.” You could have forgiven Turner for his fixation on societal change. When he was school shopping, he was in his early 30s and getting a crash course in the world of tech startups. A few years before, he had launched a company called Tenrocket, which built apps for other startup founders. At the Atlanta co-working spaces he frequented, he met other entrepreneurs, some of whom had skipped college in order to get started making things in the real world. Their industriousness impressed him. Turner recalls becoming “obsessed with that problem” of educating kids to function in a new world, which led to his next startup project: a new kind of classroom experience. In his vision, children as young as 5 could learn through activities like, he told me, “starting businesses and hosting podcasts and building rockets and going to Costa Rica on a study abroad trip.” In 2018, Turner quit his startup job and spent the next two years planning and fundraising to make this notional school a reality: In 2020, he launched a learning space, called Moonrise, on a bustling corner of the affluent and progressive Atlanta-adjacent city of Decatur, Georgia. Moonrise has no curriculum or teachers. Instead, adult “guides”—often college students, parents, or retirees—preside over activities like knitting lessons, excursions with virtual reality headsets, or a Minecraft club. If the day’s activities don’t appeal, students are free to do, well, whatever they want. They can play cards with a friend all day, read a book, or, as several students were doing on the day I visited, curl up in a pillow fort with an iPad. The staff doesn’t track academic outcomes, because that’s not their domain: Moonrise is a “learning center,” not a school, so it is not subject to state curriculum and testing requirements. That’s the parents’ responsibility. (Sort of: According to the homeschool accountability group Coalition for Responsible Home Education, just two states, New York and Hawaii, enforce state requirements about documenting students’ academic progress.) Moonrise is what’s known as a hybrid homeschool, an educational model that offers homeschool families a place for children to learn outside the home a few days a week. Though part-time tiny schools for homeschoolers have existed for decades, their popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, when some families found that they liked that style of education and never went back to traditional schools. Since 2019, the number of Americans who homeschool has doubled to about 6 percent of US students or about 2.9 million school-aged children. When Moonrise launched at the beginning of the pandemic, just a handful of families were enrolled; today it serves 150. Turner expects that number to grow in 2025 because, in January, Georgia became one of the 33 states to offer a private school voucher program, which allows families to use funds designated for public education toward private school tuition. Each state’s program works differently; the one in Georgia offers $6,500 to families whose local public school’s test scores rank in the bottom 25 percent of schools in the state. That amount would hardly make a dent in the tuition bills for local elite private schools, some of which charge upward of $38,000 annually. But Moonrise’s unlimited plan, which offers homeschool families up to 12 hours a week in the space, costs just under $6,000 a year, and families can add extra time at the rate of $20 an hour. Georgia’s new voucher program is expected to yield 20,000 more homeschoolers in the state—marking a potentially very significant customer base expansion for Turner. In states with older private school vouchers, programs similar to Moonrise are already proliferating: A company called Primer runs a network of hybrid homeschools in Florida, Alabama, and Arizona, each of which offers a robust voucher program. Another chain, Prenda, with 1,000 locations across the country, recommends that prospective families take advantage of “generous and flexible” voucher programs in states where they’re available. In part because the expansion of vouchers and other school choice programs is expected to continue under President Trump, hybrid schools like Moonrise have proven attractive to Silicon Valley investors aiming to “disrupt” the educational system. From the funding he’s now receiving from a Peter Thiel–backed venture firm to the political climate, Turner sees signs all around him that hybrid homeschools like Moonrise are poised to grow in popularity. “So everything that we’re doing,” he said, “is setting up for the ability for us to meet that demand.” On a recent Wednesday morning, I drove to Moonrise and parked out front next to an SUV with a bumper sticker that read “A SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE TOOK MY MONEY.” Once inside, I took in the sunlit, loft-like space, which previously housed a gifts and home furnishings store. Moonrise, I discovered, really does feel less like a classroom and more like a coworking space for kids, with pieces of mid-century modern furniture for lounging and blonde wood tables for projects. My tour guide was a manager named Nicole, a former Waldorf teacher who told me she hopes to gain experience at Moonrise so that she can eventually open her own school and eco-village. “I don’t like the school system—I think it’s broken,” she told me as we breezed by the Moonrise podcast studio. “We offer things kids actually want to learn, but it’s not so rigid.” When I first arrived at around 10 a.m., there were only three “Risers” present: a 6-year-old zooming around the room on her pink and purple roller skates and two more kids relaxing in a fort made of cushions and blankets. A nature show about elephants was playing on the screen above the well-appointed tank of the Moonrise mascot, Mochi, a stately axolotl—a kind of salamander in case you didn’t know. After a few minutes, a Cybertruck pulled up outside, and a dad dropped off two school-aged boys who enthused about their adventures during a recent snow day; a few minutes later, two more kids showed up. When I called Turner a few hours after my visit, he was eager to share his insights, especially about what he saw as a lag between the educational system and the technology sector. “It seems like everything in the world of tech especially is accelerating at this massive pace,” he told me. “But kids are still sitting in front of teachers, sitting in rows of desks, listening to lectures, and focusing on academics. But everything else is moving to, like, flexibility, creativity, and value creation, not just based on degrees.”    > “Kids are still sitting in front of teachers, sitting in rows of desks, > listening to lectures, and focusing on academics. But everything else is > moving to, like, flexibility, creativity, and value creation, not just based > on degrees.”    