Significant days for U.S. government
Today and tomorrow will be very significant days for our government as we go into 2021 because of the Georgia senate runoff elections today and Congress’ vote tomorrow on counting the Electoral College.
In Georgia, polls will close at 7 p.m. ET. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R) will try to defeat the Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock. Senator David Perdue (R) will try to defeat the Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff.
Georgia’s election system is unique in that a Senate candidate must receive more than 50% of a vote. During the November election, no candidate had more than 50%. In that election, Warnock was ahead of Loeffler, while Perdue was ahead of Ossoff.
AP News explained that ballot counting will begin after 7 p.m. Absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls to be counted. Military and overseas ballots must be postmarked by today and received by Friday. If an absentee ballot has errors on it, they can be “cured” or corrected by Friday. What this means is that we’ll likely see a repeat of poll results from the 2020 election — almost instant results from in-person voting, but votes being added on later on as absentee ballots are counted. The Republican candidates will likely have an early lead, then it’ll get close as absentee ballots are counted. This part of the process is likely to raise allegations of fraud, but we have to remember that it just takes more time to open up the envelopes and process them and because of the coronavirus pandemic, there are many more absentee ballots than in the past.
If Republicans win one of the two seats, it means that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) will maintain control of the U.S. Senate and Democrats will have to compromise with Republicans to pass legislation during the Biden administration.
If Democrats win both seats, it would split the Senate 50-50 and it would give Democrats control because Vice-President elect Kamala Harris would be the tiebreaker.
Both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden gave speeches last night in Georgia to rally voters to show up and vote for either side.
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Tomorrow at the U.S. Capitol, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over a joint session of Congress to count the Electoral College votes. This means all members of Congress from the House and the Senate will get together, similar to meetings during the State of the Union. This day is typically free of drama, but this year it’ll be controversial because 13 Republican senators and many House Republicans will rise up to challenge the results from several states that President Trump lost in.
When a challenge is issued, both chambers will leave the joint session to debate for up to 2 hours and then proceed on a separate vote. “Business Insider” said the objections could delay the proceedings for several hours or even into Thursday if there are objections against multiple states.
News analysts said the objections will not have any chance of succeeding in changing the outcome of the 2020 election because both chambers of Congress must vote by a simple majority to reject a state’s electors. Because Democrats control the House, there is no chance unless Democrats somehow find something overnight that makes them reject a Biden victory. That is unlikely to happen.
Additionally, At least 18 Republican Senators said they will not object, so with the 48 Democratic Senators, that would defeat the 13 Republican Senators who plan to object. What this means is that we can expect for the 2020 election results that gave Joe Biden a victory to be confirmed. We’ll see what it looks like tomorrow in Congress.
https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/georgia/senate-special/
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953245235/georgia-senate-runoffs-to-determine-which-party-controls-chamber
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-johnny-isakson-georgia-general-elections-elections-eea3b662d4470c6f02ffd500d8aaaff8
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-gop-lawmakers-will-object-to-electoral-votes-on-wednesday-2021-1