I live in Georgia and I’m getting inundated with pro-Republican ads and mailers for the Senate race. I don’t think the Democrats have a chance of pulling it off - even with near-record turnout in the main election, it was still too close, and on a runoff, more people than not will stay home. I think to win the Republicans would have to stay home AND the democrats will have to maintain the primary turnout, which just isn’t going to happen.
I’m used to my vote never mattering though on any level, so it was nice to have it count for a change.
Well said. The pocket of deplorable Americans is remarkably stable over the decades and centuries. Sometimes they come out to vote in greater numbers than the non-deplorables, and sometimes they don’t, but their existence is a perennial fixture.
Are write in votes allowed in the runoff? I thought that the whole point of the runoff was that there are only two candidates on the ballot so that one candidate could get over 50%. Roger Stone, however, is reportedly encouraging people to write in Donald Trump. If this is allowed, what happens if none of the candidates clear 50%?
Same. I’m shocked the Georgia flipped blue, but not enough to convince my defensive-pessimistic PTSD that a repeat performance is in the cards. I think the “write-in Trump for Senate” movement is just some astroturfed Twitter crap that won’t manifest in any appreciable way.
My predictions are narrow defeat for Ossoff, narrower defeat for Warnock.
According to my reading of the Georgia elections statute, write-in votes are not allowed in the runoff. It does not surprise me at all that Stone was not aware of this.
I wonder what the people who think they’re going to write in Trump will do when they get there and discover that they can’t?
Pity the poor pollworkers in Georgia. (Actually, I already do. Count the votes not once, not twice, but three times, and with everybody yelling at you?)
Sorry, I always confuse plurality and majority. The person with the higher number/percentage of votes wins. I wonder - with only two candidates, is the result necessarily 100%?
If people vote in one race but not the other, it could be less than 100%, depending on how the tabulating software determines percentage. Votes for X/Total votes in the race would be 100% but Votes for X/Total number of ballots could be less.
Or if someone does something goofy like submit a blank ballot, although the tabulating machine might kick that out as an error.
I read a piece a week ago about how Susan Collins pulled off an upset by winning another term comfortably when the votes were counted despite Biden winning Maine by almost double digits, the polls showing her race neck and neck, and that the Trump base of the republican party don’t even like her.
One of the conclusions based on interviews with residents was they didn’t like the barrage of Sara Gideon (her democratic opponent) volunteers from other states phone banking and as one resident put it “interfering” in a local election by telling the people of Maine who best represents Maine. Collins has been senator for twenty years so the majority of local voters had a connection to her.
With all eyes on Georgia for the determination of the senate majority I wonder if that aspect of out of state involvement will be counterproductive.
