Eliana Willis

Georgia officials were bedding in for a long night of vote counting on Tuesday as polls closed in the two critical runoff races that will determine control of the US Senate, and with it the tone and ambition of the Biden administration.Early data gleaned after polls closed across the state at 7pm pointed to exceptionally large total turnout compared with previous runoffs. The two Democratic contenders – the former documentary film-maker Jon Ossoff and the Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock – are attempting to unseat Georgia’s two incumbent Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.Tell-tale signs also suggested that the count could be close and potentially drawn out over hours or even beyond Tuesday night.Throughout Tuesday, polling stations across the state reported a steady stream of voters who defied a devastating surge in coronavirus infections in Georgia to vote in person. Individual Georgians went to extreme lengths to take part in what have been described as elections that could set the course of America for a generation.Tyler Perry, the Atlanta-based actor and film-maker, flew back to the city to cast his vote after he failed to receive an absentee ballot.According to state election officials, the number of Georgians who had cast their votes in advance of election day – either through absentee ballots or by early voting – reached 3.1 million. That, on its own, smashed the standing record set in 2008 for a Senate runoff in Georgia which attracted a total of 2.1 million voters.By the time the final votes are counted, election officials suggested the total might reach almost double the 2008 record.The enormous electoral energy swirling around the runoffs was reflected in key counties where the results of both races could be won or lost. Dekalb county, which covers the eastern suburbs of Atlanta, saw turnout on Tuesday exceed even that of the presidential election day in November.For participation in runoff elections to surpass that of a presidential race was extremely rare, and was welcomed as a positive signal by Democrats given that Biden soundly defeated Trump in Dekalb county by 83% to 16% in November. However, a similar story of large turnout was also being told in key Republican-leaning counties, such as Forsyth county and Cherokee county where long lines were witnessed outside the polling places.Stacey Abrams, who has been seminal in building a Democratic ground game through her group Fair Fight, told CNN shortly before the polls closed that the steady turnout indicated high levels of voter interest all through the state. But she added that both parties appeared to be attracting voters in large numbers, pointing to a close battle.“We haven’t seen the deluge. We see a very steady flow of voters on both sides of the aisle, which indicates it’s going to be a very tight race,” Abrams said.Massive turnout across early, absentee and election-day voting was a reflection of the exceptionally high stakes of the two runoffs. Their outcome will determine which of the two main parties controls the US Senate.Democrats need to win both races if they are to balance the chamber at 50/50 seats across the aisle. An even split would hand Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, the deciding tie-breaker vote and with it the ability to shape the Senate’s legislative program.The president-elect himself summed up the high stakes on the eve of election day at a rally in Atlanta. He told the crowd that “one state can chart the course not just for the next four years, but for the next generation”.Fears of trouble or even violence outside polling stations appeared not to have materialised. Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, told CNN that “we have never seen an election is more secure and has had more integrity.”His fellow Republican official, Gabriel Sterling, said that incidents of difficulties with voting mechanisms were passingly few. At a press conference, he said that only 0.1% of scanning machines across the state had failed to work while 0.02% of counting machines had to be replaced.Cutting across both parties herculean efforts to get their supporters to the polls on Tuesday was the mercurial influence of Donald Trump. The president continues to refuse to concede defeat in the presidential election, and has persisted in a campaign of falsehoods targeting Georgia with unfounded claims of voter fraud.Trump lit a fuse under the double runoffs on Saturday when he called Raffensperger and tried to cajole him into overturning the certified results of the presidential race. The conversation was taped and leaked, and has led to calls for Trump to be prosecuted for election crimes.The president’s antics have left some Republicans in Georgia fretting that his claims that his victory was “stolen” would dissuade party supporters from turning up at the polls on Tuesday. But it remained to be seen just how much impact his incendiary interventions would make, and in what direction.The Republican contestants have attempted to move beyond Trump’s baseless complaint about the presidential count and focus their campaigns on what they have depicted as the “radical socialism” of their Democratic rivals. The airwaves have been flooded with unprecedented numbers of political adverts on both sides, with the campaigns of the four candidates jointly splurging more than $833m on the state according to the Center for Responsive Politics.Nonetheless Loeffler, the richest member of the Senate who also prides herself as being the chamber’s most conservative, has announced that she will vote to challenge the electoral college results at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. More

