Our live coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff elections has ended. You can read more about the results here.
Democrat Jon Ossoff will win his Senate race in Georgia, CNN projects.
His win means Democrats will have control of the Senate. With Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s wins over Georgia’s two incumbent GOP senators, there will be a 50-50 split in the Senate.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, also a Democrat, will cast any tie-breaking votes.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reports. Watch:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling, and other staffers from their office have been relocated from the Georgia State Capitol building for security reasons, Sterling told CNN.
Sterling, the state’s voting implementation manager, said Raffensperger and some of his staff were escorted from their offices with their usual security detail at around 1:30 p.m. ET “out of an abundance of caution.”
Sterling said that this was not a reaction to the breach at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, but rather a proactive move.
A small group of “Stop the Steal” protesters and supporters of President Trump have gathered in front of the Georgia State Capitol. Some of the protesters were armed with long guns, according to CNN Producer Jason Morris.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office at the State Capitol is now closed for the day. There is a heavy law enforcement presence inside and outside of the Capitol.
Gwinnett County election workers have begun scanning the roughly 5,000 absentee votes outstanding into the system.
They began at 1p.m. ET, expect to be finished by 5 p.m. ET and would soon thereafter push those numbers to the Secretary of State’s election results website, Gwinnett County public information officer Joe Sorenson told CNN. But depending on how many absentee ballots need to be adjudicated, that number could be lower.
The ballots are batched into 50 or 100 ballots. If one or more of those ballots needs to be adjudicated, the whole batch will be pulled. They are hoping to have adjudication panels come in this afternoon to handle the small amount of ballots they anticipate will need adjudication, but if they are not able to, then the batches pulled will not be included in the end of day count.
Sorenson told CNN he does not expect the number of ballots needing adjudication to be very high as the ballot only included three races. It leaves a smaller chance of voters making mistakes on their ballots. For example, if 10 ballots in 10 separate batches need adjudication, that could leave as many as 1,000 ballots from being included in the end-of-day count.
A reminder: Adjudication panels include one Democrat, one Republican and a neutral third-party that all must agree on the voter’s intent to cast their ballot for one candidate or another when a mistake has been on the ballot and is rejected by the scanner.
Republicans are not tipping their hands this morning on how Sen. David Perdue will respond if the final count shows him trailing Jon Ossoff inside the margin of .5%, which would allow him to ask for a recount.
Remember: While Ossoff is leading Perdue, the race is still too close to call, and CNN has not yet projected a winner.
There are no automatic recounts in Georgia, a trailing candidate must ask for one.
The Perdue campaign did not respond to a request from CNN about their plans this morning, but in a statement last night promised their supporters that they would exhaust “every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots will be properly counted.”
One GOP source involved in the race told CNN that they “simply have no idea” how Perdue will respond when presented with the option of a recount.
It is important to point out that while there are still votes to be counted, Ossoff’s lead over Perdue is greater than the margin Biden beat Trump by in the general election. That margin was confirmed by three different recounts.
Democrats are moving closer to winning control of the Senate as Jon Ossoff continues to lead GOP incumbent Sen. David Perdue. The race is still too close to call, but Ossoff’s lead has continued as more votes are counted.
CNN already projected that Democrat Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against GOP Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler.
If Ossoff wins his race, there will be a 50-50 split and control of the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaker.
Moments ago, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer congratulated Warnock and Ossoff, saying that “one of the first things” he wants to do as Senate Majority Leader is pass $2,000 stimulus checks.
Remember: CNN has not called the race between Ossoff and Perdue.
GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a staunch Trump ally, said he doesn’t think President Trump’s message to voters – saying that the election was rigged – was “very helpful” for Republicans in the Georgia Senate races.
“It’s a good question, I don’t know the answer, necessarily, whether it was helpful or not. He was gonna get blamed either way,” he said, when asked if Trump’s message that the election was was rigged was helpful to turn out voters.
