Nevada and Georgia have become two key states in the nail-biting election race that has seen Joe Biden edge ahead of President Donald Trump on Thursday.
Counting continues in most states, but all eyes are on the crucial swing areas that both candidates need to win to secure the presidency.
Former chair of Republican National Committee Michael Steele told ABC News Breakfast that “what's left are largely votes in major metropolitan centres.”
“These states, and the surrounding suburbs of those metropolitan centres, are heavily Democratic, heavily African-American, and, therefore, heavily slanted towards Joe Biden,” he said.
In Georgia, the counties with the most remaining votes are in metropolitan Atlanta. Both are growing Democrat areas with significant black populations at 44.5 percent and 54.9 percent respectively.
Black voters in Georgia are backing Biden at 87 percent, according to National Election Pool’s exit polls.
Mondale Robinson from the Black Male Voter project, an organisation that aims to promote voter turnout amongst black men across the US, said there are some key factors contributing to comparatively slower counts in these areas.
“Urban areas have more population and votes to count; COVID-19 means more people have access to mail-in voting and early voting.”
Mondale said that there is evidence of subpar equipment being provided to areas with higher black populations.
“In Georgia there were a few places where white voters were able to walk in and walk out, and in black areas, some voting machines wouldn’t work.”
A machine glitch halted voting in Morgan (22.3 per cent black population) and Spalding (34.6 per cent black population) counties, which stopped voters from casting machine ballots for .
Vote counting in Fulton, Georgia’s largest county, was delayed due to a pipe burst in a room where absentee ballots were being counted, which has affected how quickly statewide results can be reported.
No Democratic presidential candidate has won Georgia since Bill Clinton was first elected in 1992, and it’s been 22 years since a Democratic nominee for governor or US Senate carried the state. Shifting demographics -- with more Black, Latino and Asian American voters joined by white transplants from other states -- have made the state more competitive.
Concerned citizens and members gathered in New York to demand 'every vote' be counted on 4 November, 2020 Source: AAP
Lawsuits incoming
US President Donald Trump's campaign and the Georgia Republican Party have filed a lawsuit against the Chatham County Board of Elections asking a judge to order the county to secure and account for ballots received after 7pm on Election Day.
The lawsuit alleges that a Republican observer watched a poll worker take unprocessed absentee ballots from a back room and mix them into processed absentee ballots waiting to be tabulated. In Georgia, ballots must be received by 7pm on Election Day in order to count. Chatham County contains Savannah and leans Democratic.
Mondale from the Black Mail Voter Project said Trump is only trying to stop mail-in ballots where he risks losing electoral college votes.
“He wants to stop it in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and because he knows he has a risk of losing them because of where the outstanding votes are,” he said.
“He has been trying to discredit the mail-in ballots very hard. But this country has been voting by mail since the civil war.
“The only person crying foul is Donald Trump and that’s because he’s about to lose the election.”
