Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff win in Georgia, handing Dems Senate control
Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats — and with them, the U.S. Senate majority — as final votes were counted Wednesday, serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his turbulent final days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s progressive agenda. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992. Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate. And Ossoff becomes the state’s first Jewish senator and, at 33 years old, the Senate’s youngest member. This week’s elections were expected to mark the formal finale to the tempestuous 2020 election season, although the Democrats’ resounding success was overshadowed by chaos and violence in Washington, where angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Wednesday’s unprecedented siege drew fierce criticism of Trump’s leadership from within his own party, and combined with the bad day in Georgia, marked one of the darkest days of his divisive presidency. Still, the Democrats’ twin victories in Georgia represented a striking shift in the state’s politics as the swelling number of diverse, college-educated voters flex their power in the heart of the Deep South. They also cemented the transformation of Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds for the foreseeable future. In an emotional address early Wednesday, Warnock vowed to work for all Georgians whether they voted for him or not, citing his personal experience with the American dream. His mother, he said, used to pick “somebody else’s cotton” as a teenager. “The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said. “Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.” Loeffler, who remains a senator until the results of Tuesday’s election are finalized, returned to Washington on Wednesday morning to join a small group of senators planning to challenge Congress’ vote to certify Biden’s victory. She didn’t get a chance to vocalize her objection before the violent protesters stormed the Capitol. Georgia’s other runoff election pitted Perdue, a 71-year-old former business executive who held his Senate seat until his term expired Sunday, against Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. “This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state — for all the people of this state,” Ossoff said in a speech broadcast on social media Wednesday morning. “Whether you were for me, or against me, I’ll be for you in the U.S. Senate. I will serve all the people of the state.” Trump’s false claims of voter fraud cast a dark shadow over the runoff elections, which were held only because no candidate hit the 50% threshold in the general election. He raised the prospect of voter fraud as votes were being cast and likened the Republicans who run Georgia’s election system to “chickens with their heads cut off” during a Wednesday rally in Washington. Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office and a Republican, said there was “no evidence of any irregularities.” “The biggest thing we’ve seen is from the president’s fertile mind of finding fraud where none exists,” he said. Both contests tested whether the political coalition that fueled Biden’s November victory was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new electoral landscape. To win in Tuesday’s elections — and in the future — Democrats needed strong African American support. AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 3,700 voters in Tuesday’s contests, found that Black voters made up roughly 30% of the electorate, and almost all of them — 94% — backed Ossoff and Warnock. The Democrats also relied on the backing of younger voters, people earning less than $50,000 annually, and newcomers to the state. The Republican coalition backing Loeffler and Perdue was the mirror opposite: white, older, wealthier, and longtime Georgia residents. The coalition closely resembles the one that narrowly handed Georgia’s Electoral College votes to Biden in November, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in almost three decades. Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, while meritless, resonated with Republican voters in Georgia. About 7 in 10 agreed with his false assertion that Biden was not the legitimately elected president, AP VoteCast found. Election officials across the country, including the Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, as well as Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed that there was no widespread fraud in the November election. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, where three Trump-nominated justices preside. Publicly and privately, some Republicans acknowledged that Trump’s monthslong push to undermine the integrity of the nation’s electoral system may have contributed to the GOP’s losses in Georgia. “It turns out that telling the voters that the election was rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters,” said Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican and a frequent Trump critic. Even with Trump’s claims, voters in both parties were drawn to the polls because of the high stakes. AP VoteCast found that 6 in 10 Georgia voters say Senate party control was the most important factor in their vote. Turnout exceeded both sides’ expectations. Ultimately, more people cast ballots in the runoffs than voted in Georgia’s 2016 presidential election. Former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, issued a statement praising the election of Georgia’s first African American senator and his ability to improve divisions in Washington. “Georgia’s first Black senator will make the (Senate)
Donald Trump targets vote certification in late bid to block Joe Biden
