Ellis Gibbs Arnall (March 20, 1907 – December 13, 1992)[1] was an American politician who served as the 69th Governor of Georgia from 1943 to 1947.

[2] A liberal Democrat, he helped lead efforts to abolish the poll tax and to reduce Georgia's voting age to 18.

A man named Edward Waters was given 100 acres of land in Elizabeth City, Virginia because he paid for the transportation of two servants to come to the colony.

Edward Waters covered the cost of William Arnall’s trip, which was owed to a man named Thomas Hamor.

He succeeded in lowering the voting age to eighteen more than two decades before the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution implemented that change nationally.

He removed the University of Georgia from political machinations,[9] and he led efforts to prevent a governor from exercising dictatorial powers, as opponents of Eugene Talmadge stated had allegedly occurred during his administration.

Additionally, Arnall, who had become a proponent of civil rights, argued that African Americans should be able to vote in the state's primary election.

Arnall stood behind Henry A. Wallace's efforts to remain Vice President in 1944, when the former United States Secretary of Agriculture was replaced by U.S.

Truman offered Arnall the post of Solicitor General but he declined in order to return to private practice.

His primary opponents for the nomination were Lester Maddox, an Atlanta restaurant owner who had hoisted ax handles as a symbol of his opposition to desegregation,[12] and Jimmy Carter.

Maddox called Arnall "the granddaddy of forced racial integration ... a candidate who would never raise his voice or a finger - much less an ax handle - to protect the liberty of Georgia.

Arnall won a plurality of the vote in the primary but was denied the required majority, because of support for Carter, then a state senator from Plains.

The civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., denounced what he called "a corroding cancer in the Georgia body politic.

[15] Stunned Arnall backers announced a write-in candidacy for the general election, a move that impacted Callaway more than it did Maddox.

Under the election rules then in effect, the state legislature was required to select a governor from the two candidates with the highest number of votes.