Early voting for the November presidential elections begins this Tuesday in Georgia, a close state where Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are in a virtual tie, according to the most recent polls.
With 16 votes in the Electoral College, Georgia is one of the seven states that could define the race for the White House, so both candidates are intensifying their campaigns this week when the polls open and they plan to hold events in the metropolitan area from Atlanta.
Trump plans to participate this Tuesday in a Fox News town hall in Forsyth County, a northeastern suburb of Atlanta, with an “audience composed entirely of women,” and will finally close the day with a rally at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, according to his campaign sources.
Harris, for her part, plans to visit Atlanta this Saturday, in what will be her fifth visit to Georgia since she became the Democratic presidential candidate in the summer after President Joe Biden announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign. .
Early voting, which runs through Nov. 1, begins at a time when Harris and Trump are virtually tied in most polls published in recent days.
Electoral authorities anticipate a high voter turnout, so some counties have increased voting centers and the number of workers assigned to each precinct.
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In Georgia there are approximately 8.2 million registered voters
“We are prepared for historic participation,” Keisha Smith, electoral director of DeKalb, one of the largest counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area, told local media.
There are approximately 8.2 million registered voters in Georgia, according to the latest data from the Office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Of them, some 4.1 million identify as white, 2.5 as African-American, 877,000 do not identify with any of these parties, 380,000 as Hispanic and 250,000 as Asian or Pacific, according to official figures.
The deadline to register to vote in Georgia was last October 7 and the deadline was not extended, despite the efforts of some organizations and activists who asked to extend the process after Hurricane Helene passed through Georgia, where it left a trail. of destruction and death at the end of September.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by voting rights groups to reopen voter registration, arguing that “the disruption caused by Hurricane Helene unfairly deprived” people of the opportunity to register.
The legal action, brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project, maintained that historically there has been an increase in the number of people registering during the last days of the process.
Georgia was a key state in President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 elections, voting for the first time Democratic since 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated George HW Bush, thanks to a coalition of young and minority voters, including members of the Latino, African American and Asian communities.
According to official figures, Georgia’s presidential race was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, so organizations are carrying out intense campaigns to mobilize voters.
With information from EFE.
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