The line stretched around the block at South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton where voters waited in line for hours to cast ballots on the first day of early voting in the Nov. 3 general election on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Early voting in the momentous 2020 general elections started off with a bang Monday as thousands of Georgians poured into precincts, eager to cast perhaps the most important ballots of their lives.
More than 128,000 people piled into polling places across the state to kick off the three-week stretch of early voting, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
It was a record number of first-day ballot casters who turned out amid the lingering health terror of coronavirus and unprecedented nationwide doubt in the legitimacy of voting processes in the United States.
“It’s a very important election,” said Theressa Odums, a longtime Cobb County voter. “So I wanted to make sure I was here to vote.”
Seated in a fold-out chair beneath an umbrella in the hot sun, Odums was one of many voters who spent their entire day waiting in line to vote at the South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton.
They were among the thousands of people who queued up from morning to dusk at precincts throughout the state, forming lines that stretched around entire street blocks, particularly in urban areas like metro Atlanta and Savannah.
The line outside South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton stretched around the block on the first day of early voting for the Nov. 3 elections on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Bernadine Conner, who stood in line with Odums from 9 a.m. until well past 4 p.m., said she wanted ample breathing room to cast her ballot before Election Day on Nov. 3 when lines outside polling places could very well stretch far longer.
“I’m just being patient and having the fortitude to stick it out,” Conner said. “That’s what it takes.”
Voter turnout in Georgia is expected to top 5 million next month with a presidential contest, double the usual number of U.S. Senate seats and a fierce push by Democrats to flip the balance of power in the Georgia House of Representatives for the first time in 16 years.
Looming over all is the highly contagious, vaccine-less respiratory virus that has splintered social interactions and local economies, coupled with the most decisive test yet for Georgia’s new paper-and-scanner voting machines that drew intense scrutiny even before the global pandemic struck.
Janine Eveler, the elections director for Cobb County, said her nine early-voting precincts saw no technical issues with voting on Monday save for a few minor hiccups that were quickly mended.
Contributing more to the hours-long lines, Eveler said, were revised processes to check in early voters via certifications and signature oaths, which took longer than normal in order to abide by social-distancing practices.
On top of that, droves of voters had requested absentee ballots prior to arriving in-person at polling places Monday, representing a fraction of the roughly 1.6 million Georgians seeking to vote by mail amid the pandemic.
Every voter who requests a mail-in ballot but shows up in-person must formally cancel their ballot by signing an affidavit, which adds more time to the already long waits at precincts, Eveler said.
Despite the relatively smooth sailing at her precincts, Eveler said late Monday that in her more-than two decades as Cobb’s election chief, she had never seen such a busy first day of early voting.
“The first day is always heavier because there’s pent-up excitement,” Eveler said. “But this has been a perfect storm.”
Uncommonly long lines have been anticipated for months now, following the shocking wait times that confronted Georgia voters during the primary elections on June 9 during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
To prepare, Raffensperger’s office has pushed to recruit more poll workers, doled out grant funds for absentee drop boxes, invested in new technology to broadcast line waits in real time and let voters apply for mail-in ballots online, and mustered more on-site technical assistance to help local poll workers rapidly solve potential equipment issues.
But the true test will come on Nov. 3 when millions of voters head to the polls across the state, election officials hunker down to count mounds of mail-in ballots and Georgians conclude what is shaping up to be one of the most impactful elections in decades.
Take it from Scott Traslavina, a Cobb County voter who ditched a day of work as an appliance repairman to stand in line to vote at the Mableton library.
Departing the voting booth after hours of waiting, Traslavina said he felt anxious to have missed so much work with times as tough as they are now. But even more so, he said he felt great relief knowing that his vote for the state and country’s future leaders will count.
“I didn’t trust that my vote would be counted with mail-in because I thought current administrations here in the state and country might impede that,” Traslavina said. “But now I know it’s done.”
Early voting continues in Georgia through Oct. 30.
Andrew Clyde (left) and Devin Pandy (right ) are competing for the 9th Congressional District seat in the 2020 general election. (Photos by candidate campaigns).
Andrew Clyde, a gun store owner and the Republican nominee in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, fielded attacks on his business dealings and a recent lawsuit against Athens-Clarke County during a debate Monday ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
His Democratic opponent, actor and U.S. Army veteran Devin Pandy, jabbed Clyde for costing Athens taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars” amid the cash-strapped days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandy also called Clyde “another millionaire attempting to buy an election.”