On the phone, Turner’s tone was affable and measured. But like many people, he’s a more firebrand version of himself on social media, cheerfully engaging in the culture wars, bragging about having refused to wear a mask at airports in 2020, and quoting rightwing provocateur James Lindsay’s statement that “Woke is Marxism evolved to take on the West,” which he described in a 2023 post as “*by far* the best theory of woke ideology I’ve encountered. At times I was almost moved to tears by its explanatory power.” (When I asked Turner about the post he told me that it was something of a one-off and that he’s no James Lindsay superfan.) A policy wish list Turner posted in August included “defend the west,” “let kids work,” and “deregulate founders.” On X, Turner regularly praises Silicon Valley celebrities who, he told me, he believes get a bad rap because people get caught up in their politics rather than focusing on what they’ve accomplished. Last August he called Elon Musk “a once-in-a-generation engineer with the design and product standards of Steve Jobs and the work ethic of Henry Ford.” He mused last May on X, “Can you imagine what the last decade would have been like without Elon Musk? Dude is like Batman for western values.” By western values, Turner later told me, he meant “things like liberty, democracy, capitalism, scientific and technological progress, and defense against anything aiming to tear down these values.” Thiel is another favorite—Turner told me unsurprisingly—given that some of the PayPal founder’s thoughts about education align with Turner’s. Thiel runs a fellowship for entrepreneurs who have foregone a college degree to instead launch a company, and his Founders Fund was one of the venture firms that raised $18.7 million in funding for the hybrid homeschool chain Primer. “Whenever I get concerned about the future of this great country, I remember that Peter Thiel is an American and instantly feel better,” Turner posted in 2021. That post proved prophetic for Turner’s own business. In 2023, Moonrise was chosen to be part of an accelerator run by a Bay Area investment firm called 1517, which is also funded in part by Thiel. The founder of 1517, Michael Gibson, previously helped Thiel launch his fellowship for college dropouts and is the author of the 2022 book Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University. In it, he makes the argument that instead of canceling student debt, the government should defund student loan programs. When I asked Gibson why he decided to fund Moonrise, he responded that it was because Turner “knows that if he doesn’t bring a Moonrise to every town, then our current sad failure of an education system will own the next generation like a gulag warden,” he wrote in an email. “That will be bad for these children, bad for America, and bad for the human race.” As part of the 1517 accelerator program, Moonrise received $500,000 in seed funding. That windfall has allowed Turner to think much bigger: He plans to launch four locations next year and double the number of locations every year after that, with a goal of 100 locations nationwide by 2030. It’s an ambitious plan, but in addition to his Silicon Valley funding, Turner believes the political winds are at his back. “The Trump administration is more pro-school choice, so we just expect that to increase demand for options like Moonrise,” he told me. Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, has supported programs that divert public school money toward charter schools and vouchers. America First Policy Institute, the right-wing advocacy group she helms, says it lobbies for school choice so that “every family has the funds to send their children to the school that fits their needs.” Like President Trump, Turner believes that the federal Department of Education is a “failure,” and that it should be dismantled so states would have more control over their education systems. Eliminating the DOE as Trump has suggested, he says, “will allow the expansion of school choice, and it will reduce the national debt.” One major critique of private school voucher programs is their propensity to shunt taxpayer money to religious institutions. Studies of private school voucher programs have found that about 90 percent of the money they provide is used to pay for tuition at religious private schools. > “The modern version of the indulgence is a piece of paper many believe will > save you from Hell. Only they call it a college diploma and they charge $200k. > Well, that was bullshit in 1517 and it’s bullshit now.” Turner said Moonrise has no faith affiliation, though many of its member families are Christian. Some of 1517 Fund’s staffers are vocal about their Christian faith on X, though in an email to me, Gibson, the 1517 co-founder, called himself a “pagan heretic” and said the firm’s name—which comes from the year of the Protestant Reformation—was meant as a nod to the practice of papal indulgences that the movement sought to end. “The modern version of the indulgence is a piece of paper many believe will save you from Hell,” he wrote. “Only they call it a college diploma and they charge $200k. Well, that was bullshit in 1517 and it’s bullshit now.” Yet Gibson has also posted occasionally on X about what he sees as the dangers of an overly secular society. “You know you’re talking to the atheist Church of No Christ when: (1) they substitute ‘humanity’ for soul e.g. ‘this person’s humanity is as vital and precious as our own’ (2) instead of God, they say ‘the arc of justice’ or ‘the right side of history,’” he wrote in 2022. When I asked him what he meant, he replied that he had intended the post as “a commentary on how leftism is a warped version of Christianity without Christ. That is to say, the moral intuitions of the left are the vestiges of Christian intuitions at work after the death of God.” Other growing hybrid homeschool chains have funding from groups that are more explicitly religious. Primer secured a funding round from New Founding, a venture capitalist firm that says it aims “to shape institutions with Christian norms.” The conservative political activism group Turning Point USA runs a national network of 41 Christian hybrid homeschools. Hybrid homeschools aren’t regulated, so it’s impossible to say how many of them have religious underpinnings. That ambiguity is concerning to Rachel Laser, president of the nonprofit group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She worries that many of the schools that vouchers fund could “indoctrinate students in one particular faith and discriminate against students, families, and staff who don’t share the school’s beliefs.” What’s more, says Laser, voucher programs don’t always deliver the results they promise. In Arizona, where private school vouchers are available to any families that want them, the program cost the state 1,000 percent of the initial estimate. It also served five times more affluent than low-income families—the opposite of its initial intent. In Arkansas’ program, which was designed to offer alternatives to students in the lowest-ranking public schools, just 2 percent of participants come from schools ranked “D” or “F.” Vulnerable students, says Laser, “aren’t the ones who primarily benefit from universal private school voucher programs.” As for the future, Turner hesitated to share details about where the next Moonrise locations will open, but the employee who showed me around told me that Turner had been eyeing Florida because of its robust voucher program. Turner said he is also courting more Silicon Valley investors, though he declined to say which ones. In the next year, he plans to restructure Moonrise’s pricing plans to allow for greater flexibility. The question now, he said, “is not whether or not people want to use it, it’s how much they’re going to use it.” In the meantime, at the Georgia Moonrise space, it’s business as usual. A recent list of activities included weightlifting, making ice cream, learning about startup founder careers, a NASA Spacecraft STEM Challenge, and debate club. (The topic: “Is College Worth It?”) On X in October, Turner likened his founding of Moonrise to the history of the United States. “We first rejected monarchy (school), then we invented democracy (co-learning), and now we’re in the “democracy has to function” phase,” he wrote. “The next phase is to build a strong culture of excellence, most likely through our equivalent of capitalism.”

