Last month, I went to GA and talked to Republicans voting early in the runoff. Almost without exception, they said they believed the Nov. election was a scam.

What did surprise me, tho, was how consistently they said that voting in the runoff was a “correction” to November. (1/)

I asked one guy in Cherokee County why he was voting: “Election integrity. I feel the November election was riddled with fraud—and frankly, one of these runoffs we shouldn't even have because of the fraud. So it's really our duty to come out here and help save the republic.” (2/)

Another woman: “It’s my constitutional right to be here, but I'm still concerned that my vote won't be turned over to the other party. The integrity of all this is questionable, and it's a very sad time right now for me to question it. I never have in the past." (3/)

But the profound irony here is that… there are lots of reasons to question the election system, and to be concerned about voter suppression. But that's because of policies that are public… too few polling places + eight-hour lines, people purged from voter rolls, ID laws… (4/)

Even Georgia's runoff system itself has explicitly racist origins — the guy who started the bill to establish runoffs for statewide seats said he wanted to "'prevent the Negro bloc vote from controlling the elections." (5/)( https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/10/us/us-files-suit-against-georgia-charging-bias-in-election-laws.html)

So, the fact that (white, conservative) voters in Georgia are questioning the integrity of the election system for the first time ... demonstrates a real state of blinkered reality and ignorance of their state's fraught history with voting. (6/)

We get into all this in our latest episode, an hour-long deep-dive into what's at stake in the runoff: https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/georgia-on-our-minds/

But for me, one big takeaway is that this perceived sense of scam-ness is fueling, and not stymying, Republican participation in this runoff. (7/7)