But Clyde took the criticism in stride during the debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club. His reluctance to punch back at Pandy likely stemmed from the position he holds as the Republican nominee in a heavily conservative district covering northeastern Georgia from Gainesville to Athens.
The June 9 primary election tells the tale: More than 140,000 Republican voters turned out for that election, while Democrats only cast around 31,000 ballots.
A U.S. Navy veteran, Clyde absorbed similarly fierce blows from his Republican opponent in the Aug. 11 primary runoff, state Rep. Matt Gurtler, R-Tiger, before winning by a comfortable margin.
On Monday, the two general-election candidates squaring off ahead of next month’s contest stuck with party lines on bread-and-butter issues, forcing Pandy to go on the offensive to distinguish himself in the Democrat-averse district.
Pandy slammed Clyde for suing Athens-Clarke officials to keep his business open during the county’s shelter-in-place order in March, drawing parallels between that case and contracts Clyde held with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after he sued the federal agency for asset forfeiture and pushed legislation to reform the practice.
“Andrew Clyde only wants to be involved in government when it impacts his own bottom line,” Pandy said during Monday’s debate.
Ignoring those attacks, Clyde embraced his past battles with the IRS as a pillar of his conservative personality and limited-government political beliefs.
“This experience showed me there’s a very thin line between we the people running our government and our government running us,” Clyde said. “And I believe that we the people need to run our government.”
Pandy also had sharp criticism for Clyde on the issue of climate change, which the Republican nominee on Monday said he does not think exists beyond the normal four-season cycle each year. Claiming that scientists have “changed their tune on climate change,” Clyde argued “there are scientists who believe it and many who don’t.”
“I will hold court with those scientists who don’t believe in man-made climate change,” Clyde said.
Pandy poked holes in that stance, arguing signs of rising global temperatures have been seen in worsening natural disasters like wildfires in California and that “97% of scientists around the world agree climate change is real.”
“Humans may not have started it, but we are definitely making it exponentially worse,” Pandy said. “It wouldn’t be something that sets the entire West Coast on fire if it wasn’t real.”
Clyde also used the debate stage to tout his support for dismantling the IRS through a so-called FairTax levy on spending only, while Pandy called for establishing a universal basic income.
The election on Nov. 3 is poised to decide who in the 9th District will replace U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, who has opted to run for U.S. Senate. Early voting began Monday.
Georgia lawmakers meet in the state House of Representatives chamber at the Capitol in Atlanta during the 2020 legislative session. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Will the balance of power shift in the Georgia state legislature following the highly anticipated general election on Nov. 3?
For the first time in nearly two decades, Georgia Democratic leaders believe they have a real shot at wresting control of the state House of Representatives, which has been in Republican hands since 2005.
But state and national Republicans are deploying millions of dollars into local races to keep that from happening, targeting Georgia as perhaps the only state where one of its most influential Democratic lawmakers in the House could be toppled.
“For Democrats to flip the House, they have to win what looks like virtually all of the marginal seats now,” said Charles Bullock, professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
According to Bullock, Democratic candidates flipped 13 seats in the House during the 2018 election that they are likely not in danger of losing next month, prompting Democrats to focus on 17 other seats that could be won in the 2020 general election.
For Democrats, the magic number to flip the House is 16 seats out of the body’s total of 180 seats, representing a cluster of suburban Atlanta districts plus some districts around many of the state’s other urban areas including Athens, Milledgeville, Albany, Columbus, Savannah, Warner Robins and Suwanee.
The Georgia Senate is likely not in play with only five seats potentially open for Democrats that would cut the Republican majority in that body down to a four-seat advantage, according to Bullock’s analysis.
But the Georgia House is the holy grail this year. A shift in the balance of power would not only inject more say for Democrats into the state’s legislative policies, but also giving the party a stronger bargaining hand in the upcoming process to redraw district boundaries next summer.
Based on each new census count every 10 years, the Georgia General Assembly rearranges state and congressional district borders to align with shifts in population. Whichever political party is in charge of that process could tweak the boundaries in their favor to capture potentially decisive voting blocs for the next decade, according to Bullock.