Facebook has announced it will again ban political advertising targeting users in the state of Georgia, following the election there on Tuesday.The social media company said that, starting on Wednesday, Georgia users would again be subject to the US-wide political ad ban instated following the 3 November presidential vote. Facebook had temporarily lifted the ban in Georgia ahead of the runoff elections to allow political messaging to reach more voters.“Following the Georgia runoff elections, Georgia will re-join the existing nationwide pause on social issue, elections and political ads,” Facebook said in a blogpost.“This is part of our ongoing efforts to reduce the potential for confusion or abuse,” the company told advertisers in an email reviewed by Reuters.Facebook and Google had introduced pauses on political ads after the November presidential election as part of measures to combat misinformation and other abuses on the platforms. Google lifted its pause in December, saying it no longer considered the post-election period to be a “sensitive event”.Facebook lifted its own ad ban on 15 December exclusively for the state of Georgia, due to “feedback from experts and advertisers across the political spectrum about the importance of expressing voice” and using Facebook to reach voters ahead of Georgia’s runoff elections. For the rest of the country, the ban remained.The change announced on Tuesday means any ads about the Georgia runoff elections would be paused and any advertisers who were previously allowed to run ads about the Georgia runoff elections would not be able to create new political ads.It comes after it was discovered that Republican politicians and other operatives were using advertising on Facebook to target Georgia voters with misinformation in the final days ahead of the vote.A report from the global human rights group Avaaz found a number of ads on Facebook sponsored by Republicans that featured misinformation or falsehoods meant to sway voter opinion. One sponsored by the Senate Leadership Fund claims the Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff is “threatening to defund the police”, which he is not. Another from the Republican party run in December accused the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, of scheming to replace the president-elect, Joe Biden, with the vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris.Nearly half of these false ads were shared by political candidates in the race, who are exempt from Facebook’s fact checking rules. Facebook has come under fire for the broad exemptions it grants politicians who advertise on its platform. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has defended the policy, saying Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth in political scenarios.Critics of Facebook say the spread of lies ahead of the Georgia election underscore how ineffective the company’s measures to address these issues have been. The company’s oversight board, introduced in late 2020, was meant to adjudicate disputes regarding content. But the group is not able to take down content quickly, limiting its effectiveness in breaking news situations. A group of academics and civil rights leaders critical of Facebook, calling themselves the Real Facebook Oversight Board, say the misinformation exposed in Georgia this week is proof there is more to be done.“The Facebook Oversight Board is complicit in a misinformation campaign in Georgia,” the group said in a statement. “They must do better, and Facebook needs to be held accountable for their failure to protect voters from disinformation.”Reuters contributed to this report More

Voters in the state of Georgia are back to the polls today to cast their ballots in two runoff elections that will determine control of the US Senate. This will significantly affect the extent to which President-elect Joe Biden will be able implement his agenda.

Why these elections matter
In the November general election the Democrats maintained their hold on the House of Representatives, but fell short of the 51 seats needed to retake the Senate, where the Republicans have had a majority for the past six years.
Tom McCarthy said: “Control of the US Senate is on the line. If the Democrats win both races, the president-elect will gain a big opportunity to build a progressive legacy. If Democrats lose one or both races, the country will enter at least a two-year period of divided government, with the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, retaining power and likely frustrating Biden’s agenda.
“If Democrats win both races, the Senate would be split 50/50, but Democrats would effectively control the body with Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, in her role as president of the Senate, breaking any ties in a strict party-line vote.
“The runoff races are being held in accordance with state election laws because no candidate in either race won 50% of the vote in the November elections.”
Who are the candidates?
Tom McCarthy said: “The Republican candidates include one sitting senator – the wealthy appointee Kelly Loeffler, 50 – and one senator whose term has just ended, David Perdue, 71.
“Challenging the Republicans are fresh faces on the Democratic side. Documentary film-maker Jon Ossoff, 33, a former congressional staffer and failed House candidate, is running to replace Perdue, while Atlanta pastor and first-time candidate Rev Raphael Warnock, 51, is running to unseat Loeffler.” More

