Early in-person voting begins in Georgia today for the state’s Senate runoff races that pit incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democratic nominees Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock.
If the Democrats can win, it would tie the Senate up at 50-50 for the start of the Joe Biden administration, with vice president-elect Kamala Harris holding the casting vote.
The Associated Press report that more than half of the record 5 million votes in the state in the 3 November general election were cast during the two-week early voting period. Early in-person voting could be even more important for the runoffs because of the short time frame for voters to request and send back ballots by mail.
Overnight the president of the United States was making clear just how he felt about the way that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp ran the November vote.
On Friday Warnock emphasised how important a factor it could be, saying after a speech to labor union canvassers. “It’s how we won in the general and it’s how we’re going to win in the runoff.â€
No one expects turnout to be as high in the runoff as the general election. But Bernard Fraga, an Emory University professor who studies voting, said overall turnout could rise as high as 4 million.
More than 125,000 people cast ballots in October on the first day of early in-person voting before the general election. Gabriel Sterling, election system implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State, said he expects a surge of people on Monday. Some Atlanta-area early voting sites in October and November saw people frequently lined up for hours.
“As always, on the first day of early voting, it’s kind of like when the iPhone comes out,†Sterling said last week. “People want to go get the new iPhone at the Apple store. They’re going to stand in line for a while.â€
One question is how many mail-in ballots will be cast in the election. By Friday, 1.2 million mail-in ballots had been requested and 200,000 returned. In the general election, Biden won 65% of the 1.3 million absentee ballots that were returned, a record fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 86,000 voters who did not vote in November had requested ballots as of Friday, according to statistics from Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks voting.
Fraga said it’s possible that mail-in ballots, if anything, will be even more favorable for Democrats in the runoff because of attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting by President Donald Trump and many Georgia Republicans.
The US will hold a climate summit of the world’s major economies early next year, within 100 days of Joe Biden taking office, and seek to rejoin the Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency, in a boost to international climate action.
Leaders from 75 countries met without the US in a virtual Climate Ambition Summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France at the weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris accord. The absence of the US underlined the need for more countries, including other major economies such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, to make fresh commitments on tackling the climate crisis.
Biden said in a statement: “I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office … We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future. We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power.â€
He reiterated his pledge to put the US on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and said the move would be good for the US economy and workers. “We’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world.â€
Read more of our environment correspondent Fiona Harvey’s report here: US to hold world climate summit early next year and seek to rejoin Paris accord
Donald Trump’s decision not to immediately make a statement by taking the Covid vaccine certainly muddies the message from his administration, which is due to roll out a massive pro-vaccine advertising campaign imminently to attempt to counter public mistrust. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael D. Shear report for the New York Times that:
The Building Vaccine Confidence campaign, overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, will unfold in an atmosphere of hope as vaccinations begin. The celebrity component — which was to include the actor Dennis Quaid and the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus — was scrapped after an inquiry by House Democrats prompted Alex M. Azar II, the health secretary, to order an internal review of the plan.
The new initiative will take a “science-based approach,†said Mark Weber, the federal health official who is running it, and will begin this week with a first wave of advertisements in print, social media and radio, with television advertising added when the vaccine becomes more broadly available.
The effort — developed by Fors Marsh Group, a market research group, under contract with the government — is focused on what officials are calling the movable middle: people who are hesitant to take the vaccine, but who can be persuaded to do so. But that will not be an easy task.
“I have advised my team that we recognize our operating environment is complicated, we have a public health mission, and we need to stay focused on that,†said Weber, a 30-year career government official who has a master’s degree in marketing. He acknowledged that the campaign was battling “a credibility factor right now,†with a high level of distrust in government and fears about the safety of a vaccine that was produced in record time.
On Friday, while declining to talk specifically about president Trump, Dr Anthony Fauci said “When you have an anti-science element together with a divisiveness in the country, it will be challenging.â€
Read more here: New York Times – Trump administration plans a rushed effort to encourage Americans to be vaccinated
Donald Trump has said he is reversing an administration directive to vaccinate top government officials against Covid-19.