The morning of Election Day, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed Russia for creating bomb scares at polling places in the swing state of Georgia. “They’re up to mischief it seems,” Raffensperger said at a press conference of Russia’s efforts. “They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair, and accurate election.” The bomb threats temporarily closed two voting sites in Union City, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, according to the Election Protection Coalition, which monitors Election Day disruptions. Union City is nearly 90 percent Black and therefore tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. The county is attempting to extend voting hours at the affected locations. Five non-credible bomb threats were called in on Tuesday morning. Raffensperger said Russia was the culprit and that federal law enforcement had helped make that determination. The presidential race in Georgia is expected to be very close and it is one of the states that could determine who wins the White House. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a clear interest in former president Donald Trump retaking the White House. Trump is much more interested in appeasing Putin’s war in Ukraine, has expressed little loyalty to other allies, and is generally solicitous of the authoritarian leader. Vice President Kamala Harris, conversely, has stated her commitment to supporting Ukraine as well as strengthening NATO. Georgia appears to be a target of Russian meddling this year. A fake video purporting to show recent Haitian immigrants illegally voting for Harris in the state was produced and disseminated by a Russian disinformation outfit, US intelligence officials revealed last week. And this is only the most recent example of a months-long effort by Russian-backed propaganda to target the Harris campaign. As Mother Jones previously reported, the disinformation group responsible for the Georgia video also is believed to be behind another fake video purporting to show ballots for Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania.

This story was produced in collaboration with Talking Eyes Media and Amplifier Fellows. Four years ago, Georgia was at the center of a political maelstrom. On top of the two runoff elections that resulted in Democratic control of the Senate, there was also Donald Trump’s demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,779 votes to secure his victory there. Georgia delivered high drama on an impressive scale. The state is likely to be the site of a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Kamala Harris this year, with shifting demographics slowly nudging it from red to blue. The change is driven by growing numbers of immigrants, African Americans, and young people. But as we traveled around the state, it was clear that Georgia’s youth vote isn’t a gimme for Democrats. Earlier this month in Athens, Georgia, a young voter told me, “If there is a threat to democracy, it’s certainly not Donald Trump.” He detailed what he saw as the alleged abuses perpetrated by Democrats, including jailing Trump supporters and indicting him four times. “They forced Joe Biden off the top of the ticket against his will and appointed a replacement nominee,” he added. “Not elected, appointed a replacement nominee.” Young conservatives are a formidable presence in Georgia, which has the highest proportion of people under 30 of any swing state. They will be instrumental in determining the outcome of the election. During my recent conversations with them, the economy repeatedly ranked as their top concern. Hardly anyone mentioned abortion, gender, or climate change. Most of them were politically active, belonging to groups like the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and the Young Patriots Association, and several had interned at the state capitol. > “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether > information is true or it’s false.” Jefry Capinegro, a junior at the University of Georgia, is a thoughtful, serious 24-year-old who sees himself as “pretty far to the right.” He says he’s deeply committed to the truth, and he reads the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as well as bouncing between multiple TV news sources. When I asked about potential threats to democracy, Jefry told me that Democrats are trying to censor conservatives on social media, a sentiment I heard multiple times from other young people. I pressed Jefry on whether it was okay to limit information that is false or incites violence. “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false,” he said. He insisted that it is dangerous to allow the government to decipher fact from fiction because “we’ve seen these fact-checks to be wrong on numerous occasions.” Jefry cited Trump and JD Vance’s claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. He said that while it sounded crazy at first, it was actually based in truth—he had seen the video. He described police body cam footage that shows a Haitian woman with blood on her face as officers ask her repeatedly if she ate a cat that laid on the ground. I found the video he was referencing. It turns out the incident happened 174 miles from Springfield, and it shows an American-born Black woman who later pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple criminal charges. When I shared this information with Jefry via text, he immediately responded, “Thank you for finding that. I stand corrected. Perhaps not the best example to cite, but glad to know now.” The following excerpts have been condensed for clarity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel Shaver 18-year-old college student, founder of Young Patriots Association Daniel Shaver in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures We’ve gone to a point now where the polarization between the Republican and the Democratic Party has gotten so bad that people are afraid to speak out. And I feel like to an extent that is a violation of people’s rights to freedom of thought and expression. I know people who have personally lost their jobs because their employers did not agree with their political beliefs. I’ve also seen people have things taken down on social media because their views were considered misinformation. And I think that is dangerous to personal freedom. I have felt pressure, as far as societal pressure. If you don’t agree with me on this, then you’re not going to be part of our club. You’re not going to get this job. There’s a lot of that pressure going on. It’s the unspoken, the silent tension that people have to deal with. And I feel like that is very sad and it’s dangerous to the future of our country. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to say, I’m Republican, I’m Democrat, I’m independent. You shouldn’t have to feel that way. And we have to make sure that we’re all fighting to make sure that people feel safe to share their beliefs.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miracle Jones 27-year-old health care human resources professional Miracle Jones in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am a Christian, and I am a devoted Christian. So everything, my point of view, they are heavily biblically based. So when I’m looking for policies, I’m looking for policies that align more so with the Bible than anything else. Because for me, it’s always God first. Fun fact: I’ve never registered to vote until this election, because I’m worried. I’ve never been worried. I’ve always had the mindset of God will take care of me, either way, no matter who gets in the office. But now, this time, I feel like it actually matters who gets in the office. So with Trump policies, for instance, the gun laws, he’s, you know, pro-guns, the Lord, whether people have read that part in the Bible or not. He’s also for protecting ourselves. And then Trump he’s not for teaching you know 73 different genders or allowing men to participate in women’s sports. We all know what the Lord says about homosexuality and things of that nature. And then when it comes to the border thing, God is, he’s for borders, he’s for different nations. That’s why we have different nations and different languages to begin with, because if all the people try to come together like they once did back in the day, then they try to play God and he can’t have that, so he’s for the borders. If you ask me, I think the Democratic Party is silencing me. I feel like they are the ones behind like the social media fact-checkers in some form or fashion, whether directly or indirectly. I think the freedom of religion is more so supported by the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jose Barrera Bales 20-year-old election protection organizer for Common Cause, Georgia Jose Barrera Bales in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am disappointed in the 2024 election because the candidates are both on very extreme sides of the aisle. Neither one of them, you know, very much resonates with me