Cramer continued,
More than 1 million absentee-by-mail votes have been counted in Georgia, election official Gabriel Sterling said in a press briefing.
He also provided details on the number of absentee ballots that have been checked in but not yet scanned and uploaded as results as of 10 a.m. ET.
“Counties are still putting stuff in, they’re also scanning. So these numbers will be a little fluid during the day today. But these are the basic ones we have as of 10 a.m. this morning,” he said.
Here’s a look at some of the most updated numbers from Sterling:
“The biggest buckets of them are from the metro area with a handful scattered about the state. We have requested of the counties, we don’t have a right to direct them, but we have requested they get all of the absentee ballots accounted for as in they received them,” Sterling said, adding that he hopes most counties will make the deadline and upload the absentee ballots online by 1 p.m. ET today.
He added:
“Again, I want to remind everybody, these folks are all tired. They’ve had a long day and a long week and a long month and a long year, but they are doing their best to get these results quickly. I know some people were surprised how quickly results did come in, but that’s the advantage of having three races on the ballots.”
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, reiterated that President Trump is to blame for Republicans losing key races, including the presidency and now presumably two Senate races.
Remember: Democrat Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against GOP Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler, CNN projects. While Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading GOP incumbent Sen. David Perdue, the race is still too close to call.
Sterling said that by telling people their vote doesn’t count and “don’t come and vote, then you spark a civil war within a GOP that needs to be united to get through a tough fight like this in a state that’s been trending – from the point of view of Republicans – from the other direction for years now.”
As a Republican he said, “It irritates me.”
President-elect Joe Biden released a statement today congratulating Raphael Warnock on his projected win in the Georgia Senate runoff election and paying homage to the “twin powers” of Georgia, Stacey Abrams and Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Biden says he intends to move forward with key Cabinet nominations while the Georgia results are confirmed.
“My nominees for critical national security positions at State, Defense, Treasury, and Homeland Security have bipartisan support and have been confirmed by the Senate before. They need to be in their jobs as soon as possible after January 20th,” he said.
According to Richard Barron, Fulton County Director of Registration and Elections, and Regina Waller, a spokeswoman for the Fulton Co. Board of Elections, there are roughly 7,500 ballots that still have to be adjudicated in Fulton County, which includes matching signatures.
Waller tells CNN that most of those ballots have been counted but are not included in the total until they are adjudicated.
After finishing the process with the 7,500 ballots, that will conclude absentee vote by mail until Friday, when they will count the remaining overseas and military ballots that can arrive up until then.
Barron said that the vote review panel meets at 3 p.m. they will post the latest absentee by mail totals after that.
Several Senate Republicans are privately pointing the finger squarely at President Trump for the failures in Georgia.
A senior Republican official involved in both Georgia Senate races says of Trump:
Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney weighed in on the Georgia Senate races on Wednesday morning, saying:
Romney also commented on today’s joint session of Congress, where many of his colleagues plan to challenge Electoral College results, saying “the gambit we’re seeing today is very disappointing.”
Data submitted as part of a federal court order shows that USPS moved nearly all of the 471 ballots it processed on Election Day for the Georgia Senate runoff – moving them on-time, and in time to count.
The total amount of ballots processed by USPS on Election Day is down from its peak in early December — over 16,000 in one day. The data suggests that a significant number of Georgians either sent their ballots in early, or turned in their ballots in-person to election offices or ballots boxes.
The 471 ballots were processed between 80% and 97% on time.
To ensure no ballots would be left behind, the USPS also conducted sweeps of processing facilities yesterday. The final sweep found 210 ballots that the USPS delivered in time to count.
Ballots had to arrive by 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday and military and overseas ballots must arrive by Friday to count.
The data does not include ballots that are being sped up by “local turnaround,” one of the extraordinary measures USPS has implemented since December 28. Local turnaround delivers ballots directly to election officials instead of having it go first to mail processing facilities.
Gwinnett County is processing a little more than 4,800 absentee ballots that remain to be counted, county spokesperson Joe Sorenson tells CNN.