“If the people who draw the districts have good data and are careful with it, they could cast the die in terms of what a legislature’s partisanship looks like for a decade,” Bullock said in an interview last week.
With demographics shifting around urban areas across the state, the key for Democrats will be to sway suburban women voters who may have voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 but have had second thoughts since then, said Andra Gillespie, political science professor at Emory University.
At the same time, some Republicans holding vulnerable seats have begun shifting closer to the center in a bid to win more moderate voters who could turn the tide in a close election, Gillespie said. An example is Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Dacula, who sponsored bipartisan hate-crimes legislation in an election year that Georgia Democrats had long sought.
“The idea that they would then pick the low-hanging fruit of the hate-crimes bill which has stalled for years in the General Assembly, was the easy thing to do,” Gillespie said in an interview last week. “They’re trying to get a clear majority of the overall universe of voters in their district.”
Outside groups from both sides have pumped large dollars into contested legislative races, particularly for Republicans’ bid to unseat Georgia House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville, whose West Georgia district went to Trump in 2016 and Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a national group focused on state legislative contests, is poised to pump $1 million into the campaign of Trammell’s Republican competitor, emergency-medical helicopter pilot David Jenkins, marking a huge amount of money for one local race.
The strategy is twofold: By forcing Trammell to step back and focus on his own race, Democrats may have to spend more money on a single district than they anticipated and divert some attention from other competitive races elsewhere in the state, said RSLC President Austin Chambers.
“This is a great opportunity for us to take out the leader of their caucus,” Chambers said. “It just creates chaos on their side.”
Republicans also have the stout backing of Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, who as one of the party’s most influential leaders has leaned into the campaign season alongside other top Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol.
“Georgia Republicans aren’t taking anything or any vote for granted,” said Jen Ryan, a spokeswoman for the campaign efforts of Ralston and the House Majority Caucus.
Despite that confidence, Democrats aren’t sweating it. They are leaning on a party-affiliated organizing and fundraising initiative called the Legislative Victory Fund to splash millions of dollars into local legislative races across the state, including Trammell’s.
Tied to Fair Fight, the group founded by Democratic Party star and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the Legislative Victory Fund has recruited and backed Democratic candidates in vulnerable Republican-held House districts from the campaign season’s start this year, said the fund’s organizing director, Patricia Lassiter.
“We are running a full-fledged, multi-faceted movement to show Georgia what needs to be done,” Lassiter said. “We know that once these candidates get into office, they’re going to change what Georgia looks like [and] leadership is going to actually represent Georgians.”
For his part, Trammell has swatted aside recent polls indicating he may be trailing in his race. He points to the big-money moves focused on his own district as evidence that Republicans are “holding on by their fingernails here.”
“They started pumping money into Georgia a few months ago because they know they’re in trouble,” Trammell said in a recent interview. “Voters in the district don’t want a vote that’s for sale. My vote is not for sale and will never be for sale.”
The general election is scheduled for Nov. 3. Early voting begins on Oct. 12.
Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) rallies with Jon Ossoff (left) at a joint campaign stop in DeKalb County in Georgia’s U.S. Senate races on Oct. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Democratic U.S. Senate contenders in Georgia rallied Saturday to hand out yard signs and push for consolidating the state’s left-leaning voter population ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats vying to unseat Republican senators this election cycle, linked arms in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia Saturday morning in one of a burgeoning number of in-person campaign events being held by top Democratic candidates amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has held mostly online video rallies and townhalls so far in his campaign against U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Atlanta businesswoman who was appointed in December to hold the seat of retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson until November.
But Saturday’s joint in-person appearance in Dekalb County by Warnock and Ossoff, the investigative journalist challenging U.S. Sen. David Perdue, signaled the two Democratic frontrunners are ready to engage more directly with voters in their respective Senate races roughly a month out from Election Day – and to do it wearing masks.
“I think that the science is very clear that masks work,” Warnock said Saturday.
“This virus is neither red or blue, Democrat or Republican,” Warnock continued. “It’s a virus. And the best thing we can do for one another – the most patriotic thing we can do – is put on a mask, socially distance, wash our hands and take care of our neighbors.”
The several-dozen people in attendance handing out signs Saturday in support of Warnock and Ossoff all wore masks and conducted their activities outdoors, marking a contrast between Republican candidates and incumbents who have taken a more cavalier approach to masking.
