ATLANTA (AP) – Georgians cast final turnout on Tuesday in the election to determine the balance of power in the new Congress, which decides the second round of Senate elections it will surely shape the ability of President-elect Joe Biden to enact what could be the most progressive government agenda of generations.
Republicans unite against Biden’s plans for health care, environmental protection and civil rights, but some fear President Donald Trump’s blatant attempts to undermine the integrity of the nation’s voting systems could deter Georgia voters.
State election officials reported a slight turnout Tuesday morning, including in the deeply conservative Northwest region, where Trump held a rally Monday night to encourage Republican Party voters to come into force. Waiting times at polling stations were “almost non-existent,” averaging about a minute across the state, said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
More than 3 million Georgians had voted before, either by mail or during face-to-face voting in December. Strong early turnout was expected to benefit Democrats, as it helped Biden in November become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992.
“This is the story that is unfolding in Georgia right now,” Jon Ossoff, one of Georgia’s two challenging Democrats, told reporters in front of an Atlanta polling station.
Republicans had a large turnout Tuesday to increase their chances.
“You have to widen it tomorrow,” Trump told thousands of cheering fans Monday night, downplaying the threat of fraud, even as he repeatedly stated that the November state election was plagued by deceiving Republican officials, including his former attorney general and head of the election. Georgia, they say they did not occur.
Democrats must win both elections to the state Senate to get a Senate majority. In this scenario, the Senate would be divided equally between 50 and 50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would serve as a tiebreaker for Democrats.
Democrats won a narrow majority in the House and White House during the November general election.
Georgia’s January election, necessary because no Senate candidate received a majority of the votes in the general election, has been unique for many reasons, most notably because the candidates ran essentially as teams.
One of the contests featured Democrat Raphael Warnock, who is the senior pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Warnock, 51, was raised in a public home and spent most of his life preaching in Baptist churches.
Warnock faced Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate a year ago by the state’s Republican governor. She is only the second woman to represent Georgia in the Senate, although race has become one more campaign focus. Loeffler and his allies have seized fragments of Warnock’s sermons in the historic black church to make it extreme. Dozens of religious and civil rights leaders have backed down.
The other election pitted former business director David Perdue, 71, who held the Senate seat until it officially expired on Sunday, against Democrat Ossoff, a former congressman aide and journalist. At just 33, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate if elected. He landed national prominence for the first time in 2017 during an unsuccessful election in the House special elections.
Even a closely divided Democratic Senate would not guarantee Biden all you want, given the House rules that require 60 votes to move most major legislation. But if Democrats lose even one of Tuesday’s contests, Biden would have few quick votes up or down on his most ambitious plans to expand government-backed health coverage, address racial inequality, and fight climate change. A Republican-controlled Senate would also create a tougher path for Biden’s cabinet selections and judicial candidates.
“Georgia, the whole nation is watching you,” Biden said at his own rally in Atlanta on Monday. “Power is literally in your hands.”
Despite fears among some Republicans that Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud may depress turnout, the two Republican Party candidates strongly support him. Perdue said Tuesday that Trump “of course” would deserve credit if Republicans won.
“What the president said last night, even if you’re upset about it all, you’re going to have to stand up to us and fight,” Perdue told Fox & Friends. “We’ll look back on that day if we don’t vote and we really premiere the day we handed over the keys to the kingdom to the Democrats.”
Loeffler has pledged to join a small but growing number of GOP senators protesting Wednesday against Congress ’certification of Biden’s victory.
“We need to get to the bottom of what happened in this election,” Loeffler told reporters while campaigning in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. “There are too many unresolved open investigations.”
Warnock accused Loeffler of “helping and inciting” Trump’s efforts to undo his election loss.
“You want to spend time trying to get your voice heard,” Warnock told fans of the suburban Marietta north of Atlanta. “We know that Joe Biden won Georgia. How many times do we have to count the votes? So what we need now is to help him. ”
Democrats have assassinated Perdue and Loeffler, each of the richest members of the Senate, for personal operations conducted after members of Congress received information about the emerging threats of COVID-19 while Trump and Republicans downplayed the pandemic. None of the trades that violate Senate law or ethics have been found, but Warnock and Ossoff have left Republicans interested and out of touch.
Perdue and Loeffler have responded by handling Democrats as confident of initiating a left-wing push into national politics. Neither Warnock nor Ossoff are socialists, as Republicans claim. However, they support Biden’s agenda.
Georgia’s qualifiers mark the formal end of the turbulent 2020 election season and have raised nearly $ 500 million in campaign spending in a once-solid Republican state that is now a battlefield. The result will help demonstrate whether the political coalition that drove Biden’s victory was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new landscape.
Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by about 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast in November.
Democratic success will likely depend on a huge turnout among African Americans, young voters, college-educated voters, and women, all groups that helped Biden win Georgia. Republicans have focused on energizing their own base of white men and voters beyond the core of the Atlanta subway.
In downtown Atlanta, Henry Dave Chambliss, 67, voted for both Republicans. He said he wants Republicans to maintain control of the Senate to ensure the incoming Biden administration does not slide “to the left.”
“I’m moderately successful and I know they’ll come after more money I’ve earned,” Chambliss said. “I was born a Southern Democrat and I just hope and pray that some moderate voices are heard and that things stay more in the middle of the road.”
Beverly McDaniel voted Tuesday morning amid low turnout at a downtown Atlanta neighborhood gym. He voted in favor of the two Democrats, saying he thought it would be best to deal with the difficulties of the coronavirus.
“Our kids aren’t completely in school the way they are supposed to be and people don’t have jobs,” said McDaniel, a medical field worker. He said the virus “is taking the place where we should make the government take over.”
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Haleluya Hadero and Angie Wang contributed from Atlanta.