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Georgians encountered few problems at the polls Tuesday, the final day of voting in the Senate runoffs.
Huge stakes, few problems as Georgians cast final votes of a tumultuous year
Jan 05 2021
Capping an extraordinarily complex and contentious season for democracy in a fitting way, hundreds of thousands of Georgians headed to the polls Tuesday for an unusual overtime contest with exceptional consequences.
It took five days after the 2020 campaign year ended for the final election of 2020 to finish. And the stakes of the twinned Senate runoffs could hardly be higher: whether Republicans will still control half of the Capitol, or whether Joe Biden will have a Democratic Congress at his back for his first two years as president.
The fact that the races are in Georgia, which has long been ground zero in battles over voter suppression and rickety election administration, has only heightened the tension. But as of midday, civil rights groups and others looking for big problems were not finding them.
<p>On the contrary, it seemed as though many of the criticisms about the state's processes had faded or been resolved in time for their biggest test.<br></p>
<p>"The scope and scale of the problems voters are facing are not overwhelming," said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Her organization ran an election protection hotline all year — one that was swamped with calls from confused or complaining voters after the state's first 2020 election day, the primaries in June.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>A main reason, she said, was that so many voters had continued to take advantage of the state's pandemic-promoted decision to encourage voting ahead of time, either in person or using mail ballots that Georgia has made easier than ever to obtain and complete. </p>
<p>As of Monday, more than 3 million had already voted — including 123,000 who didn't vote in the general election. Somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 were expected at local polling places before polls shut at 7 p.m.</p>
<p>Such turnout — while below the 5 million votes cast in the presidential race, a turnout rate of 68 percent — would nonetheless shatter records for runoffs in Georgia, which in modern times have not topped about three-fifths of the November number.</p>
<p>Black voters made up 31 percent of the ballots cast early, either in person or by mail, in line with their share of the population and their share of the November vote. Voters younger than 30 account for 12 percent of the early votes, also in line with the fall. Turnout by both Black and younger voters were key to President-elect Joe Biden's razor-thin, 12,000-vote win in the state, the first by a Democratic presidential nominee in 28 years.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Motivating turnout for what has appeared to be a pair of tossup races of national importance has helped make the Georgia contest by far the <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/runoff-georgia" target="_self">most expensive congressional election</a> in American history: More than $833 million has been spent on the two contests overall — an astonishing 6 percent of all the money poured into all the elections for president and Congress over the past two years.</p>
<p>Wins by both Democrats, documentary film company owner Jon Ossoff and Baptist minister Raphael Warnock, would give their party 50 seats in the Senate, a working majority once Kamala Harris becomes vice president and has the tie-breaking vote. </p>
<p>Victories by either GOP incumbent, David Perdue (who's opposed by Ossoff) and Kelly Loeffler (challenged by Warnock), would mean a GOP Senate but a Democratic House, almost assuring partisan gridlock that hobbles Biden's efforts to advance what could be the most progressive governing agenda in generations.</p>
<p>The biggest problem reported Tuesday morning was in Columbia County, outside Augusta, where problems with the digital poll books meant election workers had to resort to the slower methods of checking people in using paper backups.</p>
<p>Gabriel Sterling, the state's voting system manager, <a href="https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/1346448612637683712" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> that back-up emergency ballots were being used and new equipment was being delivered to polling stations by police.</p>
<p>Election workers have experienced sporadic issues with a new generation of electronic equipment in use since last year, so much so that this fall a federal judge had ordered the paper backups as a precaution.</p>
<p>Of the 2,000 calls to its hotline, the Lawyers Committee reported, by far the most were complaints that requested absentee ballots had not arrived and so voters felt compelled to risk Covid-19 exposure to vote in person.</p>
<p>Looming much larger than any voter complaints, it seemed certain, would be the vituperative <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/certification-of-electoral-votes" target="_self">condemnations</a> of the Georgia election system from President Trump. Since losing the state's 16 electoral votes — after the ballots were counted three times — he has launched an extraordinary jihad against the fellow Republicans in charge, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.</p><p>At a rally in northwest Georgia on Monday night, he repeatedly declared that the November elections were plagued by fraud that fellow Republicans — from the Georgia officials to his own previous attorney general — flatly declared did not occur.</p><p>At the same time, he encouraged his supporters to show up in force. "You've got to swarm it tomorrow," Trump told thousands of cheering supporters, downplaying the threat of fraud. </p><p>Since the early vote appears to have solidly favored the Democrats, Republicans are counting on a big turnout Tuesday from their base. </p><p>At just 33, Ossoff would become the youngest senator in the nation. Warnock would be the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the Deep South.</p><p>"Georgia, the whole nation is looking to you. The power is literally in your hands," Biden declared at his own rally in Atlanta on Monday. "One state can chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for the next generation."</p>
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Members of the National Guard patrol in Philadelphia the morning after Election Day.
