Joe Biden won the state of Georgia in 2020 by just under 12,000 votes. To this day, Donald Trump and his supporters accuse the authorities of the result being wrong. The election workers are under enormous pressure.
David Schafbuch reports from Atlanta
It’s a very quiet morning at the polling station in downtown Atlanta. Only a police officer in uniform has just cast his vote in the austere government building.
Until November 1st, voters here in the Georgia capitol and other election offices could do the so-called “Early voting” use: so cast your vote early before the actual election day on November 5th. This is intended to streamline the electoral process. The method is becoming increasingly popular: In total, more than half of the votes that were counted in the state in 2020 have already been cast in Georgia. Other states also use this option.
This morning, however, many of the chairs set out for waiting voters remain empty. Fulton County public information officer Regina Waller still has a busy schedule. A number of journalists would want to know from her exactly how the election in Georgia is going.
Waller explains the interest this way: Georgia was already very competitive in the last presidential election. As a swing state, this will probably be the case again in the current election, she says. Fulton County, which includes the state’s largest city, Atlanta, is the most populous in Georgia. That’s why all eyes are on Fulton County, explains Waller as she leads through the small polling station.
Interest in Georgia is also so great because in no other state was the result in the presidential election four years ago closer. Just 0.2 percentage points was enough for Joe Biden to win in Georgia. The result in 2020 was breeding ground for Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory that he had been deprived of victory. To this day, the 78-year-old has no evidence of this. On the contrary: several recounts confirmed the result.
Four years later, Georgia faces another extremely close election – and it’s already becoming apparent that the result could be even more hotly contested.
In 2020, Donald Trump was initially ahead of Joe Biden in the state at an early stage of the count. As more and more votes were added that had been received by postal vote due to Corona, the tide turned in favor of the democratic challenger. Before that, the Democrats last won Georgia in 1992 with Bill Clinton.
Trump and some of his colleagues subsequently contested the result and put those responsible for the election under pressure: In January 2021, the elected president called the Secretary of the Interior of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger: Raffensperger, who was also the head of election supervision, was called by Trump asked if he would like to vote for Trump “find” could. Many interpreted his words as a direct call to manipulate the election. Raffensperger and his office manager Gabriel Sterling, both Republicans, even received death threats after the election.
Trump’s attempt at manipulation was unsuccessful and is now occupying the judiciary: the ex-president and his colleagues were arrested with the help of the so-called “Rico”-Acts accused. The law was originally introduced to bring criminal groups such as mafia clans to justice together. However, the start of the trial was delayed so that Trump no longer has to take a seat in the dock before the election.
However, others have already been found guilty. Most recently, Trump’s lawyer met Rudy Giuliani: The 80-year-old, former mayor of New York, had publicly accused two election workers from Georgia of manipulating the results in the state. For this he has to pay the women almost 150 million dollars.
