A major symbol of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the election that removed him from office in 2020, the US state of Georgia returns to the polls this Tuesday (8) to elect a senator, representatives and governor still under the shadow of the allegations. fraud allegations two years ago.
The midterms, as the midterm elections are called in the United States, take place while Trump himself is rehearsing a new candidacy for the presidency – on Thursday (3), he said that, “to make the country successful, safe and glorious “, will “very, very, very likely run again”, which would be announced by Monday (14), according to the American press.
It was in Georgia that Trump made one of the clearest gestures to try to steal the election, when he called the local secretary of state, responsible for controlling the elections, and expressly asked: “All I want is this: to find 11,780 votes, one by one.” more than we have [de diferença]. Because we won Georgia.”
Today President Joe Biden beat Trump by 11,779 votes and won all 16 Electoral College votes in the state, the eighth most influential in the US system. Since 1996, with Bill Clinton, only Republicans were elected there. Trump has sued Georgia alleging that 15,000 voters voted irregularly, most with the names of people who have died, others who were not registered and some who could not have voted because they had been convicted of serious crimes.
The court says the allegations were not only false, Trump knew they were false, and yet he decided to uphold them. Even without being able to reverse the result, the damage is already done, since even today residents of the state repeat the lie. “Of course Trump won in 2020,” says driver Carlos Reyes, 34, who lives in Atlanta and has decided not to vote this year. “They didn’t let him take office because these things are decided beforehand,” he says, echoing other conspiracy theories.
None of this has any basis in reality, but the insistence on fraud has the authorities preparing this year with initiatives to speed up the count, in an attempt to prevent conspiracies that arise when results are slow to come out from gaining traction. Local legislation passed last year authorized counties to open and scan votes arriving in the mail before election day. A third of counties in the state said that even if they cannot release the results, they intend to start counting early votes before the polls close.
If he runs again, Trump may again find officials unwilling to respond to requests to change the results, as the current governor, Brian Kemp, is expected to be re-elected. The former president worked hard to prevent another Republican candidacy, as, in 2020, Kemp ignored the co-religionist’s appeals and confirmed Biden’s victory – since then he has been the target of the ire of the former White House chief.
On the other side of the dispute for government is Stacey Abrams, an activist for expanding minority access to the vote and seen as crucial for Biden to have emerged victorious there. Abrams and Kemp repeat the 2018 election, which the Republican won with 50.2% of the vote. This year, he has a more comfortable margin, and, until the eve of the election, he appears with an advantage of 7.5 percentage points in voting intentions.
Georgia residents also go to the polls to choose a senator, in one of the most important races to determine whether or not the current president will have a majority in the Senate. The election opposes two black candidates, which brings strong symbolism in the state where some of the biggest names of the black movement in the country acted, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and former congressman John Lewis.
Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock is seeking re-election — he was elected to the post in 2020 for just two years, in the seat of the senator who decided to retire mid-term.
The fact that he is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the same church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, gives him a certain projection — in the memorial mounted in front of the church, a tourist attraction in Atlanta, there are posters promoting the senator’s memoir. “It’s impossible not to vote for him. It’s the history of our people. I’m not so confident in other Democratic candidates, but Warnock is our pastor,” says Ola Tunde, 42, who does not attend church but took advantage of the sunny afternoon to take the daughter to see the place.
Although the polls show the dispute technically tied, throughout October Warnock came to open more than 4 percentage points in relation to his rival, Herschel Walker, a Republican supported by Trump.
He, who said he was against abortion in any situation, even in cases of rape, was accused by two ex-girlfriends of having encouraged and paid them to have abortions in the past.
Furthermore, one of his sons, Christian Walker, 23, a conservative influencer with over 500,000 Instagram followers, has accused his father of domestic violence. “You are not a ‘family man’ when you left us to have sex with a bunch of women, threatened to kill us and made us move more than six times in six months running away from your violence,” he wrote on Twitter. Walker denies all charges.
Opponents hired ads on Google, and today, anyone in Atlanta searching for the candidate’s name will find a site at the top of the list of results titled “Herschel Walker’s Violent Past.” A football star with stints with the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, he has no experience in politics. On his platform, in addition to banning abortion, he advocates “defense of the family”, increased border controls and increased funding for the police.
Now, the nationalized dispute, with the economy worsening under Biden, may have given the Republican a reprieve in the polls. If neither of them reaches 50% of the votes, there will be a second round on December 6, which could delay the definition of who will control the Senate from next year – today the House has 50 senators from each party, with the vote of minerva in the hands of the vice, Kamala Harris.
As each state has its voting and counting rules, it is not possible to be sure that the result of the midterms will be clear on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning (9).
In addition to the case of Georgia, there are other states with fierce races and particular mechanisms that delay the investigation. In Pennsylvania, for example, votes sent by mail, which are expected to be about 1.5 million this year, cannot be counted until after the polls close.
Thus, if there are questions in court, the result can delay even more. In 2020, Biden was declared the winner four days after the election, and four states still had the results indefinite.
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