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 Georgia casting ballots in person at the polls, or 44% of all active voters.

The state’s early voting period ends Friday.

As of Monday, more than 199,000 Georgians have turned in mail-in ballots out of a total of 342,000 requested ballots. Voters who did not request an absentee ballot by Friday’s deadline must vote early in person or on the Nov. 5 Election Day.

Election officials in Georgia and several voting rights organizations are encouraging voters to directly return their mail-in ballots to county election offices and drop boxes, or to vote in person if they have not yet received them.

Georgia’s county election workers greeted a historic number of early-bird voters since select polling places opened on Oct. 15, with some locations experiencing wait times in excess of an hour daily. Statewide, reports of long lines were minimal. Voter turnout is expected to increase during this final week of early voting.

Georgia nonprofit Fair Fight Action, a voting access advocacy organization, noted significant problems with mail-in ballot processing this fall and advised voters to return their ballots via drop boxes or in-person voting instead of sending them by postal mail. An overhaul of the postal service’s Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center in Palmetto is blamed for delaying mail delivery so much that a bipartisan group of Georgia’s congressional delegation has issued stinging criticism of the U.S. postmaster general.

According to Fair Fight Action, a number of county registrars are coping with delays in vote-by-mail processing, with one-third of voters contacted still waiting for their ballots.

A third of the about 190,000 ballots sent to Georgia voters that were unreturned as of last week were within the metro Atlanta area, including the counties of Cobb, Fulton. Gwinnett, and DeKalb. Unreturned ballots in other parts of the state were reported to be at their highest levels in Bibb, Dougherty, and Sumter counties, according to Fair Fight.

Absentee ballots must be received by the time the polls close at 7 p.m. Election Day in order to be counted.

“We do not recommend at this point, that voters, put their ballot in the postal system,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said last week. “They need to return it into a drop box, or they need to go into an early voting center and cancel their mail vote and vote in person because of the postal delays.”

Since the 2020 election, Georgia lawmakers introduced new voter ID laws that specifically limit options for absentee voters.

About 1,200 absentee ballots are on the Georgia Secretary of State’s office list of ones rejected for deficiencies.

Many of the rejections were due to ID errors, which could be a result of Georgia voters being unaware of the new ID requirements that differ for each form of voting, according to VoteRiders, a national voter ID resource organization.

VoteRiders is collaborating with Fair Count of Georgia for a ballot cure program that will assist voters to have their absentee ballots counted by fixing the issues that resulted in their ballots being rejected.

“What we are seeing is in addition to the changes in the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot, there are new voter ID requirements for absentee ballots that did not exist in 2020,” said Randy Faigen, Georgia state coordinator for VoteRiders.

Voters who have had their absentee ballots rejected are being contacted directly by Fair Count. Election officials in some areas have already contacted voters to inform them of the problem.

“A lot of times it requires that they submit a copy of their state ID or their driver’s license, and that isn’t always easy, especially for some of our elderly voters who may not have access to a photocopy machine or have a smartphone to send that in,” Faigan said. “They may need a ride to go to the county elections office to show them their ID. If so, then we’re really just brainstorming with the voter to figure out what we can do to make sure their ballot counts.”

This year’s election has seen a substantial number of Republican operatives change their stance to emphasize early voting. Georgia is considered one of seven swing states for the Nov. 5 presidential election contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump has publicly encouraged Republicans to vote early at polling stations, but there has been mixed messaging about absentee voting.

In 2020, Trump’s early lead over Biden evaporated after Election Day as mail-in votes were tabulated in Democratic strongholds such as Fulton County. Trump and other supporters spread false allegations that the election was stolen in order to cause doubt in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states where Trump was defeated after the 2020 election.

In the following 10 weeks, there were over 60 failed voter fraud lawsuits, multiple new conspiracy theories about election theft, violent threats against election officials, and a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, David Becker, executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, said on an October episode of his podcast “The Count with David Becker.”

“(Trump’s) message to his party was clear,” Becker said. “Any election we lose cannot be trusted. Election distrust was now hardwired into a major political party.

“So when that party lost in 2020, the partisan effect combined with the hardwired message, fully half of Republicans expressed no confidence in the vote, a 32-point gap below Democrats,” Becker said. “There’s a painful paradox in this lost confidence. As overall confidence in elections was dropping, the elections themselves were getting better and better.

“More professional, more transparent, more verified, more secure, until we reached the most trustworthy and least trusted election in American history,” Becker said

Faigan said absentee voting remains a secure way for Georgians to make their voices heard in an election.

“Absentee is a great method of voting,” Faigan said. “People get nervous about it. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, but the ballots are secure. if you take it to a drop box, you can put it in yourself, and you see it go in. The hard part is the mail and that’s the one factor we cannot control. Georgia is a received-by-absentee ballot date, which means absentee ballots have to be received by 7pm on Election Day. It doesn’t matter what the postmark says.”