Loeffler, speaking with U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee at a Forsyth County restaurant Friday, stated she will not require masks to be worn among attendees at her campaign events despite the positive COVID-19 test results this week of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.
“I have had twenty-three Delta (Airlines) flights since May 4th,” Loeffler said Friday. “It is safe to be out and about if you take those precautions. And we should. We have to reopen the economy.”
“The Democrats want to keep us locked down,” Loeffler continued. “We have to find ways to manage through this. I would just encourage Georgians to keep a level head and make sure they’re being cognizant of [health] guidelines.”
Collins, the U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain and Republican who is waging a fierce campaign against Loeffler for Georgia’s share of conservative votes, has also declined to require masks at his campaign events.
“We encourage people to be safe in ways they are comfortable with,” said Collins campaign spokesman Dan McLagan.
“Not being control-mad socialists, we are not big into requiring things,” McLagan added. “Be respectful of others, wear a mask if you wish, social distance.”
The approaches between Democrat and Republican candidates on the campaign trail this election season have been starkly different, marked by an intense focus on safety guidelines by more liberal candidates like Ossoff and Warnock and a more assertive stance on personal choice espoused by conservatives like Loeffler, Collins and Perdue.
Perdue, who like his Republican counterpart Loeffler tested negative for coronavirus Friday following news of Trump’s contraction, said he continues “to urge all Georgians to stay vigilant as we fight this virus.”
“Remember to follow the three ‘W’s’: wash your hands, watch your distance and wear your mask!” Perdue wrote on Twitter Friday.
The alliance of Ossoff’s campaign with fellow Democrat Warnock represents an unusual occurrence, given elections for Georgia’s two Senate seats normally occur in staggered years that do not overlap.
But the start-of-the-year retirement by Isakson, a Republican, has thrust both Senate seats into play and partnered Warnock and Ossoff as the state’s Democratic party seeks to solidify support – and potentially help flip the balance of power in Congress.
On Saturday, Ossoff pressed for less political divisiveness amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has crippled swaths of the economy and hounded Georgians who in many communities are venturing back out in public after more than six months of social isolation.
“This should be a time for healing and unity,” Ossoff said Saturday. “And Reverend Warnock and I are united in the effort to unite the people to focus on what matters, which is our health, our well-being [and] our prosperity.”
As of Friday afternoon, more than 320,000 people in Georgia had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic. It had killed 7,106 Georgians.
Early voting in Georgia for the Nov. 3 elections starts on Oct. 12.
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee (right) campaigns with U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (left) in Forsyth County on Oct. 2, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., hit the campaign trail Friday to rally with fellow Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee in support of anti-abortion policies and the nominee for an open U.S. Supreme Court seat amid the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The appearance by Loeffler and Blackburn came hours after President Donald Trump announced he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for coronavirus and would quarantine for two weeks.
Both Loeffler and Blackburn said they tested negative for the highly contagious virus earlier in the day after taking rapid tests amid stops in Cobb and Forsyth counties, where they pressed for more conservative women representation in Congress.
“There is nothing that the radical left fears more than a strong conservative woman,” Loeffler said at a stop at Black Diamond Grill in Cumming, Ga.
Loeffler is waging a fierce battle with Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Doug Collins to woo conservative Georgia voters ahead of the upcoming Nov. 3 special election. Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, is facing around 20 other contenders for her seat after being appointed in December to fill the remainder of retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.
A Collins campaign spokesman brushed off Blackburn’s show of support for Loeffler, saying: “Who’s Marsha?”
Collins has crisscrossed the state since summer in a bid to pull enough conservative voters from Loeffler to make an expected January runoff for the Senate seat. He has touted his background as a U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain, the son of a state trooper and his staunch backing of Trump, including the president’s Supreme Court pick in Amy Coney Barrett, who many Republicans hope will vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on demand.
“Let’s get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed,” Collins said in a recent Facebook post. “Let’s stop the killing.”
Barrett’s nomination is being watched closely for its potential to swing the court in favor of more conservative justices.
Collins has pounced on Loeffler for her co-ownership of the women’s professional basketball team Atlanta Dream that once held a promotional event benefitting the pro-choice group Planned Parenthood, which is typically portrayed as a villain by conservative politicians.
Loeffler has dismissed that criticism, maintaining that among her top priorities if elected to keep her seat would be to fight pro-choice groups and policies, particularly Planned Parenthood.
