Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      'Whatever it takes': how Black women fought to mobilize America's voters

      by

      [embedded content]
      Even before networks projected the presidential race for Joe Biden last Saturday, Wanda Mosley, a 50-year-old organizer based in Atlanta, Georgia, began to prepare to mobilize voters for her state’s two critical Senate runoff elections on 5 January.
      After one of the most turbulent presidential elections in US history, the two races in the battleground state will determine if the balance of power in Washington will fall to the president-elect once he is sworn into office. Georgia has yet to be called for Biden, a Democrat, though he currently leads Donald Trump, which motivates organizers such as Mosley who until early December will continue to register voters planning to vote in the January runoffs.
      “We understand fully how important these races are,” says Mosley, the senior state coordinator for Georgia’s Black Voters Matter, a nonprofit dedicated to voter engagement.
      “We’re still here. We’re still working,” Mosley said.
      Democrats have long pointed to Black voters, more specifically, Black women, as a crucial voting bloc, decisive to elections since former president Bill Clinton’s victories in the 1990s. But this November, successfully flipping the southern, Republican-led state of Georgia to the Democrats for the first time in 28 years has drawn attention to the organizational power of Black women, whose large-scale mobilization efforts appear to have resulted in massive turnout among people of color in those cities, experts say.
      “What might have been different is the greater role of on the ground mobilization and voter registration efforts in states like Georgia, and I think that that was the effort that was largely built by Stacey Abrams and others on the ground,” said Jamil Scott, an assistant professor in the government department at Georgetown University.
      Rather than rely on outside political consultants swarming into battleground states, Abrams, who lost to the Republican Governor Brian Kemp in 2018, led that charge in Georgia this year, says Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a national network advocating for women of color in politics. There was a 69% increase in voter turnout among women of color in Georgia this year compared to 2016, according to Allison, who cites data She the People analyzed from progressive data firm Catalist.
      “You have a group of voters of Black women who are the most effective organizers on the ground because they are trusted voices and are working in organizations year round. They don’t come in six weeks before and kind of rent out a storefront, they’re actually invested in, long-term, empowering the community through civic and political action,” she said.
      In America, this election year has not played out in a vacuum. Rather, it has been met with – and compounded by – America’s year of reckoning with police brutality and systemic inequality, which has driven even more people to vote.
      Thousands of Americans took to the streets to protest against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths earlier this year as the Black community also shouldered the disproportionate impact of Covid-19. The meeting of those moments spurred political mobilization among Black voters, says Tim Stevens, the CEO of Pittsburgh’s Black Political Empowerment Project, a non-profit voting rights organization based in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, where Trump was swiftly defeated last week.
      “The tragedies … made what was already present in the heart of Black people and people of color even more evident and more urgent,” said Stevens.
      Those mobilization efforts were evident as ballots were counted in diverse urban centers in key states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania where large populations of Black voters in Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia helped push Biden towards victory.
      Then there were a number of prominent Black women in leadership roles – like Abrams, Nikema Williams, who took on John Lewis’s congressional seat and is chair of Georgia’s state Democratic party, and Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms – helped fuel mobilization efforts among Black women this election, suggests Dianne Pinderhughes, a professor of political science and the chair of the department of Africana studies at the University of Notre Dame.
      One organizer in Pennsylvania points to the most prominent: the first Black and south Asian American vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris. “We had the same feelings we had when Obama was first elected,”says Brittany Smalls, the Pennsylvania state coordinator for Black Voters Matter. “We just never thought we would see the day that a woman in leadership looks like us.”

      Kamala Harris
      (@KamalaHarris)
      I want to speak directly to the Black women in our country. Thank you. You are too often overlooked, and yet are asked time and again to step up and be the backbone of our democracy. We could not have done this without you.

