Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Raphael Warnock sues Georgia over early voting restrictions for runoff

      by

      Raphael Warnock sues Georgia over early voting restrictions for runoffState law limits early voting after state holidays, including Thanksgiving and another formerly honoring Confederate general Raphael Warnock’s campaign sued Georgia on Tuesday after the state said it would not offer Saturday early voting for the closely watched runoff in which Warnock is seeking re-election to the US Senate.The suit challenges the state’s interpretation of a law that would prohibit early voting on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is also a state holiday in Georgia, originally to commemorate Robert E Lee, the Confederate civil war general. In 2015, state officials dropped Lee’s name and started recognizing the day simply as a “state holiday”.‘This movement was rejected’: Republican election deniers lose key state racesRead moreLawyers for Warnock’s campaign argued that the voting prohibition only applies to primary and general elections, not runoffs, which have a much shorter voting period. Last year, Georgia Republicans passed a law shortening the runoff period from nine weeks to four. But the shortened runoff period is coming into conflict with the state law that bars early voting around holidays.The state “misreads” and “cherry-picks” provisions of the law that do not apply to runoffs, lawyers for Warnock’s campaign wrote in a complaint, which was joined by the Georgia Democratic party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “The secretary’s insistence that counties may not hold advance voting on November 26 therefore has no support in the law and conflicts with [the statute’s] requirement that counties begin advance voting for the December 6 runoff as soon as possible,” it reads.The suit asks a judge to declare that state law does not prohibit counties from offering early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and to order the state not to take any action blocking them from doing so.Georgia law says counties may start early voting “as soon as possible” after the state certifies results from the general election, with a mandatory period from 28 November to 2 December. State law also bars Saturday early voting on the Saturday before a runoff, 3 December.Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially said he believed some counties would offer early voting on Saturday, before his office reversed course and said it was prohibited.“It’s not our choice. It’s literally in black-letter law that the Saturday following a state holiday cannot be used for early voting,” Gabriel Sterling, an interim deputy secretary of state, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “We all thought there was going to be Saturday voting until we looked at the law really closely.”Gerald Griggs, the president of the Georgia NAACP, said a Confederate holiday should not block voting.A Confederate holiday should not prevent the protection of democracy, which is called voting. That holiday needs to be eliminated. #TakeDownHate #gapol https://t.co/FqxW4zEx7h— Gerald A. Griggs (@AttorneyGriggs) November 13, 2022
      A coalition of civil rights groups separately sent a letter to all of Georgia’s 159 counties on Tuesday urging them to offer at least three additional days of early voting from 7am to 7pm, which is allowed at the counties’ discretion under Georgia law. The coalition urged the counties to offer voting on the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding Thanksgiving as well as the Sunday after the holiday.“If you only offer advance voting on the five days required by statute (which, as noted above, is limited to weekdays), there is a significant risk that many voters will be unable to participate due to obligations during the workday,” lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Georgia wrote in the letter. “The lack of weekend or evening voting options is especially concerning for voters of color, who may be less able to take time off from work to vote.”Hillary Holley, the executive director of Care in Action, the political arm of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, tweeted on Tuesday that Fulton county, home to Atlanta and the state’s most populous county, had agreed to start early voting on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. She also said Gwinnett county, one of the largest and most diverse counties in the state, had also agreed to start early voting on Sunday.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The fight for democracyGeorgiaUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The ‘armed and gay’ Senate hopeful who helped force Georgia’s runoff

      by

      The ‘armed and gay’ Senate hopeful who helped force Georgia’s runoffLibertarian Chase Oliver, 37, managed 81,000 votes despite raising just $8,000