Something to celebrate: a safe election, so far
Nov 04 2020
Election Day passed with remarkably little drama. After months of anxiety, that's a relief. Even better, there has been extraordinarily little violence or threat of violence to mar the election itself. Those of us concerned about political violence will now worry about the aftermath.
<p>On the positive side: The evening before the election, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general declared illegal the department's deputization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and other DHS employees to Portland in August. The timing suggests the IG wanted to get the warning out before the election, to preclude the possibility of further Portland-like deployments in the post-election period. These are missions that could take DHS into territory that would appear partisan.</p><p>Similarly, Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York, from the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, <a href="https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/reps-lieu-and-rice-request-information-all-potential-plans-deploy-dhs" target="_blank">asked DHS</a> about any planned post-election deployments, requesting detailed understanding of rules of engagement, authorities, and plans. That the DHS inspector general and members of Congress felt the need to warn about unlawful activities is worrisome. That they did it anyway shows patriotism. </p><p>Meanwhile, our active duty military got in front of rumors with a highly unusual call this weekend to news anchors representing channels from across the political spectrum. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs <a href="https://www.axios.com/milley-tv-anchors-call-military-no-election-role-1570714a-3532-4102-8f24-69fbd2d375e2.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportedly told journalists</a> in the off-the-record briefing that the active duty military would have no role in a transition of power.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>The chief of the <a href="https://www.nationalguard.mil/Leadership/CNGB/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Guard Bureau</a> also explained to journalists that some units have already been activated at the behest of governors. Some soldiers worked without uniform, as normal poll volunteers, under strict National Guard guidelines. Others have been working to ensure cybersecurity of their states' elections. </p><p>Still others have been activated, in uniform, in case of civil unrest. Since uniformed military on U.S. streets can frighten some people, the National Guard needs to make sure the public understands their presence isn't a cause for alarm. Forces activated so far haven't been federalized. Under their governor's command they are fulfilling proper and normal missions. Should there be post-election unrest, the Guard generally backfills jobs like traffic control so local law enforcement can handle protests and counter-protests.</p><p>The U.S. military is highly respected for its apolitical, professional role, and it does not want to be politicized. They are well aware of <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/election-and-military" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">laws that specifically prohibit</a> interference in elections and vote counting, and want to stay well on the <a href="https://www.electiontaskforce.org/resources" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">right side of those laws</a>.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>That does not mean we should remain sanguine. Governors may attempt to politicize the National Guard. But the Guard today is not what it was in the 1960s. While these citizen-soldiers come from their states and communities, most have been deployed in wars overseas, where they served under the professional norms of active-duty troops. We can hope they imbibed some of those nonpolitical norms. Meanwhile, Guard units' military police are trained in civil unrest, unlike many in local law enforcement. DHS may try to circumvent laws and the IG alert in ways that further tarnish its reputation. Doing so could make the public believe DHS serves a party, not a country. That would politicize its long-term survival.</p><p>Finally, the clear bad news is that the election has fallen into our expected, but worst-case scenario. It's a close call that may shift from red to blue, after the president has declared victory. It may take days to count all the ballots. It may take even longer to work through litigation challenging the counts. According to multiple polls, voters on both sides of the aisle expect their candidates to win, and they believe if their side loses, it will be because of fraud. That underlines the likelihood of protests and counter-protests. </p><p>If police can't deescalate protests, violence may grow. And for some politicians, such citizen-on-citizen violence could serve as an excuse to crack down with curfews and other tactics that are known to escalate situations. Such escalation tends to play into the hands of "strongmen" leaders, to whom citizens turn in the face of violence. We can hope it doesn't come to this. </p><p>There is a great deal to celebrate about the election. Despite all fears and prognostication to the contrary, a record number of Americans cast their votes peacefully and easily. And, thanks to early voting and mail-in voting, we even avoided the long lines that have become such a feature in recent elections. Let us hope that this good news can carry through to a potentially more confusing post-election period.</p><p><em>Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Read more from The Fulcrum's </em><a href="https://thefulcrum.us/election-dissection" target="_self"><em>Election Dissection</em></a><em> blog.</em></p>
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Andy Manis/Getty Images
Poll workers Angela and Zach Achten check in a box of absentee ballots in Sun Prairie, Wis.
