Republican incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, Jr., narrowly secured re-election in the runoff race to represent District 4 in the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC). McDonald secured over 50 percent of the vote totals, while his Democratic opponent, Daniel Blackman, trailed McDonald by 1 point.
The win marked McDonald’s fourth time being elected to the position. He has served GPSC for 16 years.
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Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff claimed victory in their respective U.S. Senate runoff elections as vote counting continued. Warnock declared that he’d won late Tuesday evening, while Ossoff waited until Wednesday morning to declare his win.
At the time of press with over 98 percent reporting in for both races, Warnock led Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) by over 55,600 votes, or just over 1 point. Ossoff led Republican incumbent David Perdue (R-GA) by over 18,400 votes, or just over half a point.
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Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Gabriel Sterling negotiated a $200,000 annual contract for himself last year to oversee the new voting technology from Dominion Voting Systems. Under that position, it’s reported that he worked as an independent contractor rather than as a government employee. However, he identified himself in that position as a full-time employee.
Sterling’s stint last year as an independent contractor aligned with the state’s decision in 2019 to award Dominion a $107 million contract for its voting systems. Prior to working as an independent contractor for the state, Sterling worked under one of his current positions: Chief Operating Officer. He earned much less under that government position – around $114,000 annually. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained the information on Sterling’s contracts through an open records request.
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A Spalding County voter told The Georgia Star News early Tuesday that voting machines broke at a Griffin-area polling place, and instead of receiving paper ballots, workers sent the voters waiting in line away.
In an interview with The Star News, the voter stated that she’d arrived at her polling place at Union Baptist church early because she works several jobs and wanted to ensure she could cast her vote.
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True the Vote, a nonpartisan voters’ rights and election integrity organization, submitted over 364,000 elector challenges for all 159 counties. Georgia law allows a voter to challenge the eligibility of other voters within the same county, so long as probable cause exists.
In a press release, True the Vote explained that the challenge preemptively prevents illegal votes, as opposed to a reactive challenge to ballots cast. They added that once a ballot is cast, it is near-impossible to match a ballot to its voter.
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Democrats are advocating for blue voters to become Georgia residents for the upcoming runoff elections. Georgia doesn’t have a minimum residency requirement, which poses a legal loophole for both parties. Democrats could drum up enough voters to match general election turnouts and flip the state, and Republicans could ensure their hold on two Senate seats.
Additionally, the state’s voter I.D. laws allow individuals to use an out-of-state driver’s license to vote. However, the law defines residency as “without any present intuition of removing therefrom [the fixed habitation].”
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