New Delhi: Two runoff elections in the southern US state of Georgia Tuesday will determine whether the Democrats or Republicans control power in the US Senate.
At a drive-in rally in Atlanta Monday, Joe Biden said voters in Georgia will “chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for the next generation”. The same day, US President Donald Trump also told people in Dalton “you just can’t let them (Democrats) steal the US Senate”.
ThePrint explains why the Georgia runoffs are crucial and how it will impact the control of either of the two parties in the Upper House of the US Congress.
Why runoffs are being held in Georgia
Georgia is among 10 US states where a candidate must get at least 50 per cent of the votes to win. In other states, the winner of an election is the candidate who receives the most votes, even if it is less than a majority. But in Georgia, unless a candidate meets this threshold, the race is decided by a run-off election.
A run-off election is essentially a rematch between candidates, which is held in case no contender is able to reach the 50 per cent majority criteria. Under Georgia law, the two candidates polling highest votes then face off again in a runoff election to determine the winner in case of an uncleared majority.
In Georgia, Republican Senator David Perdue is running against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, while Democrat Raphael Warnock is challenging Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.
During the November election, Loeffler had won 25.9 per cent of the votes while Warnock received 32.9 per cent. Perdue won 49.7 per cent of the votes, while Ossoff secured 48 per cent.
Georgia’s population has around 52 per cent non-Latino Whites and 32 per cent Blacks, according to 2019 census data. Data from the Pew Research Center has noted that Black residents made up nearly half of the 1.9 million increase in Georgia’s voting population since 2000.
In 2019, 2.5 million Black voters made up a third of the total Georgia electorate. The Biden-Harris win in the state, during the 2020 US election, was the first time in 30 years that Georgia went to a Democratic presidential candidate.
Importance of win in Georgia
The US Congress consists of two segments — the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are 435 representatives in the House who are elected on a two-year term and this number is proportionate to a state’s population. The Senate has 100 members — two from each of its 50 states — who are elected for a six-year-term.
Out of the 100 members in the Senate, Republicans currently hold 50 seats and the Democrats 48. There are two independent candidates.
If both Democrat candidates, Ossoff and Warnock, win Tuesday, there will be a 50-50, Democratic-Republican split in the Senate. It will give Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris the opportunity to break tie votes in favour of any legislation or committee being proposed by the Democrats.
But in case any of the Democrats doesn’t win, the Republicans will be in majority and this could influence Biden’s plans as well as policies on key issues such as climate emergency, immigration, voting rights and racial justice in the Senate.
Also read: Why Trump’s phone call looking for votes is what a coup looks like
Why the Senate is important
While any legislation has to pass both the House and Senate, the latter is the more prestigious one. The US Constitution gives the Senate power to approve presidential nominations, including Supreme Court justices.
Also, the Senate has the sole power to conduct impeachment trials while serving as the jury, as was seen in the case of former president Bill Clinton who was acquitted in 1999, and President Trump last year.
During President Trump’s trial, even though the House controlled by the Democrats had voted to impeach him on charges of abuse of power and obstructing the US Congress, the Senate voted to acquit him.
The Senate also holds investigative hearings — the most famous being the one into the Watergate scandal in the 1970s that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency.
During the US Presidential elections in 2020, Biden got 24,73,633 votes — 11,779 votes more than Trump. A 62-minute call by Trump was released by The Washington Post Monday in which he could be heard urging Georgia election officials to “find” thousands of votes and recalculate the election results to flip the state to him.
With inputs from Saumya Sharma
Also read: How Trump has fractured his own party with bid to subvert election