politically. And they both have extraordinary plans that they want to implement that will increase our deficit probably more than we’ve ever seen before. Julie Winokur: What do you say to your friends who are not voting? Jose: I would say vote anyways, because, you know, even if it’s a protest vote, it still shows how un-content the American populace is. And even if you do vote for, you know, for somebody that I might not particularly agree with, it is a civic duty. It’s a civic responsibility. And it’s good for you to keep your voice as an individual out there. I want to go into politics. Hope to be one of the first elected independents in Georgia. It’s a very lofty goal, some may even say impossible, but if I do achieve it, then, you know, it’ll change the status quo for the better, hopefully. The sense of hope for me is hopefully the future independent movement in Congress eventually will achieve term limits and corporate lobbying and end the political division between the Republicans and the Democrats. Maybe then the middle ground can start to mend the country a little bit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aqui B’Nek Wingo 26-year-old union electrician Aqui B’Nek Wingo in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures Being black and a union member and not being a Democrat, it looks really, really weird. I see myself as a Republican in a lot of sense, but mostly I wish we had a more European style system where we have multiple different parties and everything, because there are some things Republicans do that I’m not really a big fan of and there’s some things the Democrats do that I’m a fan of. Ever since I came out as a Black conservative, I’ve taken a lot of flak from my extended family members. I take a lot of flak even in my union. Just the other day, another black person made a racial slur towards me because I’m a Republican. I’m not a big fan of free college for all because I’m not going to waste my own tax dollars on a useless liberal arts degree like gender studies or wherever these titles they bunch up together so people get degrees. That seems a huge waste of time and money. If we’re investing more into, let’s say, trade programs that we can go out to work, that’ll be better because in construction fields across the country, it’s such a huge shortage of people because the last 30 years there’s been a push for college, college, college. Trade is bad, trade is bad, trade is bad. I don’t trust Western media, and I hate saying it like that, but our media, especially here in the US, is extremely biased. So what I always do is I go to Sky News. I’ll go to Visegrád 24 on Twitter. There’s Polish news I look at. I also look at DW, France 24, and sometimes the Japanese, because I want the most unbiased stuff that I can get, and the best way I can get it is by one looking at different countries in different news sources outside the country and multiple sources to gain a broader picture of what I want to see. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jefry Capinegro 24-year-old college student Jefry Capinegro in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am an immigrant to this country. I was born in Guatemala, and I was adopted when I was six months old. At the time, the immigration issue was maybe not as in the headlines as it is today, but as the immigration issue has come to the forefront. Here at the University of Georgia, this community, this campus, we’ve seen the ugly side. Laken Riley took a jog one morning down by the intramural fields on the south campus, as many people do. But she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it was an illegal immigrant who attacked her, who sexually assaulted her, and who murdered her. It should have never happened. It happens far too often. One time was too many. But this community felt the impact. Oftentimes people perceive the whole immigration argument is very black and white, very pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Well, certainly I’m pro-immigration. I myself am an immigrant. But the key word in there that seems to be somehow lost is ‘illegal’. The Republican Party, the conservative, whatever you want to call them, we are absolutely pro-immigration. I think we all understand that this country was founded and built on immigration. We are very pro-immigration. We’re just not pro-illegal immigration. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abigail Ray 22-year-old college student Abigail Ray in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures My feelings about the upcoming election, I would have to say, are: It’s nerve-wracking. It’s really nerve-wracking because I feel like we’re on a trajectory—like heading towards a cliff, like we’re going towards a cliff. We’re speeding there. And I feel like if we do not secure this election and if, in my opinion, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, doesn’t win, I feel like we will not be able to, you know, turn the wheel and jerk it and save our country. I feel like we need to save the country from further annihilation. I’ll give you an example. Flying around Athens, Georgia, for the last three days has been an airplane toting the banner that says: Abortion pills by mail. And rather than Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party wanting to advocate for, you know, a happier, healthier society where people can afford to have children and where men actually want to impregnate women and want to raise kids and have a happy family and a good society where kids can thrive, rather than do that, they want to make it easier for Americans to cut themselves down at the knee. They want to make it easier to take away our rights. And it just doesn’t make any sense. Julie Winokur: The abortion pill airplane, is that a Harris campaign advertisement? Abigail: No, there’s no name on the on the sign, but it’s blue. And we know that there were abortion vans outside the Democratic National Convention where they were literally having people come and get an abortion in a van. And so what you can detect from that is that they must not want to advocate for pro-American life. They must not actually love us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaston Atkins 19-year-old college student, state secretary of the Georgia Association of College Republicans Chaston Atkins in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I’ve always necessarily been critical of President Trump, and I think that I have not necessarily been on the populist bandwagon.  Because I am a political science major, a lot of my friends are politically engaged. I would say that maybe 35 to 45 percent of my friends are actually liberal or moderate or not necessarily conservative. And, you know, that just comes with the territory of being on a college campus, engaging with people who have different ideas. And so it just comes to dealing with those people, being cordial, being kind, knowing that we’re not going to agree on everything, but we have other things that we can agree on and that we should work on those things and try not to be hyperpartisan, which I think is detrimental not just to the individual but to the government and to society as a whole. I don’t necessarily believe that there is a threat to democracy. I think people are hyperpartisan, they’re mad, they’re angry, they’re being hostile, and that’s something that you can say is brought on by politicians who are seen as somewhat demagogue-like. I believe that former President Trump has already said that he would step down in case of him losing the election, but regardless as to whether he said it or not, I think he ultimately will. I think that everyone learned their lesson from what happened last time, that you can’t let things get out of control. You can’t let things become riotous. I don’t think that’ll happen at all this time. I think that regardless of the outcome, I think we’re going to be in safe hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Laura Kelley 22-year-old college student Laura Kelley in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures Everything is so difficult with politics, in my opinion, because I’m a conservative and I believe that government should not be super involved in people’s lives. People should have the freedom to do what they want, and that’s the best thing about America. So with books in schools, that’s so difficult. My mom is actually a librarian in an elementary school and it’s in a northern county in Georgia, so obviously the population is very conservative. And when this topic came to light the school board was super against certain books to be put into the schools. So therefore, my mom had to make those selections. But also it’s like those kids want to read those books. So it’s just so complicated, like maybe the kids should be able to buy it outside school if they really want to read those. But if the taxpayer is saying those books shouldn’t be allowed in schools, they shouldn’t. So I really don’t know what I believe in that.