Getting nowhere in the courts, President Donald Trump’s scattershot effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory is shifting toward obscure election boards that certify the vote as Trump and his allies seek to upend the electoral process, sow chaos and perpetuate unsubstantiated doubts about the count. The battle is centered in the battleground states that sealed Biden’s win. In Michigan, two Republican election officials in the state’s largest county initially refused to certify results despite no evidence of fraud. In Arizona, officials are balking at signing off on vote tallies in a rural county. The moves don’t reflect a coordinated effort across the battleground states that broke for Biden, local election officials said. Instead, they seem to be inspired by Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about baseless fraud and driven by Republican acquiescence to broadsides against the nation’s electoral system as state and federal courts push aside legal challenges filed by Trump and his allies. Still, what happened in Wayne County, Michigan, on Tuesday was a jarring reminder of the disruptions that can still be caused as the nation works through the process of affirming the outcome of the Nov. 3 election. There is no precedent for the Trump team’s widespread effort to delay or undermine certification, according to University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas. “It would be the end of democracy as we know it,” Douglas said. “This is just not a thing that can happen.” Certifying results is a routine yet important step after local election officials have tallied votes, reviewed procedures, checked to ensure votes were counted correctly, and investigated discrepancies. Typically, this certification is done by a local board of elections and then, later, the results are certified at the state level. But as Trump has refused to concede to Biden and continues to spread false claims of victory, this mundane process is taking on new significance. Among key battleground states, counties in Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin have all made it through the initial step of certifying results. Except for Wayne County, this process has largely been smooth. Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia still haven’t concluded their local certifications. Then all eyes turn to statewide certification. In Wayne County, the two Republican canvassers at first balked at certifying the vote, winning praise from Trump, and then reversed course after widespread condemnation. A person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to the canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. Time is running short for Trump. Across the nation, recounts and court challenges must wrap up and election results must be certified by Dec. 8. That’s the constitutional deadline ahead of the Electoral College meeting the following week. Matt Morgan, the Trump campaign’s general counsel, said last week the campaign was trying to halt certification in battleground states until it could get a better handle on vote tallies and whether it would have the right to automatic recounts. Right now, Trump is requesting a recount in Wisconsin in two counties, and Georgia is doing a hand audit after Biden led by a slim margin of 0.3 percentage points, but there is no mandatory recount law in the state. The law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Some in the president’s orbit have held out hope that by delaying certification, GOP-controlled state legislatures will get a chance to select different electors, either overturning Biden’s victory or sending it to the House, where Trump would almost surely win. But most advisers to the president consider that a fever dream. Trump’s team has been incapable of organizing even basic legal activities since the election, let alone the widescale political and legal apparatus needed to persuade state legislators to try to undermine the will of their states’ voters. Lawsuits have been filed by Trump allies in Michigan and Nevada seeking to stop certification. Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani argued to stop vote certification in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the first time he’d been in a courtroom in decades. And the same day, the Arizona Republican Party asked a judge to bar Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, from certifying until the court issues a decision about the party’s lawsuit seeking a new hand count of a sampling of ballots. The party is also putting pressure on county officials across the state to delay certification, even though there hasn’t been any evidence of legitimate questions about the vote tally showing that Biden won Arizona. “The party is pushing for not only the county supervisors but everyone responsible for certifying and canvassing the election to make sure that all questions are answered so that voters will have confidence in the results of the election,” said Zach Henry, spokesman for the Arizona Republican Party. While most counties in Arizona are pressing ahead with certification, officials in Mohave County decided to delay until Nov. 23, citing what they said was uncertainty about the fate of election challenges across the country. “There are lawsuits all over the place on everything, and that’s part of the reason why I’m in no big hurry to canvass the election,” Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould said Monday. Officials in all of Georgia’s 159 counties were supposed to have certified their results by last Friday. But a few have yet to certify as the state works through a hand tally of some 5 million votes. “They are overwhelmed, and they are trying to get to everything,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. “Some of these are smaller, less resourced counties, and there are only so many people who can do so many things.” In addition, a few counties must recertify their results after previously uncounted votes were discovered during the audit. Once counties have certified, the focus turns to officials at the state level who are charged with signing off on the election. This varies by state. For instance, a bipartisan panel in Michigan certifies