      November 9, 2020

      Now, as Americans across the country shift their attention away from the presidential race and to the runoff elections in Georgia, organizers like Mosley say they are keen to build on their success, in an election that could ultimately determine what kind of presidency Joe Biden will have.
      “This is the culmination of years and years and years of work, when other people didn’t think it was possible,” said Mosley. “We know how important the Senate is, and so if we can play a role in getting one – or possibly two seats – to try to shift that balance of power, you need to understand that Black women will do whatever it takes.”
      This piece was published in partnership between the Guardian and The Fuller Project. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump's longshot election lawsuits: where do things stand?

      by

      Since election day, Donald Trump and other Republicans have filed a smattering of lawsuits in battleground states that have provided cover for Trump and other Republicans to say that the election still remains unresolved.
      Legal experts have noted these suits are meritless, and even if they were successful, would not be enough to overturn the election results. Indeed, judges in several of these lawsuits have already dismissed them, noting the Trump campaign has failed to offer evidence to substantiate allegations of fraud.
      Here’s where some of the key lawsuits stand:
      Pennsylvania
      One of the main rallying cries for Trump and his supporters has been that they were not allowed to observe vote counting in Philadelphia, the overwhelmingly Democratic city that helped Biden carry Pennsylvania.
      That’s not true. The Trump campaign did secure a court order to allow observers to get closer to the vote counting process, but there’s no evidence observers were excluded and Philadelphia had a 24/7 livestream of its counting. When the campaign went to federal court arguing that its observers didn’t have access to vote counting, a campaign lawyer was forced to admit there was a “non-zero” number of campaign observers watching the vote count.
      Pennsylvania Republicans and the Trump campaign are also still pushing the US supreme court to reject mail-in ballots that were postmarked by election day and arrived at election offices by 6 November. Pennsylvania law requires ballots to arrive by the close of polls on election night, but the Pennsylvania supreme court, where Democrats have a majority, pointed to mail delays and the pandemic to justify the extension. Several other states in the US allow ballots to be counted if they arrive after election day but are postmarked before.
      Republicans have been trying to get these ballots rejected since early September, when the Pennsylvania supreme court extended the receipt deadline by three days. The number of late-arriving ballots is thought to be relatively small, so even if the supreme court were to ultimately reject them, it would not be enough to overturn Biden’s lead of nearly 45,000 votes in the state.
      Trump and Republicans have also pursued a number of cases to try and get courts to reject mail-in ballots where voters made a mistake, but have been unsuccessful in all of their suits. Even if Republicans succeeded, it wouldn’t be enough to overturn the results of the race.
      On Monday evening, the Trump campaign filed another lawsuit in federal court offering a new legal theory – Pennsylvania’s election was illegitimate because it had different processes for voting by mail and voting in person. Many legal experts quickly noted the theory was bogus.
      The suit was “inexcusably late”, said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, who noted the differences between in-person and mail-in voting were known for months.
      “The core theory on which it rests – that there’s some kind of right to have all ballots counted through precisely the same procedures – would effectively invalidate mail-in voting not just in Pennsylvania, but nationwide,” he said. “Yet again, it offers no actual evidence of any impropriety or fraud in how Pennsylvania has counted these ballots. It’s just a transparent effort to throw out legal votes – or, at least, to muddy the waters long enough to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its slate of electors in time.”
      Arizona
      The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Arizona on Saturday that seemed to be based on a discredited conspiracy theory that voters who used Sharpie pens to fill out their ballots would not have them counted.
      The campaign’s suit didn’t specifically mention Sharpies, but contained allegations from voters who said they noticed ink had bled through their ballots, which could potentially cause their ballots not to count if the ballot scanners believed they had cast a vote for more than one candidate in a contest, something known as an overvote. The suit says that poll workers failed to avail voters of the opportunity to cast a new ballot when scanners notified them of the issue.
      The Trump campaign submitted affidavits from two voters who said they were not notified of the chance to fix their ballots. A poll watcher submitted an affidavit saying he observed around 80 instances in which voters were given vague or confusing information about the possibility their vote could be rejected. He said he observed about 40 instances in which the poll worker had pressed the button to submit the ballot on behalf of the voter. Biden leads Trump in Arizona by more than 17,000 votes. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      How Georgia's Senate runoffs could finally hand Stacey Abrams her victory