This story was produced in collaboration with Talking Eyes Media and Amplifier Fellows. Four years ago, Georgia was at the center of a political maelstrom. On top of the two runoff elections that resulted in Democratic control of the Senate, there was also Donald Trump’s demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,779 votes to secure his victory there. Georgia delivered high drama on an impressive scale. The state is likely to be the site of a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Kamala Harris this year, with shifting demographics slowly nudging it from red to blue. The change is driven by growing numbers of immigrants, African Americans, and young people. But as we traveled around the state, it was clear that Georgia’s youth vote isn’t a gimme for Democrats. > Post by @motherjonesmag > View on Threads Earlier this month in Athens, Georgia, a young voter told me, “If there is a threat to democracy, it’s certainly not Donald Trump.” He detailed what he saw as the alleged abuses perpetrated by Democrats, including jailing Trump supporters and indicting him four times. “They forced Joe Biden off the top of the ticket against his will and appointed a replacement nominee,” he added. “Not elected, appointed a replacement nominee.” Young conservatives are a formidable presence in Georgia, which has the highest proportion of people under 30 of any swing state. They will be instrumental in determining the outcome of the election. During my recent conversations with them, the economy repeatedly ranked as their top concern. Hardly anyone mentioned abortion, gender, or climate change. Most of them were politically active, belonging to groups like the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and the Young Patriots Association, and several had interned at the state capitol. > “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether > information is true or it’s false.” Jefry Capinegro, a junior at the University of Georgia, is a thoughtful, serious 24-year-old who sees himself as “pretty far to the right.” He says he’s deeply committed to the truth, and he reads the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as well as bouncing between multiple TV news sources. When I asked about potential threats to democracy, Jefry told me that Democrats are trying to censor conservatives on social media, a sentiment I heard multiple times from other young people. I pressed Jefry on whether it was okay to limit information that is false or incites violence. “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false,” he said. He insisted that it is dangerous to allow the government to decipher fact from fiction because “we’ve seen these fact-checks to be wrong on numerous occasions.” Jefry cited Trump and JD Vance’s claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. He said that while it sounded crazy at first, it was actually based in truth—he had seen the video. He described police body cam footage that shows a Haitian woman with blood on her face as officers ask her repeatedly if she ate a cat that laid on the ground. I found the video he was referencing. It turns out the incident happened 174 miles from Springfield, and it shows an American-born Black woman who later pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple criminal charges. When I shared this information with Jefry via text, he immediately responded, “Thank you for finding that. I stand corrected. Perhaps not the best example to cite, but glad to know now.” The following excerpts have been condensed for clarity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel Shaver 18-year-old college student, founder of Young Patriots Association Daniel Shaver in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures We’ve gone to a point now where the polarization between the Republican and the Democratic Party has gotten so bad that people are afraid to speak out. And I feel like to an extent that is a violation of people’s rights to freedom of thought and expression. I know people who have personally lost their jobs because their employers did not agree with their political beliefs. I’ve also seen people have things taken down on social media because their views were considered misinformation. And I think that is dangerous to personal freedom. I have felt pressure, as far as societal pressure. If you don’t agree with me on this, then you’re not going to be part of our club. You’re not going to get this job. There’s a lot of that pressure going on. It’s the unspoken, the silent tension that people have to deal with. And I feel like that is very sad and it’s dangerous to the future of our country. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to say, I’m Republican, I’m Democrat, I’m independent. You shouldn’t have to feel that way. And we have to make sure that we’re all fighting to make sure that people feel safe to share their beliefs.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miracle Jones 27-year-old health care human resources professional Miracle Jones in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am a Christian, and I am a devoted Christian. So everything, my point of view, they are heavily biblically based. So when I’m looking for policies, I’m looking for policies that align more so with the Bible than anything else. Because for me, it’s always God first. Fun fact: I’ve never registered to vote until this election, because I’m worried. I’ve never been worried. I’ve always had the mindset of God will take care of me, either way, no matter who gets in the office. But now, this time, I feel like it actually matters who gets in the office. So with Trump policies, for instance, the gun laws, he’s, you know, pro-guns, the Lord, whether people have read that part in the Bible or not. He’s also for protecting ourselves. And then Trump he’s not for teaching you know 73 different genders or allowing men to participate in women’s sports. We all know what the Lord says about homosexuality and things of that nature. And then when it comes to the border thing, God is, he’s for borders, he’s for different nations. That’s why we have different nations and different languages to begin with, because if all the people try to come together like they once did back in the day, then they try to play God and he can’t have that, so he’s for the borders. If you ask me, I think the Democratic Party is silencing me. I feel like they are the ones behind like the social media fact-checkers in some form or fashion, whether directly or indirectly. I think the freedom of religion is more so supported by the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jose Barrera Bales 20-year-old election protection organizer for Common Cause, Georgia Jose Barrera Bales in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am disappointed in the 2024 election because the candidates are both on very extreme sides of the aisle. Neither one of them, you know, very much resonates with me politically. And they both have extraordinary plans that they want to implement that will increase our deficit probably more than we’ve ever seen before. Julie Winokur: What do you say to your friends who are not voting? Jose: I would say vote anyways, because, you know, even if it’s a protest vote, it still shows how un-content the American populace is. And even if you do vote for, you know, for somebody that I might not particularly agree with, it is a civic duty. It’s a civic responsibility. And it’s good for you to keep your voice as an individual out there. I want to go into politics. Hope to be one of the first elected independents in Georgia. It’s a very lofty goal, some may even say impossible, but if I do achieve it, then, you know, it’ll change the status quo for the better, hopefully. The sense of hope for me is hopefully the future independent movement in Congress eventually will achieve term limits and corporate lobbying and end the political division between the Republicans and the Democrats. Maybe then the