Barbarosa
JF-Expert Member
- Apr 16, 2015
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Biden lead in Arizona shrinks
Mamlaka zimethibitisha kutakuwa ya marudio ya zoezi la kuhesabu kura zilizopigwa katika Uchaguzi Mkuu uliofanyika mapema mwezi huu, na mchakato utafanywa kwa mikono
Jimbo hilo limekuwa upande wa Chama cha Republican kwa miaka mingi na mara ya mwisho Democratic kushinda ilikuwa 1992 ambapo Bill Clinton alishinda
Katika matokeo ya awali Rais Mteule, Joe Biden alikuwa anaongoza kwa kura zipatazo 14,000 dhidi ya Rais Donald Trump
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Georgia has confirmed there will be a full hand recount of its US election votes after the result in the state remains too close to call.
President-elect Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes out of nearly five million votes counted.
Nearly all of the ballots have been processed.
Election officials announced an audit of the result, meaning a full recount is triggered.
"With the margin being so close, it will require a full, by-hand recount in each county," Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said at a press conference.
He wants the recount to start by the end of the week and expects it to take up until the certification deadline of 20 November.
The flipping of Georgia would be seismic. It honestly can't be overstated. To go from red to blue would have seemed like some sort of a crazy dream a few years ago; a few months ago, maybe even a few weeks ago. Not any more.
The state has consistently been on the side of a Republican presidential candidate for decades.
The last time they voted for a Democratic candidate was in 1992 when Bill Clinton won.
But if the uninformed outside this state thought it was a guaranteed solid red this time round, they haven't be watching the quiet revolution going on inside Georgia over the past few years.
This is a state where we found huge racial divisions; a chasm of social inequality and massive renewed enthusiasm for voting amongst the black community.
And this about two weeks before polling day.
Atlanta is amongst the richest cities in America, yet has one of the highest crime rates. It's also the cradle of the country's civil rights movement.
The place where one of the nation's most famous sons comes from - and Martin Luther King's legacy of non-violent civil unrest seeps through everything here.
We saw snaking long lines of mainly black voters in the lead up to election day.
Some had waited 11 hours; others four, three, two hours outside early voting centres to make sure their voices were heard.
And they were utterly determined this time, their voice should be heard loud and clear - and that it should be counted.
The Black Voters Matter campaign was working all hours to rally their community, many of whom, frankly, had lost faith in the voting system. They had teams of young people running up garden paths, sliding voting posters into front door cracks and leaving them on doorsteps.
They were organising convoys of free transport to take the young, elderly, fragile and car-less to cast their vote. They held rallies and poll gatherings. They hit the phones.
Despite the recount, the Democrats of Georgia firmly believe they've won the state.
So why and how has Georgia reached this point?
Several converging factors: first, about a million new voters registered in this 2020 contest, many believed to be young and black.
The state, and Atlanta in particular, has seen a big influx of Black, Hispanic and Latino residents from elsewhere in search of work and although not a monolithic voting block, many tended to be seen as more left-leaning - and the third is an African-American politician called Stacey Abrams.
Ms Abrams was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2018.
She came within a whisker of winning but claimed her victory had been stolen by her Republican rival, Brian Kemp, who was also the person in charge of organising the election.
Then there were multiple complaints about fewer polling stations; confusing ID laws; the disenfranchising of many who were struck from the electoral roll for tiny identity differences such as a missing hyphen, and the malfunctioning of many of the electronic voting machines.
An investigation discovered her suspicions were well founded.
It found 340,000 people had been improperly purged from voter registration rolls without notice; Secretary of State Kemp, a Trump loyalist, had previously blocked 53,000 people from registering to vote due to minor discrepancies such as name spelling or missing initials in the state records.
The vast majority affected (80%) were black and Ms Abrams lost by a margin of just 55,000 votes.
Ms Abrams never conceded but filed several lawsuits and has continued to be a motivating force amongst the black community and a steadfast defender and fighter for transparent democracy.
She set up a Fair Fight campaign last year well ahead of the 2020 presidential contest to raise awareness, instigate civil rights action and mobilise an army of volunteers to take on the rampant voter suppression she believes is going on, not just in Georgia but across the country.