      by

      Two years ago, Stacey Abrams became a household name when she ran for governor of Georgia against Brian Kemp, then secretary of state. Though her votes came in short, she refused to concede – citing widespread voter suppression in a state where the election was run by the opponent himself.
      In 2020, she is still not the governor. But in some ways, Abrams never lost.
      Though it is poised for a recount, Georgia surprised America and the world when – on the basis of the first count –the Democrats outpolled the Republicans last week. If the result survives the recount then Joe Biden will become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years.
      He could not have done it without Stacey Abrams.
      The huge voter turnout – inspired by Abrams’s work and a groundswell of Black community organizers in her circle – means that both Georgia Senate races will go to a runoff and, if the Democrats were to win both races, they would control the Senate. Without them Joe Biden will be significantly constrained by a Republican held Senate – the leader, Mitch McConnell, could even veto cabinet appointments.
      The date of the Senate run-offs, 5 January, looms large as another day of destiny for Georgia – and America. At its heart is a woman who, two years after losing, might be on the brink of a spectacular victory. As a CNN article last week noted, using popular shorthand for “Democratic”: “For Stacey Abrams, revenge is a dish best served blue.”
      Tearing down barriers
      In 2018, the race for governor in Georgia was a highly contested one. The final tally said Abrams lost by just 55,000 votes. But Abrams, who had earned endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, wouldn’t accept the result.
      More than 1 million Georgians had been purged from voter rolls, with nearly 670,000 cancelled from the roles in 2017. An Associated Press analysis revealed that 70% of the cancelled voters were Black – a stark racial disparity since only 32% of Georgia’s population is Black. This would cut deeply into Abrams’ voter base.
      Meanwhile, the person in charge of maintaining the voter rolls was her opponent himself. At the time of the race, Kemp was serving as Georgia secretary of state, a position that oversees the state’s elections – a clear conflict of interest.
      The New Yorker, a few weeks before that election day two years ago, ran a profile headlined Brian Kemp is the Martin Shkreli of Voter Suppression. (A reference to Kemp’s insider influence while referencing the notorious ‘Pharma Bro’ who was convicted of fraud for hiking drug prices.)
      The New Yorker said of Kemp: “His tenure as secretary of state has been marred by a record of voter suppression and intimidation tactics. In general, it’s impossible to talk about these actions without talking about how they hurt minority turnout.”
      Abrams didn’t concede. But she also didn’t stop working. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      How Georgia built on legacy of a civil rights titan and finally tilted blue

      by

      Downtown Atlanta boarded up when it became clear that Georgia could decide the fate of Donald Trump by just a few thousands votes one way or the other.The city worried that the president might unleash his well-armed supporters against an unfavourable result or that Trump’s opponents might turn out in protest if Georgia’s Republican establishment got up to its old shenanigans of fixing elections.But as the counting dragged on, the streets stayed quieter than usual, although coronavirus had already taken its toll on city life. When the results finally began to put Joe Biden in the lead in Georgia, his supporters held off on the celebrations. This was the wrong year to tempt fate.But there was a lot of quiet satisfaction that a state whose most significant role in presidential elections until now was as the home of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, might prove instrumental in the toppling of the US president.“I’m glad I voted. Didn’t last time but we needed rid of that guy. I’m proud of Georgia!” said Martin Williams, on his way to work at a fast food restaurant an otherwise empty city street early Saturday morning.That is a widely held sentiment among Trump’s opponents who sometimes cast his defeat – although a recount was announced on Friday – in terms of a sweet revenge in a state he won by five points in 2016.After trailing for days in the Georgia count, Biden was finally tipped into winning territory by votes from Clayton County, represented in Congress for years by the civil rights titan John Lewis, a fierce critic of Trump who died in July.“I love the idea that Clayton County could put Biden over in GA. That’s John Lewis’ district. He would do one of his trademark happy dances in heaven. Symmetry,” former Senator Claire McCaskill tweeted.Ben Crump, the lawyer who represents the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans killed by police, tweeted a reference to Lewis’s mantra of causing “good trouble” in the fight for rights. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Georgia announces recount after presidential race too close to call

