The United States elections are already underway. Several States have implemented early voting and by mail. This Tuesday, three weeks before November 5, the official date of the elections, Georgia has opened the voting centers to begin receiving the citizen vote. The turnout at the polls has shattered the figures from four years ago. “Spectacular,” has been defined by Gabriel Sterling, the director of operations of the Secretary of State’s office, responsible for the electoral process. Among those who were able to participate when the deadline opened, a very illustrious one: former President Jimmy Carter, 100 years old, who has lived long enough to fulfill his desire to vote for Kamala Harris.
“At 4:00 p.m. we have surpassed the quarter-million barrier, with 251,899 votes cast. A spectacular participation. We’re running out of adjectives. “Proud of our election team with the Secretary of State, the great work of the counties, and most importantly, the voters doing their jobs and showing up,” Sterling tweeted with a meme that repeated “spectacular.”
As citizens queued and cast their ballots, the records fell one after another. At 1:00 p.m., 154,000 votes had already been reached, surpassing the mark of 136,000 for the entire first day of early voting in the 2020 presidential elections, which pitted Joe Biden against Donald Trump.
By 3:30 p.m., the number of voters had reached 234,000. With this, Georgia voters surpassed all daily records for any day of early voting in the 2022 legislative and state elections. “Our county elections directors are exceptional, and Georgia voters are full of energy!” he wrote Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State of Georgia, also on your X social network account.
Aside from citizen mobilization, the increase in in-person early voting may be partly related to the additional difficulties imposed by the Georgia legislature for voting by mail. A new law has shortened the deadlines to request it, imposed additional identification requirements and limited the availability of ballot boxes to deposit ballots.
Georgia is one of the decisive states in the presidential elections. Of the seven in which the forces are most balanced, it is, after Pennsylvania and together with North Carolina, the one with the most votes in the Electoral College: 16.
The polls so far give a slight advantage to Republican Donald Trump, who is starring in a rally in Atlanta this Tuesday, but within the margin of error. In 2020, after almost five million voters cast their votes, Biden won by only 11,779 votes. He was the first Democrat to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992. Trying to reverse the result at the polls, Trump told Raffensperger by phone that he needed to “find” 11,780 votes in his favor. He did not achieve his purpose.
For the alleged attempts at electoral fraud, Trump is charged in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, the capital and main city of the State. The judge, however, dismissed the specific accusation for that call, concluding that the accusation of requesting a public official to violate his oath was not specific enough to meet the elements of the criminal offense. McAfee left the door open for the prosecutor to refile the accusation later. The call may also serve as evidence for some of the other crimes he is accused of.
Vote-by-mail ballots began being sent out last week. Although there has been no confirmation from family members, former President Jimmy Carter, who at 100 years old is in palliative care, has already had the opportunity to vote. His grandson Jason Carter said at the Democratic convention that he nominated Kamala Harris as a candidate that his grandfather would like to be there, that the Democrat embodied his legacy and that he couldn’t wait to vote for her.
More than five million voters
Early and mail-in voting is already underway in most states. According to data collected this Tuesday by The New York Times, there are already more than 5.1 million citizens who have participated with one of these formulas. Some 55 million people have requested to vote by mail.
In the 2020 elections, in the midst of a pandemic, many States facilitated early voting, in person or by mail. Some of them have passed laws that restrict it in the last four years. Democratic registered voters are generally much more likely to use early voting formulas. In 2020, It is estimated that around 60% of Biden voters resorted to them, compared to less than a third of Trump’s.
Trump has frequently criticized early voting, even baselessly linking it to electoral fraud, although lately they have been silencing that message that was demobilizing for their own voters and are encouraging Republicans to also go to the polls as soon as possible.
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