A prominent Republican senator has declined to clearly answer a question about whether he is involved in a bid to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election that Democrat Joe Biden won convincingly in November.Asked if he was trying to “overturn the election” and keep Donald Trump in power, Missouri senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “That depends what happens on Wednesday.”That is when Congress will meet to count Joe Biden’s 306-232 electoral college victory, which has been certified by all 50 states. Formal objections due to be raised by Hawley, around a dozen other senators and more than 100 Republicans in the House will not overturn the result – as Trump and his supporters hope they will.Democrats hold the House, guaranteeing defeat there, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans in that chamber also oppose the objections.Speaking on Monday night, Hawley at first avoided questions about whether he was trying to overturn an election and thereby disenfranchise millions of Americans, insisting he was objecting to the handling of the presidential election in states including Pennsylvania.“I just want to pin you down,” anchor Bret Baier said, eventually, “on on what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to say that as of 20 January [inauguration day] that President Trump will be president?”“Well,” said Hawley, “that depends on what happens on Wednesday. I mean, this is why we have to debate.”Baier answered: “No it doesn’t. The states, by the constitution, they certify the election, they did certify it by the constitution. Congress doesn’t have the right to overturn the certification, at least as most experts read it.”“Well,” Hawley said, “Congress is directed under the 12th amendment to count the electoral votes, there’s a statute that dates back to the 1800s, 19th century, that says there is a right to object, there’s a right to be heard, and there’s also [the] certification right.”Baier countered: “It’s from 1876, senator, and it’s the Tilden-Hayes race, in which there were three states that did not certify their electors. So Congress was left to come up with this system this commission that eventually got to negotiate a grand bargain.”That bargain left a Republican president, Rutherford Hayes, in power in return for an end to Reconstruction after the civil war. In August, the historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “Part of the deal was the surrender of the rights of African Americans. I’m not sure that’s a precedent we want to reinvigorate, you know?”Baeir continued: “But now all of the states have certified their elections. As of 14 December. So it doesn’t by constitutional ways, open a door to Congress to overturn that, does it?”“My point,” Hawley said, “is this is my only opportunity during this process to raise an objection and to be heard. I don’t have standing to file lawsuits.”Trump’s campaign has filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging electoral results, losing the vast majority and being dismissed by the supreme court.Hawley dodged a subsequent question about whether his own White House ambitions are the real motivation for his objection – as they seem to be for other senators looking to appease the Trumpist base of the party.Also on Monday night, activists from the group ShutDownDC held what they called an “hour-long vigil” at Hawley’s Washington home. Demanding he drop his objection, they said they sang, lit candles and delivered a copy of the US constitution.Hawley, in Missouri at the time, complained that “Antifa scumbags” had “threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door.” More

The murk surrounding Donald Trump’s likely whereabouts on his last day as president has thickened considerably with news that an official plane he has used in the past is due to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.Trump himself is sticking to his refusal to accept his decisive electoral defeat. He has been caught cajoling election officials to “find” thousands of extra votes and is encouraging his supporters to gather for a “wild” day of protest on Wednesday when Congress is due to ratify the result.The White House has refused to say what he will do when Biden is inaugurated on 20 January, raising the question of whether Trump will even leave the building voluntarily.Most Trump-watchers expect him to dodge any event that would involve acknowledging his election loss. They predict he will stage a spectacular diversion to detract from Biden’s first day on the job.Many versions of that scenario have the outgoing president flying to his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. But Scotland’s Sunday Post has reported that Prestwick airport, near Trump’s Turnberry golf course resort, has been told to expect a US military Boeing 757 that has occasionally been used by Trump, on 19 January.The report said that speculation over a possible inauguration day drama has been fuelled by sightings of US military surveillance aircraft circling Turnberry for a week in November, doing possible advance work.“It is usually a sign Trump is going to be somewhere for an extended period,” the Post quoted an unnamed source as saying.The 757 is a smaller, narrower plane than the Boeing 747-200Bs that are normally designated Air Force One. It is more often used by the vice-president and first lady, Melania Trump, than the president.There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the White House or Prestwick airport. Leaving the country before formally leaving office would be unprecedented for a US president.Flying to Scotland before 20 January would be a way to get US taxpayers to pay for the first leg of a post-presidential holiday. It is also possible the flight was booked as a contingency by a candidate surprised by defeat and unsure what to do.Multiple reports suggest he will face severe difficulties in his heavily indebted business empire.New accounts published on Monday showed Trump’s array of golf properties in Scotland lost £3.4m in 2019, though Trump Turnberry showed a modest profit.Meanwhile his neighbours at Mar-a-Lago have launched a legal effort to stop him moving there full-time, saying he is precluded by an agreement he signed in the early 1990s converting the estate from a private residence to a club.Wherever Trump goes on 20 January, it is unlikely the exit will be quiet or particularly dignified. But it will be unlike any presidential departure the country has ever witnessed. More