      US midterm elections results 2022 – live
      The morning after the midterms, Chase Oliver was back at work. “That’s what most other Georgians have to do after an election,” he tells the Guardian. “I have a job and have to pay rent and the bills.”Oliver, 37, has two jobs, actually – one as a sales account executive for a financial services company and another as an HR rep for a securities firm. And as he toggled between email replies and Zoom interviews from his north-east Atlanta home, with three cats and a dog, Delilah, underfoot, you’d never suspect this natty, young Georgian had thrown a spanner into the cogs of American power. “You are possibly the most hated man in America right now,” read one post to his Facebook page.Oliver was the third candidate in Georgia’s US Senate race: a pro-gun, anti-cop, pro-choice Libertarian who proudly announces himself as the state’s first LGBTQ+ candidate – “armed and gay”, he boasts. And on Tuesday night, this surprise spoiler scored an historic upset of sorts, siphoning enough support away from the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker to force the election to a 6 December runoff – Georgia’s second in as many election cycles. Until then, there’s no telling whether the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.Exactly who went for Oliver remains disputed: he reckons his typical voter was a left-leaning independent who might otherwise have voted for Warnock. But one pollster predicted Oliver’s success was more likely about pulling away “soft Republican” votes from rightwing voters who couldn’t face voting for Walker.Even more impressive than the 81,000 votes Oliver tallied on election night was the $7,790 he raised campaigning to win them. Of the record $8.9bn spent nationally on federal campaigns this election cycle, Georgia Senate candidates raised $136m, one of the most expensive contests in the country.Oliver’s was a true grassroots campaign. He hosted a watch party for the only Walker-Warnock debate and walked in Pride parades waving a rainbow-colored Don’t Tread On Me flag now perched outside his garage. On the front lawn are campaign signs for his fellow Georgia Libertarian challengers. When I compliment his modern ranch-style home from the comfort of a screened-in back porch, he’s quick to note that he pays rent to a live-in owner and mostly keeps to the basement – campaign HQ, officially. Inside, more Oliver lawn signs and posters share wall space with portraits of members of Star Trek’s Starfleet.Despite his obvious need, Oliver refused to indulge into the usual groveling for campaign cash. “I’m not someone who likes to get on the phone and beg people for money,” says Oliver, who instead relied on the kindness of friends, family and fellow Libertarians. The bulk of that fundraising went toward yard signs, canvassing materials and gas for his beat-up Toyota Corolla. “It’s not the prettiest in the world,” he says of the car – which, among other things, is missing a cover for the rear bumper. “But it gets great mileage.”On election night, Oliver watched from home with friends, picking over chicken wings when he wasn’t exchanging texts with his campaign team. Beforehand, he had been polling at about 5%; anything above 2% figured to spark a runoff, given how close the race was between Warnock and Walker already. When Oliver settled just above 2% and stayed there and neither frontrunner retained more than a 50% + 1 vote share, the minimum standard for victory, Oliver celebrated the coming runoff – which he says he caused partly to prove the need for ranked-choice voting across the country. “That’s the real lesson I want people to learn,” he says. “Whether you voted for Raphael Warnock or Herschel Walker or me, we wouldn’t have to wait weeks later to see who’s going to Washington DC if we passed something common sense like ranked-choice voting.”Oliver makes no effort to hide his healthy contempt for the current two-party system. But he wasn’t always so disillusioned. As an out teenager in a state where laws against sodomy were aggressively enforced until the state supreme court invalidated them in 2003, Oliver launched his high school’s gay-straight alliance. Oliver remembers screening Brokeback Mountain when it opened in 2005 and being so moved that he dragged his straight friends to the theater to see it the very next week. He thought, “This is what’s gonna get all my friends to understand the struggle,” he says. “But they did not have the same experience. They were like, ‘It was a good movie, but you kinda oversold it.’”Why is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?Read moreHe gravitated toward the Democratic party because of Barack Obama, inspired by promises to bring home the troops, close Guantánamo and draw down the US’s drone-strike program. But as Obama betrayed those promises, Oliver decamped for the Libertarians – a 50-year-old party that’s more culturally liberal than Democrats and fiscally conservative than Republicans and the third-largest political party by voter registration. Oliver’s platform runs from immigration reform to world peace. But it’s government dysfunction that really animates him. “There’s no real legislating going on,” he says. “What we’re seeing now is leadership drafting a bill behind closed doors with giant corporate interests.“It doesn’t matter who wins, Raphael Warnock or Herschel Walker; they’re going to be a cog in that system.”Oliver struggled for face time alongside the Senate frontrunners. When Walker flashed a fake police badge during his debate against Warnock last month, Oliver joined the meme parade, promising to bring his Starfleet pin to a subsequent debate against Warnock. (“Apparently, badges are required for debates now,” he tweeted.) But when Oliver pushed the senator on the Democrats’ flawed criminal justice policies, Warnock mostly ignored him.Although Oliver has received some threats, he tells friends not to worry about security. (“I conceal carry, so I’ll be taking care of myself as always,” he says.) To those who might bemoan this nerdy young white guy in the first Georgia Senate race to feature two Black candidates, Oliver invites would-be critics to check his record. “People who know me know that I’ve always worked with a diverse coalition of activists to get things done,” he says. “I think no matter what the skin color of the Republican or Democratic candidates, they would have been somebody I had severe policy disagreements with.”Still, many Georgians are likely to resent Oliver anyway for further drawing out what’s seemed like an endless campaign cycle – not least the exasperated voters who supported Oliver. While Oliver sympathizes with voter frustrations (and is exhausted with the campaign crush himself), if at the very least it brings about the end of runoff elections, history might say it was worth it. “I wanted to be an honest broker,” Oliver says. “I’m hoping that whoever wins this runoff reaches across the aisle a bit more and actually does some real legislating.”
      This article was amended on 11 November 2022. An earlier version misstated Raphael Warnock’s record on LGBTQ+ rights.
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?

