• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. election 2020>

Huge stakes, few problems as Georgians cast final votes of a tumultuous year

Sara Swann
https://twitter.com/saramswann?lang=en
January 05, 2021
Georgia voter

Georgians encountered few problems at the polls Tuesday, the final day of voting in the Senate runoffs.

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

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.


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.

"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.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 most expensive congressional election 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.

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.

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.

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.

Gabriel Sterling, the state's voting system manager, tweeted that back-up emergency ballots were being used and new equipment was being delivered to polling stations by police.

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.

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.

Looming much larger than any voter complaints, it seemed certain, would be the vituperative condemnations 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.

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.

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.

Since the early vote appears to have solidly favored the Democrats, Republicans are counting on a big turnout Tuesday from their base.

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.

"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."

From Your Site Articles
  • Georgia runoff elections will be the next test for democracy - The ... ›
  • Late rush to register young Georgians for Senate runoffs - The Fulcrum ›
  • Georgia smashes record for most expensive Senate election - The ... ›
  • What if the Senate won't seat Georgia's winners? - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Live Updates: Georgia Senate runoffs voting underway | Fox News ›
  • Georgia Senate runoff election: Live updates and results - The ... ›
  • Georgia Runoffs Live Updates: Voters Head to the Polls ›
election 2020

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

The conservative mind at 70

Michael Lucchese

Fulcrum Rewind: How to get along at Thanksgiving

Debilyn Molineaux
David L. Nevins

How reforming felony murder laws can reduce juvenile justice harms

Margaret Mikulski

What if neither party can govern?

John Opdycke

The case for the 4th, from a part-time American

Flora Roy

How to critique a Schedule F revival

C.Anne Long
latest News

Slovakia’s election deep fakes show how AI could be a danger to U.S. elections

David Levine
Louis Savoia
2h

How to change the world: Sam Daley-Harris has a formula

Jay Evense
2h

Podcast: America’s political orphans

Our Staff
2h

The Voter Choice Act reintroduced in the Senate

Our Staff
22h

How America skimps on healthcare

Robert Pearl
22h

States need to define emergency

Kevin Frazier
24 November
Videos
Who is the new House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson?

Who is the new House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson?

Our Staff
Video: Jordan bully tactics backfire, provoke threats and harassment of fellow Republicans

Video: Jordan bully tactics backfire, provoke threats and harassment of fellow Republicans

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Reflection on Indigenous Peoples' Day with Rev. F. Willis Johnson

Video Rewind: Reflection on Indigenous Peoples' Day with Rev. F. Willis Johnson

Our Staff
Video: The power of young voices

Video: The power of young voices

Our Staff
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Dr. F. Willis Johnson in a rich conversation with Patrick McNeal

Our Staff
14 November

Podcast: Better choices, better elections

Our Staff
23 October

Podcast: Are state legislators really accountable to their voters?

Our Staff
06 October

Podcast: What does it take to “do democracy?”

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
05 October
Recommended
Slovakia’s election deep fakes show how AI could be a danger to U.S. elections

Slovakia’s election deep fakes show how AI could be a danger to U.S. elections

Contributors
How to change the world: Sam Daley-Harris has a formula

How to change the world: Sam Daley-Harris has a formula

Big Picture
Podcast: America’s political orphans

Podcast: America’s political orphans

Big Picture
The Voter Choice Act reintroduced in the Senate

The Voter Choice Act reintroduced in the Senate

Big Picture
How America skimps on healthcare

How America skimps on healthcare

Big Picture
The conservative mind at 70

The conservative mind at 70

Opinion