David Perdue, the Georgia Republican facing a Senate runoff election on Tuesday, has twice bought a significant number of shares in a US bank shortly after meeting with financial policy makers, raising more questions about his prolific stock trading while in office.In one case, in May 2015, Perdue bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of shares in Regions Financial Corporation two days after a 10-minute phone call with then treasury secretary Jack Lew.Perdue bought additional shares in the bank two years later, on 18 May 2017, two days after a half-hour meeting with then Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen.It is not clear in either case if Perdue discussed relevant financial regulation or other market-sensitive issues with Lew or Yellen or whether the discussions influenced his decision to buy the stock.At the time of the call with Lew, members of the Senate banking committee, on which Perdue sits, were engaged in close talks over a potential trade deal.But the purchase of more Regions stock in the wake of Perdue’s meeting with Yellen – who will be nominated to serve as treasury secretary by Joe Biden once the president-elect takes office – is possibly significant, because it came about two months before Yellen publicly discussed her support for raising the $50bn asset threshold for systemically important institutions, a change that meant Regions bank could see an easing of important financial regulations.As Yellen’s views on the topic publicly evolved in her role as chair of the Fed, so did Perdue’s buildup of stock in Regions. Perdue separately sought to advance deregulatory legislation that would be favorable for banks like Regions, which Regions and more than a dozen other banks publicly endorsed.Public records show that Perdue sold his full stake in Regions on 11 October 2019 and on 23 October 2019, suggesting that Perdue may have made a 21% return on his earlier investment. He then bought more shares of the stock in November 2019 and January 2020.John Burke, Perdue’s communications director, has said that Perdue does not handle day-to-day decisions about his portfolio, which Perdue claimed is managed by outside financial advisers.It is not uncommon for policy makers like Yellen to have meetings with senators. On the day of her meeting with Perdue in 2017, Yellen also met with Lord Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, had lunch with Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, and then met with another senator, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown.Former government insiders say policy makers try to be cautious in such meetings, and try to avoid sharing information that could move markets. At the same time, it can be difficult to avoid the sharing of potentially valuable information if senators and policy makers are discussing any issue in depth, and a senator might be able to gauge an evolving policy position that could be market-sensitive.The new revelations come as Perdue’s frequent stock trading while in office has come under increased scrutiny in the press ahead of his runoff Senate election on Tuesday. If Democrats win two runoff elections, it will transfer control of the Senate from Republicans to Democrats.Previous media reports have focused on how Perdue has faced federal scrutiny for his frequent stock trading while in office, and whether his position as a senator with access to market-sensitive information, especially during the pandemic, may have influenced some trades. The New York Times, citing multiple anonymous sources, said Perdue’s sale of $1m in stock in a financial company called Cardlytics, where he served on the board, drew the attention of investigators at the Department of Justice last spring, who were undertaking “a broad review of the senator’s prolific trading around the outset of the coronavirus pandemic for possible evidence of insider trading”.The investigators ultimately concluded that a personal message that had been sent to Perdue from the company’s chief executive, alluding to “upcoming changes”, was not “nonpublic information”, and declined to pursue charges. Perdue sold his stock two days after he received the personal message from the CEO. About six weeks later, the chief executive resigned and the company revealed that results were below expectations, causing the stock to tumble.The New York Times separately reported that, as a member of the Senate’s cybersecurity committee, Perdue and others sought out the protection of the National Guard against data breaches. The newspaper said that beginning in 2016, Perdue bought and sold shares in a cybersecurity firm called FireEye on 61 occasions. Nearly half of those trades, the New York Times reported, occurred while Perdue sat on the cybersecurity committee, which could have given him access to sensitive information.Perdue’s senate campaign did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. He has formerly denied having any conflict of interest.But Perdue’s challenger in this week’s senator runoff, Democrat Jon Ossoff, has repeatedly raised the issue, and accused Perdue of using his office to enrich himself.Perdue’s spokesman has called the criticism “baseless” and he has emphasized being “totally exonerated” by federal investigators. More