Atlanta (AP) – Early voting in Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats began early Monday, with lines lower than the first day of early voting in last month’s general election.
More than half of the 5 million votes cast in the November 3 general election were cast during its three-week early voting period. Early voting is even more important in the run-up to the Jan. 5 run, as voters have a short time to request and return the ballot by mail.
Democrats Rafael Warnock and John Ossoff are trying to oust the Republicans. Kelly Lofler and David Bertue will decide which party controls the US Senate, respectively.
No one expected the turnout for the general election to be high. But Bernard Fraga, a professor at Emory University who reads the poll, said the overall turnout could reach 4 million.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly made unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in the failed general election in the state of Georgia. In an overnight tweet just hours before the start of the early vote, he continued his attack on the Georgian government Brian Kemp, urging him to take action or risk detriment to the prospects of Bertou and Lofler.
“What a stupid governor Brian Kempka of Georgia,” the president tweeted. “It may have been very easy, but now we have to do it the hard way. Call this clown a special session and open the signature verification now. Otherwise, January 5th could be a bad day for the two big senators.”
In contrast to the first day of early voting in October, more than 125,000 people voted, some queuing for hours., Some long lines were announced on Monday.
One question is how many mail-in ballots will be cast in the election. By Friday, 1.2 million mail votes had been cast and 200,000 had been withdrawn. In the general election, Democrat Joe Biden won 65% of the 1.3 million returned votes in Georgia, which was triggered by a corona virus infection.
Fraga said postal votes would be even more favorable to Democrats due to the attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting by Trump and several Georgia Republicans.
That means the early vote on Trump’s narrow victory in November will be even more important for Republicans. Since the Christmas and New Year holidays are coincidental, both parties are likely to move voters towards an early referendum.
Republicans’ attacks on mail-in voting are also of concern to some Democrats. Megan Shannon, 36, who voted for Ossoff and Warnock in person Monday at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, is somewhat driven by fears that the missing ballots will be over-examined.
“I think the question will be asked when the non-voting votes are counted,” the architect said. “I wanted to be in person here, so my vote is counted, and it’s non-competitive.”
Melissa McJung, 40, voted in Rome, a staunch Republican party in northwest Georgia, and voted for Bertou and Lofler, saying “they will help make decisions based on what I think is the right choice.” He heard allegations of voter fraud in the general election and was somewhat concerned about the fairness of the ballots cast.
“I never had a problem before believing it now, but now I think something unbelievable might be going on,” he said.
Dowanda Jones voted for Ossoff and Warnock in Atlanta and denied allegations of fraud, which have been repeatedly denied by election officials.
“This system works just as well. I think our current president is a terrible loser,” he said.
The 54-year-old black hairdresser said police reform was his top priority.
“I have two grown sons,” Jones said. “The amount of black lives lost by police brutality made me sad.”
Lilburn’s Deborah Harp Gibbs said she voted for Bertue and Lofler to “keep America better.”
Gibbs said it was important for people to accept the United States as a Christian nation. “I like to pray at school,‘ God bless America ’and the apple pie,” Gibbs said, just because I think Republicans can keep things “on the right track”.
Tony Christie, 62, said he was concerned about the balance of power in Washington when he voted for two Republicans in the conservative-leaning city of Kenzo, northwest of Atlanta. If the Democrats win, there will be 50 senators from each party, with Kamala Harris, who was elected vice president, voting in a tie-breaking chamber.
This will give the Democrats more power because Christie said, “Then they will have the presidency, but they will have the House and the Senate, which is not a good balance.”
But Lilburn’s Araya Araya said Warnock voted in part to give Biden a chance to do things.
“I do not want the Senate majority to be Republican, where everything that President-elect Biden is prepared to do will be blocked,” Araya said.
Each of Georgia’s 159 counties must provide at least one early voting location during business hours, with multiple platforms in metro Atlanta offering multiple sites, extended time and weekend voting. In some places, early voting will continue until December 31.
Preparations for the early polls saw cuts in the number of early polling stations. Center for new data, A non-profit group, is scheduled to count 42 initial polling stations nationwide. In some cases, polling stations were relocated.
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Associated Press writers Hallelujah Hadero and Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Jeff Martin in Kensa, Georgia; And Sophia Dulp in Rome, Georgia; Contributed.