middle ground can start to mend the country a little bit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aqui B’Nek Wingo 26-year-old union electrician Aqui B’Nek Wingo in Kennesaw, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures Being black and a union member and not being a Democrat, it looks really, really weird. I see myself as a Republican in a lot of sense, but mostly I wish we had a more European style system where we have multiple different parties and everything, because there are some things Republicans do that I’m not really a big fan of and there’s some things the Democrats do that I’m a fan of. Ever since I came out as a Black conservative, I’ve taken a lot of flak from my extended family members. I take a lot of flak even in my union. Just the other day, another black person made a racial slur towards me because I’m a Republican. I’m not a big fan of free college for all because I’m not going to waste my own tax dollars on a useless liberal arts degree like gender studies or wherever these titles they bunch up together so people get degrees. That seems a huge waste of time and money. If we’re investing more into, let’s say, trade programs that we can go out to work, that’ll be better because in construction fields across the country, it’s such a huge shortage of people because the last 30 years there’s been a push for college, college, college. Trade is bad, trade is bad, trade is bad. I don’t trust Western media, and I hate saying it like that, but our media, especially here in the US, is extremely biased. So what I always do is I go to Sky News. I’ll go to Visegrád 24 on Twitter. There’s Polish news I look at. I also look at DW, France 24, and sometimes the Japanese, because I want the most unbiased stuff that I can get, and the best way I can get it is by one looking at different countries in different news sources outside the country and multiple sources to gain a broader picture of what I want to see. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jefry Capinegro 24-year-old college student Jefry Capinegro in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I am an immigrant to this country. I was born in Guatemala, and I was adopted when I was six months old. At the time, the immigration issue was maybe not as in the headlines as it is today, but as the immigration issue has come to the forefront. Here at the University of Georgia, this community, this campus, we’ve seen the ugly side. Laken Riley took a jog one morning down by the intramural fields on the south campus, as many people do. But she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it was an illegal immigrant who attacked her, who sexually assaulted her, and who murdered her. It should have never happened. It happens far too often. One time was too many. But this community felt the impact. Oftentimes people perceive the whole immigration argument is very black and white, very pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Well, certainly I’m pro-immigration. I myself am an immigrant. But the key word in there that seems to be somehow lost is ‘illegal’. The Republican Party, the conservative, whatever you want to call them, we are absolutely pro-immigration. I think we all understand that this country was founded and built on immigration. We are very pro-immigration. We’re just not pro-illegal immigration. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abigail Ray 22-year-old college student Abigail Ray in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures My feelings about the upcoming election, I would have to say, are: It’s nerve-wracking. It’s really nerve-wracking because I feel like we’re on a trajectory—like heading towards a cliff, like we’re going towards a cliff. We’re speeding there. And I feel like if we do not secure this election and if, in my opinion, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, doesn’t win, I feel like we will not be able to, you know, turn the wheel and jerk it and save our country. I feel like we need to save the country from further annihilation. I’ll give you an example. Flying around Athens, Georgia, for the last three days has been an airplane toting the banner that says: Abortion pills by mail. And rather than Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party wanting to advocate for, you know, a happier, healthier society where people can afford to have children and where men actually want to impregnate women and want to raise kids and have a happy family and a good society where kids can thrive, rather than do that, they want to make it easier for Americans to cut themselves down at the knee. They want to make it easier to take away our rights. And it just doesn’t make any sense. Julie Winokur: The abortion pill airplane, is that a Harris campaign advertisement? Abigail: No, there’s no name on the on the sign, but it’s blue. And we know that there were abortion vans outside the Democratic National Convention where they were literally having people come and get an abortion in a van. And so what you can detect from that is that they must not want to advocate for pro-American life. They must not actually love us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaston Atkins 19-year-old college student, state secretary of the Georgia Association of College Republicans Chaston Atkins in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures I’ve always necessarily been critical of President Trump, and I think that I have not necessarily been on the populist bandwagon.  Because I am a political science major, a lot of my friends are politically engaged. I would say that maybe 35 to 45 percent of my friends are actually liberal or moderate or not necessarily conservative. And, you know, that just comes with the territory of being on a college campus, engaging with people who have different ideas. And so it just comes to dealing with those people, being cordial, being kind, knowing that we’re not going to agree on everything, but we have other things that we can agree on and that we should work on those things and try not to be hyperpartisan, which I think is detrimental not just to the individual but to the government and to society as a whole. I don’t necessarily believe that there is a threat to democracy. I think people are hyperpartisan, they’re mad, they’re angry, they’re being hostile, and that’s something that you can say is brought on by politicians who are seen as somewhat demagogue-like. I believe that former President Trump has already said that he would step down in case of him losing the election, but regardless as to whether he said it or not, I think he ultimately will. I think that everyone learned their lesson from what happened last time, that you can’t let things get out of control. You can’t let things become riotous. I don’t think that’ll happen at all this time. I think that regardless of the outcome, I think we’re going to be in safe hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Laura Kelley 22-year-old college student Laura Kelley in Athens, GeorgiaEd Kashi/VII/Redux Pictures Everything is so difficult with politics, in my opinion, because I’m a conservative and I believe that government should not be super involved in people’s lives. People should have the freedom to do what they want, and that’s the best thing about America. So with books in schools, that’s so difficult. My mom is actually a librarian in an elementary school and it’s in a northern county in Georgia, so obviously the population is very conservative. And when this topic came to light the school board was super against certain books to be put into the schools. So therefore, my mom had to make those selections. But also it’s like those kids want to read those books. So it’s just so complicated, like maybe the kids should be able to buy it outside school if they really want to read those. But if the taxpayer is saying those books shouldn’t be allowed in schools, they shouldn’t. So I really don’t know what I believe in that.