The county expects to complete the process of batching and sorting those ballots by noon ET today, take a break for lunch, and then begin tabulating the ballots in the afternoon.
Sorenson says they expect to be completed by close of business today, barring any technical issues and then those numbers will be added to Secretary of State’s election results site.
That will be the only addition to the tally today, he said. Smaller batches of other categories of ballots, like provisional, cured, and overseas ballots, will remain to be counted.
Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff holds a narrow lead over his Republican rival David Perdue in Georgia’s Senate runoff, but the race has not yet been projected.
CNN projected early Wednesday morning that Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
As the votes continue to be counted, here’s a look at the recount rules:
In Georgia, the county certification deadline is 5 p.m. Jan. 15
The state certification deadline is 5 p.m. Jan. 22
Rev. Raphael Warnock, who is projected to win his Senate race, said that his victory was “stunning, but I think in America anything is possible.”
“That’s why I love this country so much and I refuse to give in to the forces of cynicism,” the reverend told CNN on Wednesday. “It takes hard work. Change is slow, often it comes in fits and starts. Our democracy tends to expand and then there are moments when it contracts.”
Warnock will make history when he becomes Georgia’s first Black senator and the first Black Democrat to represent a southern state in the Senate.
Warnock also said he’d spoken to Jon Ossoff, whose race against incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue is still too close to call.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, gave an update on the state of the Senate runoff election this morning. There are “a little over 65,000 votes are still outstanding, mainly from the absentees that came in yesterday,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett, stressing that that number is an estimate.
The majority of the ballots coming in will be from traditionally Democratic areas of DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb and Henry Counties, Sterling said.
He said he expects to have a “very clear picture” of remaining votes by noon.
“We likely will see the leads of the Democrat challengers increase as we go through the morning,” he said.
A Georgia voting officials said ballots in the state’s Senate runoff races were not “found” as President Trump is claiming, instead, they are “cast ballots.”
President Trump tweeted this morning, “They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools.”
Sterling said they have known about thousands of advanced voting ballots since Friday when early voting ended.
“None of this is surprising, this is part of his intention to continue to create chaos around this as we go into his final act today as they challenge the results from Georgia and other states,” he said.
In terms of why so many Democrats turned out to vote in this election, Sterling said President Trump is also responsible for that.
“While he may inspire people on the Republican side he pisses people off on the Democratic side. When you can have a credible villain that helps the Democrats turn out their vote,” he said.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock is projected to win against GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of two critical Senate runoff races in Georgia.
Fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff is currently leading Sen. David Perdue in the other race. If Ossoff wins, Democrats will claim control of the Senate with a 50/50 divide, plus a tie-breaking vote from Kamala Harris once she is sworn in as vice president.
Here’s where the vote count currently stands:
Key counties will resume counting votes this morning. They include:
In addition, the state says up to 17,000 overseas and military votes could be received by the Friday 5 p.ET m. deadline. But the expectation of the votes that will be returned by Friday will only be a fraction of that number.
This list just represents a snapshot of counties across the state and is not exhaustive. You can see a full breakdown of each county’s vote here.
Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, whose race against incumbent Republican senator David Purdue is too close to call, spoke this morning and thanked his supporters.
Projecting confidence at his chances of winning the race, he said:
“Whether you were for me or against me, I will be for you in the US Senate. I will serve all the people of the state, I will give everything I’ve got to ensuring that Georgia’s interests are represented in the US Senate.”
Remember: CNN has not yet projected a winner in this race. You can see the latest on where the vote stands here.
He reiterated his campaign’s promise to focus on combatting the coronavirus pandemic and delivering economic relief to people who have been impacted.
“I will work in the US Senate to support a robust public health response so that we can defeat this virus … and to rush direct economic relief to people who need help right now,” he said. “This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state, for all the people of this state, and they will be my guiding principles as I serve this state in the US Senate, ensuring that every Georgian has great health care no matter our wealth.”
