Georgia vote counting stretches into morning

Georgia officials counted the final votes of the nation's turbulent 2020 election season on Wednesday as polls closed in two critical races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. The two Senate runoff elections are leftovers from the November general election.

Atlanta:Georgia officials counted the final votes of the nation's turbulent 2020 election season early Wednesday as polls closed in two critical races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

The two Senate runoff elections are leftovers from the November general election, when none of the candidates hit the 50% threshold.

Democrats need to win both races to seize the Senate majority — and, with it, control of the new Congress when Biden takes office in two weeks.

President Donald Trump encouraged his loyalists to turn out in force even as he undermined the integrity of the electoral system by pressing unfounded claims of voter fraud to explain away his own defeat in Georgia.

As of Wednesday morning, it was too early to call the close races. Vote counting is expected to stretch at least into Wednesday morning.

In one contest, Republican Kelly Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the state’s governor, faced Democrat Raphael Warnock, 51, who serves as the senior pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and preached.

The other election pitted 71-year-old former business executive David Perdue, a Republican who held his Senate seat until his term expired on Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist.

At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the Senate’s youngest member.

State officials said there were no major problems with voting on Tuesday.

Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said voting was smooth across the state with minimal wait times, though lines of around an hour built up in Republican-leaning Houston, Cherokee, Paulding and Forsyth counties.

AP