On Monday morning, I drove to Powder Springs, Georgia, a working-class suburb 20 miles northwest of Atlanta, to see former president Donald Trump speak at a palatial Pentecostal church called Worship With Wonders. As I pulled into the 30-acre campus, a gentleman wearing a safety vest and directing traffic motioned for me to roll down my window and handed me a stack of voting guides “for you to hand out to your congregation.” Before I could tell him I didn’t have a congregation, he waved me toward the yawning parking lot, which was filling up fast with a crowd of several thousand attendees. The organization behind both the day’s event and the voting guide (which assured readers that Trump would say “NO” to “boys competing in girls’ sports” and “YES” to allowing “only US citizens to vote”) was the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a national Christian group that aims to “mobilize and train people of faith to vote and flex their political muscles.” Their flex today turned out to be a four-hour marathon of praise music, speakers, and a lengthy intermission before Trump arrived. The extensive speaker lineup included several superstars of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a growing charismatic movement led by a loose network of apostles and prophets who believe Christians are called to take over the government. In recent years, Trump has emerged as a key figure in this quest: In 2020, Paula White-Cain, the NAR-affiliated Florida pastor who served as Trump’s lead spiritual adviser during his presidency, warned her followers that Christians who didn’t support Trump will “have to stand accountable before God one day.”  The day’s main attraction was a meandering conversation between White-Cain, and Trump, who described him as a “champion of people of faith.” Trump reciprocated by calling White-Cain “a great person, a great woman,” and then the conversation began. Sometimes Trump answered White-Cain’s questions, but he mainly treated them prompts for what has become his trademark, meandering, stream-of-consciousness responses. When White-Cain asked about his religious upbringing, Trump described attending his family’s Presbyterian church in Queens. “It made me feel good,” he replied, “but sometimes you couldn’t get out of there fast enough, I have to be honest.” The audience roared with appreciation for his candor. His father, Fred Trump, used to take him to see Billy Graham preach, he recalled. Which made him think of the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” Which made him think of Elvis. > “It made me feel good, but sometimes you couldn’t get out of there fast > enough, I have to be honest.” When White-Cain asked him about his recent work with Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, on relief efforts in hurricane-stricken North Carolina, Trump marveled at how tornadoes destroy some things but leave others untouched. Then he told a story about how Graham-the-younger had once asked him not to swear so much. The response to a question about Trump’s plans for US-Israel relations was the oft-repeated story of moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2018. This time he finished with a flourish, with an anecdote about telling the contractors to build the new embassy out of a material called “Jerusalem stone” because “a very rich guy, a very big Wall Street guy” he knew had always told him he was very proud that his building contained the material. And—score!—it also turned out to the “cheap as hell.” Trump’s most significant line of the event may have been his cryptic promise that his “faith council” would be “directly in the Oval Office.” While Trump rambled and riffed, the speakers who preceded him, each of whom was allotted only a few minutes, cut right to the chase. Faith and Freedom Coalition president Ralph Reed announced his group had knocked on more than 8 million doors so far this election season, and then described a moment when Harris allegedly told a heckler who yelled “Christ is king” at a Wisconsin event that he was “at the wrong rally.” Reed crowed, “Today you’re at the right rally!” The crowd went wild. Lance Wallnau, a NAR apostle and key player in the “Stop the Steal” campaign promised, “In every state and every county…Christ will be glorified!” Kelly Shackelford, head of the Christian law firm First Liberty Institute got a standing ovation when he said the “Lemon Test” for the Establishment Clause, which codifies the separation of church and state, is “reversed everywhere.” The crowd was fairly diverse, and the speaker lineup, while mostly white, did include some pastors of color. Florida’s Bishop Kelvin Cobaris, the former president of the African American Council of Christian Clergy, said, “I want to tell every African American in here ‘Don’t be a afraid to lose your Black card…vote to defend religious freedom, vote to defend Israel!’” Pastor Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the enemy is “trying to kill our children in the classroom.” For a split second, I naively thought he was talking about guns, but then he clarified that the killer was “ideologies and social constructs that are out of alignment with the word of the Lord God.” The group ended the event by gathering around Trump to pray over him. The attendees I spoke to afterwards were jubilant—likely in part because after a program full of shaking their fists against “men in women’s sports” and “transgender surgeries for illegal aliens,” the crowd rocked out to the queer anthem “YMCA” as Trump was leaving the stage. Betsy Jorgensen, a volunteer with the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition, told me that she was “very confident we are going to win, barring any other tragedy.” She was from nearby Lumpkin County, which, she said, “is so red we call it Trumpkin County.” There, she had been knocking on doors and registering voters because she believed this election was crucial to right the country. “We are the last bit of a republic, of the free world,” she said. Alayna Martin, also from nearby, said she thought Trump would win “in a landslide” and that she liked him because “he cares about our faith and wants us to be a part of everything. Sophie McLean, a regular congregant at the church where the event was held, also thought Trump would win, but her friend and fellow congregant, Jennifer Smith, wasn’t so sure. In fact, she still hadn’t yet made up her mind whom she was going to vote for. What would help her choose? I asked. “More time—I’m running out of it, but more time,” she said. “I probably need a little bit more prayer.”

This week, soon after his 100th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter was able to vote in his home state of Georgia—in part thanks to protections under the Voting Rights Act. As his grandson, Jason Carter explained in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, voting assistance protections in Georgia allow family members to help cast absentee ballots (the vote can still be discarded if a signature or mark on the ballot does not match what is on file, per Georgia law). “He sat down and told everybody what he wanted to do, and was excited about it,” Jason Carter told Tapper. “My aunt dropped his ballot [at] an absentee drop box, just like thousands and thousands of other Georgians.” > Jimmy Carter just voted. His grandson explains how. pic.twitter.com/Ax1Ulvt9RR > > — The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) October 17, 2024 Even if Carter doesn’t consider himself disabled, many aging people benefit from disability rights laws and protections. Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act guarantees that “any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice.” In recent years, Republicans have attacked voters’ right to assistance, sometimes with carve-outs for close family members. But courts have repeatedly found such actions unconstitutional. In Texas, in 2022, a federal court ruled that people assisting voters can further explain ballot measures if asked; just last month in Alabama, a federal judge also ruled that the state was obligated to let voters get help from any person of their choice. While some people, like Carter, choose to, it’s not an option—or preference—for everyone. Some aging people in Georgia still face barriers to voting, even if their right to assistance hasn’t been as harshly attacked. A recent lawsuit argues that a state law enacted this year, under which votes can be challenged if a voter is registered at a nonresidential address, could impact people living in nursing homes, assisted living communities, and similar facilities. What is unclear, as my colleague Michael Mechanic recently wrote, is whether Georgia will count Carter’s ballot should he pass away before Election Day. What is clear, during the CNN interview, is how crucial Carter finds his right to vote, and the Voting Rights Act disability protections that enable him to do so. “He has done that forever,” his grandson said, “and is excited to keep doing it.”