      by

      ExplainerWhy is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?Key races in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia – which could decide the makeup of Congress – are still undecided. Here’s why Two days after the US midterm elections, a sense of deja vu is descending over the country. In a replay of the excruciating events in 2020, when Joe Biden’s presidential victory was declared four days after the polls closed, Americans are yet again asking themselves why they have to wait so long for election results.US midterm elections 2022: Senate and House remain in balance as counting continues – liveRead moreLater in the week, it remained elusive which main party will control both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, Republicans hold 49 seats and the Democrats 48, with two states – Arizona and Nevada – not yet called, and Georgia headed to a runoff.In the House there are still more than 40 seats yet to be called, with at least a dozen of them highly competitive.So what is it about the US electoral system that makes counting votes apparently so tortuously slow?Where are counts still happening, and why?Responsibility for running fair and fast elections, like much of the way the country is governed, is devolved to each of the 50 states. How the count is done, and its speed, varies slightly between each state. (Election deniers have tried to imply that slow counts are somehow irregular or fraudulent. They are not.)The big picture here is that counts are taking extra time in races that are very close. News networks are hesitant to project winners because the margins between candidates are narrow and there are many ballots left to count – and so the need for patience may be justified.In this cycle, much of the heat is engulfing just three states: Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.What’s going on in Arizona?Several of the most consequential races are happening in the border state of Arizona. A US Senate contest between the Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly and Republican challenger Blake Masters could determine which party controls the Senate.There are also consequential state races, including for governor and secretary of state, in which prominent election deniers endorsed by Donald Trump have a shot at winning. So far only 70% of the Arizona vote has been counted.To understand why that is, you have to zoom in to Maricopa county, which covers the state capital, Phoenix. It contains 60% of all votes in Arizona and is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the nation.The number of people who vote early has increased dramatically since the pandemic. This year Maricopa county also saw a surge in the number of early ballots that were dropped off on election day – they are known as “late earlies” – rising to 290,000, the largest number in the state’s history and 100,000 more than in 2020.Each early ballot has to be verified to check that the voter’s signature matches the signature in the voter rolls, and after that is done it is sent to a bipartisan panel for approval and processing. That all takes time, as we are witnessing.Many people have drawn a comparison of Arizona’s vote count with that of Florida, which called its results within hours of polls closing on Tuesday. That state’s system allows election officials to begin counting mail-in ballots as soon as they are received; mail-in ballots have to be requested and must be received by an election supervisor no later than 7pm on election day. But the main reason why Ron DeSantis won his re-election race so quickly on Tuesday was because it was a blowout, with the incumbent Republican governor garnering 59% of the vote while his challenger, Charlie Crist, received only 40%.Had the candidates we are watching in Arizona or elsewhere had such a convincing lead, we would probably not still be waiting for their races to be called. Nonetheless, there are questions that Arizona is going to have to face in future elections.Stephen Richer, who is the recorder of Maricopa county, said that after the dust settles “we will likely want to have a policy conversation about which we value more: convenience of dropping off early ballots on election day or higher percentage of returns with 24 hours of election night”.What about Nevada?Nevada is going a bit faster than Arizona, with 83% of the votes counted, but this year the count could last through Sunday. But like in Phoenix, there are still large numbers of ballots yet to be processed in the big urban areas of Las Vegas and Reno.The state runs its elections largely through mail-in ballots, and that in itself bakes in time. For a mail-in ballot to be counted it has to be postmarked by election day, but the state now allows until four days after election day – 12 November – for the physical envelope to arrive.There is a debate to be had about the merits of such a system. Many election officials stress that it is more important to have a system that is convenient, accurate and accessible than one that is fast.The count in Nevada also has a lot riding on it. That includes a very close race between the sitting US senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt; three tight contests for US House seats; and a battle involving one of the most visceral election deniers, Jim Marchant, who is running for the job of top election official.And Georgia?Georgia has completed its returns for its critical US Senate race, with the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock squeaking ahead of the Trump-endorsed former football star Herschel Walker. But this state runs a system whereby if neither candidate marshals more than 50% of the vote – which neither did – there has to be a runoff election. That feels like groundhog day too – we had to wait until the January after the 2020 election for two Georgia runoff contests to be called before we knew that the Democrats would control the Senate. At least Georgia has speeded up the process: the new voting law SB 202 has significantly shortened the period for this runoff, which will take place on 6 December.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Postal votingArizonaNevadaGeorgiaUS politicsexplainersReuse this content More