      by

      Election officials in Georgia announced a recount on Friday after the presidential race was deemed “too close to call” in that state.
      Joe Biden overtook Donald Trump in Georgia, historically a Republican stronghold, at around 4.30am ET to secure a lead of 1,579 votes.
      Trump and Biden were locked in a tight contest on Friday, with the Democrat edging ahead, to get the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. For Trump, Georgia is a state he must win.
      But with such a razor-thin margin, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said ballots will undergo a recount.
      “Right now, Georgia remains too close to call. Of approximately 5m votes cast, we’ll have a margin of a few thousand,” he said in a press conference. He added: “With a margin that small, there will be a recount in Georgia.”
      If Biden goes on to win Georgia, it would mark a major victory for the Democrats – and a huge upset for the Republicans – in a state that has been reliably Republican for decades.
      The last time a Democratic presidential nominee won in the state was Bill Clinton in 1992. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Georgia by five percentage points.
      Raffensperger acknowledged that Georgia’s result has “huge implications for the entire country” and officials said the unofficial tally could be completed by the end of the weekend.He added: “The stakes are high and emotions are high on all sides. We will not let those debates distract us from our work. We will get it right, and we will defend the integrity of our elections.”
      Georgia does not run automatic recounts, but candidates can request them if the margin is within 0.5%.
      The announcement of a recount came after a judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump campaign over the state’s handling of absentee ballots in Chatham county.
      The Trump campaign has launched a swath of legal cases across the country, which are largely intended as a distraction and are founded on weak legal arguments, experts say.
      Matt Morgan, general counsel for the Trump campaign, said on Friday: “Georgia is headed for a recount, where we are confident we will find ballots improperly harvested, and where President Trump will ultimately prevail.”
      Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, dismissed allegations of fraud, saying: “We’re not seeing any widespread irregularities.”Sterling said that 4,169 ballots, most of which were absentee, were left to be counted from four counties, including Gwinnett county, which includes Atlanta suburbs and in recent years has shifted towards Democrats. The state also has an unknown quantity of military and overseas ballots and an unknown number of provisional ballots to be “cured”.
      Biden’s strength in Georgia is the result of strong turnout among Black voters in the Atlanta suburbs, which have become younger and increasingly diverse.
      The Black Voters Matter Fund, a non-profit that advocates for increasing voter registration and access, hailed the impact of Black voters in Georgia, who they said “saved the election”.
      They said more than a million Black voters cast their ballots early in the state – exceeding 2016 numbers – and reported a “surge” in registration and turnout among young Black voters.
      Co-founders LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright said: “A new south is rising, and Georgia is the beacon … Georgia is at the epicenter of this country right now and we are claiming victory.”
      It is also a product of the work of figures such Stacey Abrams, who since losing the state’s 2018 race for governor has thrown her efforts into Fair Fight, an organization she founded that focuses on combating voter suppression.
      The recount could also have significant implications for the fight for control of the US Senate, with one – possibly two – Senate races heading for a runoff.
      According to electoral research by the Associated Press, there have been at least 31 statewide recounts since 2000, of which three changed the outcome of an election. But in those the initial margins were even slimmer – in the low hundreds rather than thousands.
      Many analysts believe Georgia’s shift to becoming a swing state is almost inevitable – an assessment that is reflected in the energies invested into the state by the Biden campaign.
      In the final weeks before the election, Biden, his running mate Senator Kamala Harris and former president Barack Obama have all paid visits. Trump has also rallied there.
      “Can you believe it? Two days from now, we’re going to win this state again and we’re going to win four more great years in the White House,” Trump told supporters in the Georgia city of Rome on Sunday. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden takes lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia as he inches closer to beating Trump

