Georgia Election Live Updates and Chat: Polls, Voting and Trump
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Audra Melton for The New York Times
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Audra Melton for The New York Times
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Audra Melton for The New York Times
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Audra Melton for The New York Times
LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, Black Voters Matter co-founders, drove what they call “The Blackest bus in America” to Georgia communities with historically low voter turnout on Tuesday, including a stop in Lee Park in Jonesboro.
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About 3.1 million people voted early, and that vote appeared to tilt Democratic. If another million people cast ballots today, Republicans believe they are likely to win.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday urged Georgians to vote and expressed continued optimism about unifying the nation, even as some Republicans in Congress push to overturn his election.
In an interview on WVEE-FM, an Atlanta radio station, Mr. Biden made a case for the importance of electing the Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, in Tuesday’s runoff elections for Georgia’s Senate seats.
“I need their votes in the Senate,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden said he was “feeling really optimistic about today,” and he made a simple request to Georgia residents: “Vote, vote, vote.”
Mr. Biden also made a pitch for Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock in an interview with WFXE-FM in Columbus, Ga., declaring, “So much is at stake.”
Mr. Biden spoke a day after traveling to Atlanta for a drive-in rally with the two Democratic candidates. If both Democrats win on Tuesday, their party will gain control of the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as a tiebreaking vote.
In the interview on WVEE-FM, Mr. Biden said their election would allow for the passage of $2,000 stimulus checks, and he suggested that the two Democrats could help provide support for his administration’s efforts to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine.
Mr. Biden said he envisioned establishing “thousands of federally run and federally supported community vaccination centers of various sizes across the country” in locations like high school gyms and N.F.L. stadiums.
And Mr. Biden, who ran for president with a message of bringing the country together and working with both parties, stuck to that theme, despite plans among some Republicans in Congress to object to certifying the Electoral College results on Wednesday.
“There are enough really decent Republicans — you’re seeing them step up now in the United States Senate — who don’t want to be part of this Trump Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said, citing Senator Mitt Romney of Utah as one example. “There’s a whole bunch of them.”
Early voting returns worried some Republicans, who were not happy with the low turnout in conservative Northwest Georgia. They hope Trump’s rally there motivated supporters.
At age 33, Jon Ossoff would be just three years over the minimum age for being a U.S. senator if he is elected in today’s runoff. His opponent, David Perdue, is 71.
One thing to note: David Perdue is actually former Senator David Perdue. His term expired and the rest of the new Congress was sworn in on Sunday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shot down President Trump’s suggestion Tuesday that a voting machine snafu in a conservative county near Augusta had compromised Republican votes in the Senate runoff elections.
“Reports are coming out of the 12th Congressional District of Georgia that Dominion Machines are not working in certain Republican Strongholds for over an hour,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, citing a report of glitches first reported by Representative Rick Allen, a Republican who represents the polling places in question.
“Ballots…
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