Washington CNN —
If Georgia voters were hoping to avoid talking politics at Thanksgiving, the state’s tightly contested Senate race has other plans.
Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projects, forcing a runoff election set for December 6.
But what exactly does that mean? And how will the runoff election work?
Here’s what you need to know.
A runoff is an additional election used to determine the winner of a certain race when neither candidate earns the required threshold for victory – in this case, 50%.
In Georgia, runoffs are more straightforward than general elections in that the candidate with the most votes wins.
Georgia’s top elections official, Brad Raffensperger, said counties are already preparing for the December 6 election, and voters can request absentee ballots starting Wednesday through November 28 via the state’s online portal.
Early voting must begin by November 28 in all counties, but Raffensperger said his office anticipates some counties could have early voting on Saturday, November 26 or Sunday, November 27. “We are working with the counties to find out what their plans are on this front,” he said.
Notably, the logistics of the 2022 runoff will be different than in years passed. The 2021 Georgia law that cut the length of runoffs from nine weeks to four means that the deadline for a new...
As world leaders gathered in New York for the High-Level Week of the 81st UN General Assembly, a “breaking news” post began circulating in Sri Lanka claiming that the country had been removed from ...