The deadline for registering to vote in the runoff elections in Georgia expired Monday, bringing the state closer to personal voting in two crucial Senate races.
The January 5 contests will determine whether two Republican incumbents, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, will keep their seats. If their Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock both win, the Democrats will claim control of the Senate.
Now it’s all up to the Georgia voters. Here’s a look at the next steps.
How many people are voting?
Some voters are already casting ballots in the runoff elections – the state started sending postal ballots last month. The personal early voting begins on December 14th. It happens to be the same day that members of the electoral college will officially vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Georgians are increasingly choosing to cast their ballots early and by post. Almost a million voters have already requested postal ballot papers for the run-off elections, according to state election officials, including more than 600,000 people who were entitled to receive the ballot automatically.
According to the Georgian Secretary of State, more than 1.3 million voters cast postal votes in November’s parliamentary elections. But more than 71,000 people who did not vote in the general election have requested ballot papers for the runoff ballot, according to state data compiled by Ryan Anderson, a data analyst in Atlanta.
So far, according to the State Secretary, around 43,000 Georgians have returned their postal votes for the runoff election. About 1,000 of these voters did not cast ballots in the general election. Postal ballot papers must be requested by January 1st and received by January 5th to count. However, voters should act earlier to avoid delays in the mail.
Both parties encourage their voters to cast their ballots early. Democrats hope to retain an advantage that helped their party beat President Trump in the November election when Mr Biden won nearly 400,000 more postal ballots in the state.
Republicans are trying to fill that void because they fear January weather and the worsening coronavirus pandemic could keep some of their constituents at home on election day. After months of Mr Trump’s disinformation campaign against postal voting, his own party has begun targeting its constituents in Georgia with leaflets and digital ads asking them to request postal voting.
Not all Republicans in Georgia are convinced: when Vice President Mike Pence encouraged voters to vote by post while the state was on a campaign freeze, he encountered a few boos, according to the Atlanta Journal constitution.
How do the parties strategize?
Runoff elections have traditionally been relatively sleepy competitions with a lower turnout that favored Republicans due to a drop in Democrats after the general election. (The runoff election itself was developed by white Georgians in the 1960s to dilute the power of black voters.)
Not this year. A flotilla of high-performing political stars has already entered the race, including former President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump. Mr Biden is expected to fight for the Democrats just before election day.
Television advertising prices are rising amid an astonishing influx of political spending. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on the two races before January 5th.
The stakes couldn’t be higher: Senate control will effectively set the parameters of Mr Biden’s first term. A Republican-led Senate would make it difficult for him to fill his cabinet, pass laws, and advance his political priorities.
Both parties expect a significantly higher turnout than in the last Senate runoff in 2008, although few analysts expect numbers close to the five million voters who voted in last month’s general election.
Modeling the electorate is not easy: never before has a runoff election in Georgia determined the balance of power in the Senate – or has it been held in the middle of a pandemic.
In November, Mr Perdue received 49.7 percent of the vote, just below the majority he would have needed to avoid a runoff, while Mr Ossoff had 47.9 percent, a difference of about 88,000 votes. The field was overcrowded in the other Senate competition: Mr. Warnock finished with 32.9 percent of the vote and Ms. Loeffler with 25.9 percent.
Democrats see opportunities in the changing demographics of the state. The drive to reach new voters, led by Stacey Abrams, drew an estimated 800,000 residents to vote – a wave that helped propel Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Republicans believe that some voters who supported Mr Biden will want a review of democratic power in Washington. However, their efforts were hampered by Mr. Trump’s refusal to end the previous competition.
Some Republican strategists fear that Mr Trump’s attacks on the presidential election results will hamper their efforts to win back some of the suburban moderate voters who fled their party in November.
A fringe group of conservative voters is also encouraging Republicans to boycott the election in support of Mr Trump’s baseless claims of fraudulent vote counting that could undermine Republican margins.
How smooth will the vote go?
The Georgia State Election Board extended some emergency provisions from the November election, such as the retention of dropboxes for postal ballot papers. Some of the rules have been adjusted to encourage faster counting as the new Congress is expected to be sworn in on January 3rd.
Districts must now start scanning and processing ballot papers at least a week before the election, but cannot start counting or tabulating until election day. These new rules should result in faster results starting on election night, though a close race will almost certainly end in recounts and litigation.
Some Democrats and voting rights groups have raised concerns about access to voting and possible repression.
Electoral officials in Cobb County, Georgia’s third largest county, plan to open fewer than half of the general election polling stations, reducing the number from 11 to five.
Some of the locations that are being closed, like the Smyrna Community Center in Smyrna, are in neighborhoods with large black populations. Voting and civil rights groups sent a letter to the district election officer on Monday asking her to keep all eleven locations open.