A state judge on Wednesday blocked seven rule changes passed in recent months by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia State Election Board, finding the board “lacked constitutional authority” to enact them. It was the third ruling in two days that dealt a blow to election deniers in the state. On Tuesday, a different judge in Fulton County, Robert McBurney, held that county election boards must certify election rules and also blocked a new rule requiring a hand count of ballots on Election Night for the 2024 election, which election officials feared could delay vote counts and sow distrust in the election process. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox went further in Wednesday’s ruling, permanently blocking the hand count requirement, along with other new rules requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results and giving county officials access to “all election-related documentation.” Democrats, voting rights groups, and even some Republicans feared that these rules could be used by GOP county officials as a pretext not to certify the election results if Vice President Kamala Harris carried the state. Cox also blocked rules expanding the areas where partisan poll watchers can monitor the vote counting process and new signature and ID requirements for dropping off an absentee ballot at a drop box. Collectively, Cox found that the state board violated the Georgia Constitution and usurped the legislature’s power to set election procedures. The rule changes were challenged by a former Republican state legislator and a Republican board member in Chatham County. They represented increasing Republican opposition to the actions of the election board’s three MAGA-aligned members, who Trump praised as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory” during a rally in August.   The court decisions blocking the board’s new rules are an emphatic setback for the election denial movement in one of the country’s most important battleground states. However, the elevation of 2020 skeptics to the board—and their subsequent actions—have gone a long way toward legitimizing conspiracy theories in the state. “The SEB’s work is already done,” Democratic state senator Jason Esteves wrote on X Tuesday. “They’ve laid the groundwork for MAGA to doubt and challenge the election in Georgia.”

A Georgia judge on Monday blocked a controversial rule passed by the Trump-allied majority on the Georgia State Election Board requiring the hand count of ballots on Election Night. Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney declared that the new ruled had been enacted too close to the election. McBurney invoked the January 6 insurrection in his order enjoining the eleventh-hour change that had led to fears among election officials that results could be delayed and ultimately not certified by pro-Trump officials. “The public interest is not disserved by pressing pause here,” McBurney wrote. “This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.” It was the second decision in a day by McBurney that upheld democratic norms and handed a major loss to election deniers in the state. Earlier on Monday, McBurney ruled that county election officials were required to certify election results. The hand count rule was passed on September 20, less than two months before the election, and was set to go into effect just as early voting began. Election officials expressed widespread concern that the new mandate would delay election returns and potentially lead to new inaccuracies in the count, which could then be weaponized by Trump and his allies to sow distrust in the voting process and pressure election officials not to certify the result if Kamala Harris carried the state. “A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots—the only tangible proof of who voted for whom—to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election,” McBurney wrote. “Clearly the SEB believes that the Hand Count Rule is smart election policy—and it may be right. But the timing of its passage make implementation now quite wrong.” McBurney blocked the rule only for the 2024 election. It’s not the only controversial rule change passed by the pro-Trump majority on the election board. They also created new rules requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, and giving county officials access to “all election-related documentation.” Those changes will be challenged in court in a separate lawsuit on Wednesday. McBurney’s orders, which could go a long way toward ensuring a free and fair election in Georgia, were issued as the state saw record turnout on the first day of early voting, with more than 300,000 voters casting ballots.

A Georgia judge ruled on Tuesday that county election boards are required to certify election results—a major victory for democratic norms and a big loss for election deniers seeking to subvert the 2024 election. “No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” Fulton County Judge Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a response to a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections who voted against certifying the May presidential primary. Adams works for an election denial group founded by conservative activist Cleta Mitchell, a Trump lawyer who helped spearhead the effort to overturn the 2020 results and filed her lawsuit with the support of the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute. McBurney’s opinion is especially significant because the MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board has passed a series of controversial eleventh-hour rule changes that Democrats, voting rights groups, and even some Republicans worry could be used as a pretext not to certify the election outcome if Vice President Kamala Harris carries Georgia. That includes mandating a hand-count of election day ballots, requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, and giving county officials access to “all election-related documentation.” Any attempt to refuse to certify the results, even if unsuccessful, could be weaponized by Trump and his allies to sow distrust about the voting process. (Those rule changes are also being challenged in court.) In his opinion, which came as in-person early voting kicked off in Georgia, McBurney addressed the consequences if Georgia election officials attempt to defy the law. “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so—because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud—refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” he wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”

Democrats filed a lawsuit on Monday against a new rule passed by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia state election board requiring the hand count of ballots on Election Day, which Democrats and voting rights groups worry could delay election results and be used as a pretext by Republican officials not to certify a Democratic victory. “If the Hand Count Rule is allowed to go into effect, the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new Rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” the lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia states. The hand count requirement was adopted on September 20—six weeks before the general election—by the three MAGA-aligned members of the state election board, despite warnings by the state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state that it was likely illegal. County election officials also told the board the rule could delay election results and lead to distrust of the counting process, which the Trump campaign could weaponize to pressure county officials not to certify the results if Kamala Harris wins the state. The board’s MAGA majority, who Trump praised as “pit bulls” during a rally in Atlanta in August, have passed a series of controversial rule changes at the behest of election deniers that could plunge the vote-counting process into chaos in the state. In August, they also passed rule changes requiring counties to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” into the vote totals and granting them access to “all election-related documentation,” which Democrats, in a separate lawsuit, argued could delay election certification and result in the “mass disenfranchisement of eligible, registered Georgians.” That lawsuit will receive a hearing in state court on Tuesday. A Republican-led group has also filed suit against the board’s new changes. The Harris campaign is supporting the Democrats’ lawsuits. “We agree with Georgia’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State: This rule is unproductive and unlawful, and we are fighting it,” Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement. “Democrats are stepping in to ensure that Georgia voters can cast their ballots knowing that they will be counted in a free and fair election.”