ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made a formal request Wednesday to new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to dismiss a Biden administration lawsuit against the state over its voting laws.

Senate Bill 202 was passed by Georgia lawmakers in 2021 after the contentious 2020 general presidential election, an election which saw Joe Biden carry Georgia over Donald Trump, the first time a Democratic candidate had carried a deep Southern state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

The law changed the deadlines to request mail-in ballots; required voters to include ID numbers like a driver’s license number on both their application for a mail-in ballot and their completed ballot; and limited the number of drop boxes in each county, among other changes.

Then-President Biden labeled the new Georgia as “Jim Crow 2.0,” and protests from unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and others eventually resulted in Major League Baseball’s decision to withdraw the 2022 All-Star Game from Atlanta.

U.S. v. Georgia was filed by the U.S. Justice Department over the law.

Since then, however, and despite no changes in the law, Georgia voters turned out in record-breaking numbers in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Raffensperger is pointing to a 2022 University of Georgia poll that found that 99% of voters reported no issues casting their ballots, and a follow-up poll in 2024 reflected a high satisfaction rate, with 98% of voters experiencing no problems at the polls.

“It disparaged our reputation, it cost the taxpayers of Georgia millions upon millions of dollars pushing back about this,” said Raffensperger, who is rumored to be a 2026 candidate for governor. “SB202, the Election Integrity Law, is good election law. This is a frivolous lawsuit.”

Major League Baseball’s 2025 All-Star Game is also returning to Atlanta, set to be played at Truist Park on July 15.

Raffensperger also said Georgia has seen reduced wait times at polling places, enhanced absentee ballot processes and increased voter confidence.

“They’re wrong, we’re right, because we have the numbers. We have the proof. We had record turnout. Voters love our system,” he said. “It will be dismissed but how many millions of more dollars is this going to cost Georgia taxpayers?”

Plaintiffs in the case, like the ACLU of Georgia, are prepared to keep fighting the law.

“Frankly, Secretary Raffensperger is attempting to take advantage of a new administration,” said Caitlin May, an attorney with the ACLU of Georgia. “They filed a motion to dismiss early in this suit, they lost. The court did not think it was frivolous.”

May said while Raffensperger points to surveys about voter confidence, she’s heard anecdotes about disabled voters, elderly voters and voters with little time to cast a ballot having a harder time doing so since the passage of SB 202.

“I think the reasons it’s important to see this through to the end are the same reasons it was important to file in the first place, and that’s to protect the right to access the ballot for every Georgian,” she said.

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