As Americans recover from the roller coaster that was the 2020 presidential election, there is still much to be decided. From legal battles to the Georgia Senate runoff election, there is still much to be decided.
Although former Vice President Biden won the popular vote by over 5 million votes and received the 270 electoral votes he needed to get a majority in the electoral college, the election is still not over. As soon as major news outlets started to call the election for Biden, President Trump pledged to fight tooth and nail for the election, citing reports of voter fraud, and calling for recounts in several swing states that Biden won. Although President Trump has filed lawsuits in several swing states, the majority of his campaign’s lawsuits have been thrown out by courts. Important lawsuits filed by the Trump Campaign have been thrown out in states such as Michigan and Arizona where Biden narrowly beat the president by a margin of 1-3 percent. However, President Trump’s lawyers have been able to take several cases to court in Pennsylvania, whose 20 electoral votes won Biden the election initially, and have forced a recount in Georgia where Biden won with an extremely narrow margin of votes.
While the fight for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes is extremely important, there is another battle brewing in the Peach State: the fight for the senate. Democrats and independents were able to flip several senate seats which brought them closer to being the majority party in the senate. Since neither party was able to get over 51 percent of the vote in the Georgia senate election there will be another “runoff” election on Jan. 5, which will decide who will control the Senate. If Democrats are able to win both seats in Georgia they will have 50 seats in the senate (combined with the 2 independents who often vote in solidarity with democrats) which is a frightening look for Republicans who were not able to flip the house, and lost the presidential election. Although 50 votes is not a majority in the Senate, ties are broken by the vice president who in this case would be Joe Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris.
While President Trump continues to file lawsuits and dispute election results in states throughout the United States, republicans and democrats are preparing to go to war in Georgia. Although no one knows where Trump’s lawsuits or Georgia’s runoff election will go, it is easy to say that this election is far from over.