      by

      Joe Biden, the US Democratic presidential challenger, has reached what appears to be a tipping point in the contest for the White House, taking the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia as the tally of postal ballots continued to skew heavily in the Democrat’s favour.
      With a Biden victory looking assured, CNN reported that a “national defence airspace” would be established above the Democratic candidate’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, meaning he would begin to receive the protection of the US military, the first trappings of the presidency.
      But a smooth transfer of power still looked far from certain. Donald Trump and a handful of loyalists continued to allege election fraud, without any evidence. Biden was reported to be seeking to rally prominent figures from both parties to endorse the legitimacy of the election, at a nervous moment for US democracy.
      After whittling down a substantial lead for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on election night, Biden’s vote count passed the president just before 9am, building up a narrow edge of 6,737. Many of the roughly 130,000 votes yet to be counted in the state are in Democratic areas, and Democrats make up a disproportional share of postal ballots.
      Winning Pennsylvania would also win the presidency, no matter what happens in the other states remaining undecided, but Biden also had the advantage there.
      In the early hours of Friday morning in the US, Biden had moved to a 1,096-vote advantage in Georgia with thousands of ballots still left to be counted – many in counties where the former vice-president was in the lead.
      The Georgia secretary of state reported late on Thursday there were about 10,000 ballots still to be counted in the state, a must-win for Trump in order to keep any chances of re-election alive in the race for the 270 electoral college votes that will determine the presidency.
      Biden’s lead over Trump in the nationwide popular vote stretched to over 4m, as he amassed a record 73.7m, but the president’s tally of 69.7m was the second highest in US political history – reflecting the fact that while Trump seemed doomed to defeat, Trumpism will remain very much a force.
      As Biden closed in on victory on Thursday night, he urged calm after an inflammatory and falsehood-filled Trump address from the White House where the president once again claimed he had won.
      The latest voting figures accelerated increasingly frantic efforts by Trump and his campaign to undermine confidence in the election, threatening a rash of litigation amid unfounded claims of election rigging.
      “This is a case when they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election,” Trump said from the podium of the White House briefing room.

      “If you count the legal votes, I easily win, Trump wrongly claimed. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.
      “If you count the votes that came in late, we’re looking at them very strongly, a lot of votes came in late,” he said.
      Several TV networks cut away during his remarks, with anchors saying they needed to correct his statements. However, two loyalist senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas, appeared on Fox News to echo Trump’s claims, in the absence of evidence that illegal or late votes were being counted, or that the election is being stolen. Graham whose loyalty had been questioned on Twitter by the president’s son, Don Jr, pledged $500,000 towards the president’s legal fees.
      Reports from inside the White House said the president had no plans to concede the election even after the votes are fully counted.
      From his Delaware headquarters Biden sought to project national leadership, beginning his remarks by talking about the surging coronavirus infection rates, and appealed for patience with the electoral process, after it emerged the US Secret Service was sending extra officers to Delaware to join his security detail.
      “I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” Biden said. “It is the will of the voters – no one, not anyone else – who chooses the president of the United States of America.”
      In the south-west, Biden maintains slim advantages in Arizona and Nevada. In Arizona, his lead narrowed to about 47,000 early on Friday and in Nevada he was ahead by about 11,500 votes.
      Trump had seen his lead steadily shrink in Georgia, a southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Bill Clinton in 1992, as officials worked through tens of thousands of uncounted votes, many from Democratic strongholds such as Atlanta.
      While Biden’s victories in the upper midwest put him in a strong position, Trump showed no sign of giving up. He was back on Twitter at about 2.30am on Friday, insisting the “US Supreme Court should decide!”.
      While many high-profile Republicans have not commented on Trump’s latest remarks, several GOP lawmakers denounced his baseless allegations about fraud, with Paul Mitchell, a Michigan congressman, saying that every vote would be counted, adding that “anything less harms the integrity of our elections and is dangerous for our democracy”.
      Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois GOP congressman, tweeted: “Stop spreading debunked misinformation … This is getting insane.” More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      US election live: Biden and Trump virtually tied in key state of Georgia

      by

      Key events

      Show

      9.39pm EST21:39
      Georgia is a virtual tie

      9.18pm EST21:18
      Trump lead in Georgia and Pennsylvania shrinks

      9.09pm EST21:09
      Biden’s lead in Arizona shrinks further as Maricopa county releases more results

