The US elections will officially take place on Tuesday November 5, but in 47 states voters have already been able to vote for three weeks. The state of Georgia, one of the pivotal states in this election, where Donald Trump denounced fraud four years ago, is even breaking records.
As early voting ends this Friday, November 1, “even in very small counties, more than 60% of voters have already voted”, welcomes Blake Evans, who is organizing these elections for Georgia.
“We have invested in technologies so that the voting machines go faster and avoid queues, which encourages people to come and vote”he explains. In 2020, the presidential election in Georgia was marked by very long queues in front of the polling stations. This time, they will not exceed one hour.
If voters rush to the polls, it is sometimes for fear of fraud, sometimes for fear that their vote will not be counted. Voters prefer to get there as soon as they can, because for four years, the conservative state of Georgia has made it much more difficult to vote by mail, which is in theory possible in the United States.
The idea, however, is to make this election more secure, defends Gabriel Sterling, the Secretary of State's right-hand man, who claims to have “much improved security and the computer system”. “Three weeks ago we avoided a cyberattack on the postal voting site. We gave tools to observers in the polling stations and we trained the teams so that they were ready, whatever happened. “, he explains.
Not sure, however, that this will be enough to prevent legal action after the results. “You can't stop it, we know we'll be sued, because this election is very close and today it's part of an American election.” he said. Procedures which would aim to slow down, or even block, the final announcement of the results on December 17.