Gulf storm damage causes polling place moves, power outages
Elections officials in the Deep South spent election eve tending to lingering damage from Hurricane Zeta and other storms that damaged buildings or left polling places without power ahead of Tuesday’s election. Storm damage caused polling places to be moved in Louisiana, and power companies and election officials scrambled to restore power, or make sure generators were available, at polling places in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Election officials expressed confidence that the sites would be operational Tuesday. Thousands of voters in southwest Louisiana will be casting ballots in different locations Tuesday because Hurricane Laura wrecked their traditional polling sites in late August, and they have not yet been repaired. Across the state in the New Orleans area and in other southeastern parishes, several dozen voting locations will be running on generator power because outages caused by Hurricane Zeta last week have not been fixed. “No polling location will be without power on Election Day,” Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, the state’s chief elections officer, said in a statement. By far, the greater disruption in Louisiana was caused by Laura in southwestern Calcasieu and Cameron parishes, where Ardoin’s office provided charts showing locations for 95 polling precincts have shifted because of the destruction of the Category 4 storm. In rural Cameron Parish, most voters will be casting ballots at either a local fire station or a neighborhood market. Calcasieu Parish has created several consolidated voting sites, with most voters in Lake Charles casting their ballots at two mega-polling locations, the Burton Coliseum entertainment arena or the Lake Charles Civic Center. Elections officials have cautioned that the megasites may require longer waits for voters than usual. Some polling sites in southeastern Louisiana will be operating on generators to keep machines and lights running because of outages caused by Hurricane Zeta, which made landfall in the state as a Category 2 storm. The number of voting sites that will require generators “gets lower and lower as each hour passes” and power is restored, said Tyler Brey, a spokesman for Ardoin’s office. New Orleans Democratic Mayor LaToya Cantrell criticized the Republican-led secretary of state’s office Sunday for “failing to fulfill its duty” in providing the generators needed for polling sites, risking disenfranchisement of voters. But Brey said every polling location will have adequate power. He said the generators for voting sites were provided largely by Entergy, but also some by the state as well. Ardoin accused Cantrell of “trying to score cheap political points” with her criticism. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had asked utility companies to prioritize restoration to voting locations even before Zeta struck. Across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, more than 148,000 electrical customers had outages Monday because of recent storms, according to the utility tracking website poweroutage.us. In Alabama, Zeta caused damage along a line stretching from the southwestern to northeastern counties of the state. Multiple Alabama voting places remained without power Monday, but generators will be provided to any that still lack service on Election Day, said Secretary of State John Merrill. He declined to say how many were without power, saying the number was rapidly reducing. Merrill said all 1,980 polling locations will have power on Tuesday, either through regular service or by generator. A spokesman for Alabama Power said the company has assessed polling locations provided by election officials and is working to ensure that all polling locations in its service territory have power before the polls open Tuesday. Officials in some of the hardest-hit counties spent the final day before the election trying to determine just how many places might lack electricity or have storm damage. In Talladega County, which has 26 polling sites, chief probate clerk Lawana Patterson said emergency management officials had told her “everything is in working condition.” “I’m not saying everything is perfect, but I’m working on it,” she said. Dallas County Probate Judge Jimmy Nunn said all but one of the county’s 29 voting places had power back on, and state emergency management officials were connecting a generator at the rural Beloit Community Center, where normal service had not been restored. “They’ll have lights and everything, so people won’t even know they’re out,” Nunn said. In neighboring Mississippi, seven counties still had power outages in homes or businesses. Electricity has been restored to all polling places in four of those counties — Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, and Stone. In Mississippi’s George, Greene and Perry counties, a small number of precincts were without power Monday, but generators were available in all three if they are needed Tuesday. Perry County Circuit Clerk Christy Pittman Mayo said “one little bitty precinct” might have to use a generator. In Georgia, two or three polling places remained without power Monday, said Gabriel Sterling, statewide voting system implementation manager. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