      8.32pm EST20:32
      Steve Bannon suspended from Twitter, faces YouTube removal after urging violence against US officials

      8.20pm EST20:20
      Federal judge denies Trump motion to stop counting votes in Philadelphia

      8.01pm EST20:01
      When will we know the US election result?

      7.58pm EST19:58
      Welcome to the Guardian’s live election coverage

      Live feed

      Show

      9.59pm EST21:59

      On Fox News, the Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have been spreading the president’s false narrative that the election is being stolen from him.
      Cruz, a Republican of Texas, baselessly alleged – as the president has done – that election officials are “finding” votes. In fact, they are counting votes. “Whenever they shut the doors and turn out the light they always find more Democratic votes,” Cruz said.
      Cruz and Fox News’ Sean Hannity wrongly claimed that Republican observers were not allowed to watch the counting. The Trump campaign’s own lawyer admitted in a federal court that Republican observers were given access, as my colleague Sam Levine pointed out earlier today:

      Sam Levine
      (@srl)
      The issue with observers in Philadelphia is over how close observers can get, not whether they are allowed into facility. Trump attorney just conceded in federal court the campaign has access. https://t.co/MaHCRybtRW

      November 5, 2020

      Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator of South Carolina, told Hannity, “I trust Arizona, I don’t trust Philadelphia.” While Trump is closing the gap in Arizona, he’s losing ground in Pennsylvania as officials in both states continue to count ballots.

      9.58pm EST21:58

      Sam Levin

      Update on Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who called for violence against US officials:
      A spokesperson for YouTube told the Guardian the video was removed for “violating our policy against inciting violence”, and that the account received a “strike”. (After three strikes, it would be terminated.)
      Bannon is also banned from uploading new content for at least a week. Alex Joseph, the YouTube spokesperson, added, “We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period.” Twitter permanently suspended his account.
      Read more on Bannon:

      Updated
      at 10.02pm EST

      9.57pm EST21:57

      Oliver Laughland reports from Florida:
      I was in Miami, at an impromptu rally organized by the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Florida when Donald Trump delivered his White House remarks.
      The rally was one of four “Stop the Biden Steel” events being held simultaneously in the state (a reference to baseless claims of voter fraud perpetuated by the president), and counted about 150 Trump supporters lined up in a car park by a roadside restaurant. Organizers placed a large speaker on the back of a truck, nestled by a yellow sign that read: “Stop Fraud”. Attendees listened, almost silently, as Trump espoused baseless claims in an attempt to undermine the outcome of the election.
      “Four more years!” They chanted after Trump finished.
      Shortly after the speech, Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys and state director of Latinos for Trump, addressed the crowd, pushing more baseless conspiracies about the election. The Proud Boys are a far right organization with links to white supremacy.
      “I want to ask you guys to stay in these streets,” he told the crowd after informing them he was traveling to Michigan on Friday, a state that has been a hotbed of militia activity in recent months. He then led the crowd in a chant of “Whose streets? Our streets!” – a common refrain of street protests around the world.
      In a short interview with the Guardian afterwards, he labelled this reporter “fake news” and continued to push baseless allegations of election fraud.

      9.49pm EST21:49

      There are about 250,000 ballots left to count in Pennsylvania.
      Biden is trailing by just under 49,000 votes. He’s been winning the mail-in ballot counts by huge margins, and could very well take the state.
      Pennsylvania backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012, 2008, 2004 and 2000. Trump needs the state’s 20 electoral votes to win.

      Updated
      at 9.57pm EST

      9.39pm EST21:39

      Georgia is a virtual tie

      Trump is ahead by just 1,902 votes. The two candidates are tied at 49.4% each. More