Stay alert until every vote is counted: A U.S. election observer's message
Nov 04 2020
Asquino was the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 2012 to 2015, the conclusion of nearly four decades as a foreign service officer.
<p>As a career diplomat who proudly represented the United States abroad in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa, I saw firsthand how elections were stolen in repressive countries. In the days ahead, we need to make sure that every vote is counted to avoid this result at home. </p><p>Time and again, votes in many of the authoritarian places where I served were rigged to allow corrupt leaders to remain in power indefinitely. As an international election observer, I often saw violations including ballot manipulation, proxy voting and voter intimidation at polling sites. </p>
<p>But the most blatant cases of electoral rigging often happened during the vote count itself — or after transmission of tallies to government-controlled electoral commissions.</p><p>To cite just one example, when I was posted to Romania in the early 1990s, I served as an international observer from the U.S. embassy for a parliamentary election there. After the last polling place where I'd observed was closed, I was allowed to remain to watch the paper ballots being counted by poll workers. Opposition and ruling party representatives were also there and permitted to challenge any ballot that appeared to be unclearly marked. As I understood Romanian, I could follow everything being said, although as an observer, I was not allowed to intercede in any way. Generally, consensus was reached among those present on whether such ballots should be counted or declared void. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>I was impressed by what seemed like a fair process and agreement by all sides on the final tallies. Opposition candidates did very well at this polling place, and the results were posted outside on a bulletin board for the public to see. All the ballots, along with the tally sheets signed by the poll workers and party representatives, were placed in a container. It was then secured with a wax seal and transported to the electoral commission. Everything seemed above board.</p>
<p>But days passed before the commission, controlled by the ruling party, announced the winners. And when it did, the tallies showed landslide victories for almost all of the ruling party's candidates. </p><p>The opposition parties challenged the results, arguing there had been strong support for their candidates at sites like mine throughout the country. They charged that the election had been rigged, and international observers concurred. But the government said there had been "grave errors" in polling site tallies requiring the commission to re-examine the ballots and count them again. </p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>There was no transparency in how this alleged recount was conducted. Nevertheless, the government declared the "revised" tallies were correct, and the results final. </p>
<p>In those years, Romania's judicial system was largely controlled by the ruling party, so the opposition had no recourse to challenging the outcome in court. It was my first experience with a party in power stealing an election. Unfortunately, I would witness similar rigging elsewhere during the decades that followed. </p><p>What relevance, if any, does this experience have for this American presidential election? Normally, I would say none whatsoever. But now, I'm not so sure. </p><p>Due to the coronavirus pandemic, record numbers of Americans voted by mail — 64 million envelopes had been returned by the morning of Election Day. After receiving their absentee ballots, many returned them to an official drop box rather than use the Postal Service. In four states, elections with entirely-by-mail voting have been held for years without any evidence of measurable cheating.</p><p>But President Trump, as has become universally known, has challenged the legitimacy of such voting by mail. Without any proof, he has claimed many times that this practice will lead to massive electoral fraud and has already made illegitimate the results that poured in Tuesday night. His solution, he signaled up until the eve of the election, will be to contest results that don't go his way all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now dominated by conservatives, including three justices he appointed. </p><p>There is simply no reason to believe that voting by mail has undermined a free and fair election in our country. But because so many more of us voted this way than ever before — and because the envelopes must be opened, the signatures checked and the ballots readied for tabulating all by hand, but in some swing states not before Election Day — the process of counting all the votes that have been cast with total legitimacy will take longer than many are used to.</p><p>As voters, we need to stay watchful in the coming days. It is crucial that the final vote count be complete, accurate and fair.</p><p>Contrary to what the president has claimed, there is nothing in our Constitution or laws that says presidential winners must be declared on election night. We should remain both patient and vigilant in the days ahead to ensure all our voices are heard — and remain alert in the 11 weeks until Inauguration Day to help ensure the legitimate result prevails. </p><div></div><p>State and federal officials must also stay vigilant to prevent foreign governments and any others from interfering with the final vote count. As patriotic citizens, it's our duty, and <a href="https://holdthelineguide.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">we all have a role to play</a> to defend American democracy if we want to make sure we avoid the sort of electoral rigging I saw so often overseas. </p>
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Georgia, which has become a competitive state in the presidential race, was home to voting difficulties early Tuesday that were later resolved without legal action.