Trump made the announcement hours after his administration confirmed that senior US officials, including some White House aides who work in close proximity to Trump and the vice-president, Mike Pence, would be offered coronavirus vaccines as soon as this week under federal continuity of government plans.
“People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the programme, unless specifically necessary,†Trump said in a tweet. “I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time.â€
It is unclear at this juncture whether Trump is attempting to send the message that frontline healthcare workers and seniors should be a priority over DC staffers and the administration leadership, or whether it is a signal that Trump has personally cooled on the idea of a vaccine that he was exerting political pressure on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve. On Friday he had ordered them, via Twitter, to “Get the dam vaccines out NOWâ€.
Several senior figures at the White House, including Trump himself, have been diagnosed with the coronavirus in recent months.
Donald Trump on Monday could suffer a withering blow to his increasingly hopeless effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election when 538 members of the electoral college will cast their ballots and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.
Under the arcane formula which America has followed since the first election in 1789, Monday’s electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the 46th president-in-waiting. Electors, including political celebrities such as both Bill and Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitols across the country to cement the outcome of this momentous race.
Normally, the process is figurative and barely noted. This year, given Trump’s volatile display of tilting at windmills in an attempt to negate the will of the American people, it will carry real political significance.
Trump continued those quixotic efforts over the weekend, sparking political unrest in several cities including the nation’s capital. On Sunday morning he tweeted in all caps that this was the “most corrupt election in US history!â€.
In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, he insisted that his anti-democratic mission was not over. “We keep going and we’re going to continue to go forward,†he said, before repeating a slew of lies about the election having been rigged.
Trump’s barefaced untruths about having won key states including Pennsylvania and Georgia went entirely unchallenged by the Fox News interviewer, Brian Kilmeade.
Any faltering hopes Trump might still harbor of hanging on to power were shattered on Friday when the US supreme court bluntly dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas to block Biden’s victory in four other states. In a different case, a Wisconsin supreme court judge decried Trump’s lawsuit aiming to nullify the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it “smacked of racismâ€.
Despite the categoric rebuff that Trump has suffered in dozens of cases, including before the nation’s highest court, his unprecedented ploy to tear up democratic norms continues to inflict untold damage on the country with potential long-term consequences. The Texas-led push to overturn the election result was backed by 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives – almost two-thirds of the party’s conference – as well as Republican state attorneys general from 18 states.
Read more of Ed Pilkington’s report here: Electoral college vote may be knockout blow to Trump’s ploy to subvert election
Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of US politics, on a milestone occasion as the electoral college formally casts the nation’s votes for president.
- The electoral college will meet in state capitols across the US today to case the votes to confirm that Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be heading to the White House as president and first lady in January.
- Normally a barely noticed ceremonial event, this year it has added significance as outgoing one-term president Donald Trump continues to dispute the result, spreading baseless conspiracies of widespread voter fraud across multiple states that nearly 50 court cases have failed to demonstrate any evidence for.
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Violence broke out in the streets of Washington DC after far-right groups clashed with counter-protesters in the aftermath of a march by conservatives denying Biden’s victory.
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On Sunday the US recorded 190,920 new coronavirus cases, and 1,389 further deaths, according to figures from the Johns Hopkins University. Figures are often slightly lower at the weekend due to different reporting practices on a Sunday.
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The US is on track to exceed 300,000 total deaths from Covid today.
- There is some light at the end of the tunnel – trucks hauling trailers loaded with suitcase–sized containers of Covid-19 vaccine rolled out of Pfizer’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday – launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the US.
- They aren’t, apparently, heading to the White House though. Officials had originally said senior members of the Trump administration would be among the first people to be given the jab, but Donald Trump said he had asked for an “adjustment†to be made.
- Reports suggest that hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the US treasury and commerce departments. It led to a national security council meeting at the White House on Saturday.
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President-elect Joe Biden is expected to address the nation tonight at 8pm ET to speak on “the electoral college vote certification and the strength and resilience of our democracyâ€.
