ATLANTA — It's the eve of Election Day, and Georgia has already seen more than 4 million votes through the early voting period that ended last Friday.
More than 55% of Georgia's 7.2 million active voters have cast a ballot. An Election Day turnout of another roughly million votes would see the Peach State surpass the 2020 election overall turnout.
It does not figure to be a quiet lead-up to Election Day in the Peach State -- Monday has a news conference scheduled with Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, and the weekend saw political commotion already in Georgia over the election.
RELATED: Georgia judge rejects GOP lawsuit trying to block counties from accepting hand-returned mail ballots
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The political flashpoint came with the decision by some counties to open election offices and accept hand-returned absentee ballots after Friday's end of the early voting period.
Republican state officials, including Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and the chief operating officer in the Secretary of State's Office, Gabriel Sterling, also said the practice was lawful. The state GOP, along with the National Republican Committee, nonetheless filed lawsuits, one of which was rejected on Saturday in a Fulton County court.
11Alive will track developments throughout Monday and the rest of this week as the residents of swing state Georgia cast their votes in the 2024 election.
2024 Election in Georgia | Live updates, Monday, November 4
3 p.m. | The Gwinnett County Police Department announced it would implement additional security measures on Election Day to ensure the safety of voters.
Officers have received additional Election Security and Response training and have been instructed to patrol polling areas in their jurisdictions as frequently as possible. The GCPD headquarters coordination center, along with the real-time crime center, will be activated to monitor activity across the county.
Additional officers have also been assigned to maintain patrol throughout election night.
1 p.m. | Be sure to verify your polling precinct before you head out to cast your ballot on Election Day. You can check to make sure you're at the correct precinct online here.
11:15 a.m. | We're expecting an update from officials in Fulton County momentarily. You can watch that in the YouTube player below.
10:20 a.m. | The news conference with Brad Raffensperger has concluded. You can re-watch it below. He took some questions about the legal cases that emerged over the weekend and the absentee-ballots-returned-by-hand tug-of-war, but as far as the new federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Georgia court in Savannah is concerned, said he'd leave that up to the lawyers and judges to sort out.
9 a.m. | Good morning. As noted above, we will hear this morning from Brad Raffensperger and his deputies in the Secretary of State's Office. It's probably they'll address some of the issues that cropped up this weekend as well as give a layout of what to expect tomorrow.
On Saturday, Raffensperger issued a release with a statement calling 2024 "the most successful early voting period in Georgia history, because voters trust the process."
That release did note there are four people who have been identified "who may have violated state law and potentially used various tactics in order to attempt to cast multiple ballots during the Early Voting period."
According to the release, his office will refer cases to local district attorneys "if the investigation shows violations of the law."
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