Voting anxieties and campaign turmoil yield to a pretty regular Election Day
Nov 03 2020
After one wild and crazy election season, evening has fallen on an Election Day that seems to have been refreshingly normal. That was the general sense for how things were going at polling places across the country, with only a few hours to go Tuesday.
There were sporadic and isolated problems but nothing close to widespread technological glitches. And the most notable effort to suppress voting — misleading robocalls in several states that the FBI was investigating — may have been the most alarming thing keeping election officials and independent monitors on their toes.
But, with a few hours to go, one of the most divisive and complex tests ever for American electoral democracy seemed to be nearing the end with unexpected calm. And very long lines of people waiting to do their civic duty.
<p>"We were bracing for the worst and have been pleasantly surprised," Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which ran the largest election monitoring operation in the country, said in the early evening.<br></p><p>More than 101 million people had voted ahead of Election Day — almost two-thirds of them by mail, with several million more such absentee ballots expected to get delivered on time to be counted.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>President Trump has relentlessly cast doubt on the security of the election, focusing mainly on mail-in ballots. His campaign organized an army of 50,000 volunteers to monitor day-of voting in Democratic-leaning areas. But there had been essentially no verifiable reports of voter intimidation.</p><p>In D.C., federal Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the Postal Service to conduct a sweep of a dozen Postal Service processing facilities during the afternoon to "ensure that no ballots have been held up" in regions that have been slow to process mail ballots. He ordered the inspections after the agency said about 300,000 ballots seemed essentially missing in transit. </p><p>But at the end of the afternoon, USPS essentially said it had ignored the judge's order in favor of sticking with its own quality control schedule.</p><p>At the same time, a wave of suspicious robocalls and texts began bombarding telephones in much of the country soon after the polls opened, their unclear origin raising suspicions of last-minute foreign interference. Millions of them urged people to "stay safe and stay home" on Election Day. Another wave of automated calls in Flint, the sixth largest city in battleground Michigan, told people to vote tomorrow if they hoped to avoid long lines today.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>That is not possible, of course, leaving officials scrambling to reassure voters of the rules. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan pledged to "work quickly to stamp out misinformation." The FBI was investigating the larger wave of calls.</p><p>The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the many voting rights groups that has battled all year to make voting easier despite the coronavirus pandemic, detailed the range of complaints to its hotline. The presidential battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Texas had produced the most calls — along with reliably blue New York. </p><p>Thirty phone banks of volunteer attorneys across the country had fielded 30,000 calls by the evening, still a relatively high call volume reflecting the elecortrate's anxieties. The top complaints were about challenged registrations, potential voter intimidation and polling site access.</p><p>Clarke said the most concerning incident stemmed from plagued electronic poll books in two rural counties near Atlanta. Voters were being asked to use paper ballots, but those soon ran out at several locations.</p><p>Clarke initially labeled the situation a "crisis-level issue" in tossup Georgia and said her group was considering suing to force an extension of voting hours. But later in the day she said the situation had been largely resolved.</p><p>In Philadelphia, two precincts did not open their polls before the afternoon.</p><p>Concerns about excessively long waiting times at the polls, historically a sign of voter suppression in many parts of the Unites States, were reported at numerous locations around the country in the morning — but those lines eased after the vote-as-soon-as-possible rush ended.</p><p>One likely reason for that is the record-setting number of people who voted by mail or in person in advance — leaving perhaps only 50 million ballots to be cast Tuesday, or one-third the total cast four years ago.</p><p>Two incidents of voter intimidation were reported in Florida. In one, five pickup trucks were blocking the entrance to a parking lot at a polling place in Orange County, where Orlando is located. In the other, two men who said they were with law enforcement, but were not in uniform, were seated outside a polling place in Tampa and were questioning voters as they entered.</p><p>In Ohio, voting machines malfunctioned at several polling sites in Franklin County, where Columbus is located, forcing people to use paper ballots. Other voters were given provisional ballots, which Clarke said was improper.</p><p>North Carolina's Board of Elections extended voting at four voting locations in suburban counties near Greensboro, Charlotte and Fayetteville. The board granted extensions as long as 45 minutes — meaning a delay in reporting results statewide until 8:15 p.m.. State law says no returns can be announced until all voting has ended. The extensions were sought because of technical glitches that caused the doors to open late in all four places.</p><p>Approximately 50 voters were given an incorrect ballot (it was missing a state House race) when they showed up to vote right when the polls opened at Hickory Ridge Middle School in Harrisburg, outside Charlotte. County officials made arrangements for them to vote for other offices in the morning and come back later to vote for state representative.</p>
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