Asked if her main interest in confirming Barrett would be to end abortion protections, Loeffler said she couldn’t speak for the court nominee but favors her strict constitutionalist approach to the bench.
“I believe myself that that would mean protecting the unborn,” Loeffler said Friday. “That’s what I stand for. That’s what I hope can happen. But I cannot speak for Judge Barrett on that.”
Loeffler also said she would not require attendees at her campaign events going forward to wear masks despite the president’s coronavirus contraction, though she said she “encourages all Georgians to wear a mask.”
Meanwhile, Democratic frontrunner Rev. Raphael Warnock has seen a recent surge in the polls that suggests he’s pulling slightly ahead of Collins and Loeffler, though likely not enough to gain the 50% vote majority needed in November to avoid a runoff.
Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has been campaigning lately alongside fellow Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, the investigative journalist challenging U.S. Sen. David Perdue in the Nov. 3 general election.
Echoing Democratic candidates nationwide, Warnock has sought to elevate access to health care and health insurance as a top issue in the Senate race, noting he would cast votes to strengthen the Affordable Care Act with a public option.
Warnock’s campaign announced this week he had raised nearly $13 million in campaign donations since July, upping his total haul to more than $17 million. That amount should help him compete down the stretch for ad space with Loeffler, who has committed $20 million of her own money to her campaign and aired high-priced ads funded by allied political action committees.
“The next justice appointed to the Supreme Court could determine the future of health care,” Warnock said in a recent statement. “Whether protections for pre-existing conditions remains the law of the land rests in the hands of the Supreme Court, and Georgians cannot afford a senator who has tried to overturn the [Affordable Care Act] and end those protections to be our voice in appointing the nation’s new justice.”
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (left), U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (center) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) are competing in the Nov. 3 special election.
Former Georgia governors are weighing in with endorsements in the campaign for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat ahead of the Nov. 3 special election.
Former Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican who served two terms from 2011 to 2019, is backing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins for the Senate seat over Loeffler, who current Gov. Brian Kemp appointed to hold retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat in December.
The endorsement pits Georgia’s most recent governor against its current one in a campaign that has emphasized intra-party schisms between many of the state’s most powerful Republican political leaders.
On the Democratic side, former President Jimmy Carter, who served as Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975, handed his support Tuesday to frontrunner Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, who has collected a pile of endorsements from top Democratic leaders and groups.
The endorsements come as the hotly contested Senate race heads down the final stretch with roughly a month left until Election Day, when nearly two dozen candidates from all parties will compete on the same ballot for Loeffler’s seat.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, has waged an intense campaign against Collins, the four-term Gainesville congressman, preacher and fellow Republican who has polled neck-and-neck with Loeffler in recent weeks as each seeks to woo conservative voters.
Collins’ campaign has jabbed often at Loeffler’s use of her wealth to buy campaign ads and travel, a sentiment Deal echoed in his endorsement.
“I know that the governor had to make a tough choice, but I’ve made my choice too, and that’s Doug Collins,” Deal said in a statement. “A Senate seat representing the state of Georgia cannot be bought.”
Deal’s backing followed the endorsement of Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, for Collins earlier this month.
Loeffler’s campaign has previously dismissed criticism of her wealth and attacked Collins over his stint as a criminal defense attorney and record of voting in step with former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on certain issues when both served in the state legislature.
More recently, Loeffler’s campaign drew headlines for releasing a pair of ads calling herself “more conservative” than the 5th-century warlord Attila the Hun. She has also pledged to vote in favor of President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Warnock, who has climbed in the polls in recent weeks, also released a new ad Tuesday in which he urges Georgians to “try something different” and vote him into the Senate. He has vowed to vote against Trump’s court nominee and sought to elevate health care as among the top issues in the race.
The endorsement from Carter looks to solidify Warnock’s standing even further as the Democratic frontrunner amid calls for other Democratic candidates in the crowded race to drop out and consolidate support around him.
“Reverend Warnock knows the struggles Georgians are facing in this unique crisis — families losing health care, shuttered rural hospitals and record unemployment — all in the middle of a pandemic,” Carter said in a statement.
Health-care consultant Matt Lieberman, who is the son of former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, has rejected calls to exit the race.
A runoff will be held in January if none of the 21 candidates including Loeffler can win more than 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 special election.
