Votes cast by thousands of military personnel in Georgia could shift how the presidential election shakes out in the Peach State.
Despite multiple news outlets on Saturday announcing that Democratic candidate Joe Biden may become the next president of the United States, vote-counting continued in Georgia, one of the few battleground states that accepts service members’ ballots after Election Day.
“We anticipate military ballots could play a decisive role in this election, given that these ballots are some of the latest to arrive and be counted,” Jack Noland, a researcher at the nonpartisan group Count Every Hero, an initiative of anti-corruption advocacy group RepresentUs, told the Washington Post.
Ballots in other battleground states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania are also still being counted. North Carolina accepts ballots from military and overseas citizens through Thursday, while Pennsylvania and Nevada accepts them through Tuesday.
County Every Hero, which is part of the Military Vote Coalition, has urged restraint in declaring winners until all military votes are counted.
Timothy Boxer, an Augusta, Georgia, transplant who now lives in Atlanta, told the Washington Examiner that calling an election before military ballots are counted sends the wrong message.
“You fight for your country, and your country can’t wait a couple of days to count your vote?” he said. “That’s a slap in the face.”
Madison Griggs, also from Augusta, agreed.
“It looks really bad and tells them they don’t matter which no one in this state thinks,” she said.
Georgia ranks fifth in the United States for total Department of Defense military, civilian direct-hire, reserve, and National Guard employment. The Army employs about 63% of Georgia’s military personnel while the Air Force employs 23%.
In the past, military personnel and their families have leaned toward conservative candidates, but an August Military Times poll found Trump falling out of favor with uniformed service members. Trump support had fallen to under 38% in 2020, compared to 46% in 2016.
Scrutiny of ballots that were not counted until after Election Day intensified as Trump’s campaign mounted legal challenges in Georgia.
On Thursday, retired military flag and general officers, along with former secretaries of the Army and the Air Force, slammed Trump for his tweet about stopping the ballot count after Election Day.
“ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”, Trump tweeted.
“Mr. President, remember your role as commander in chief,” retired Marine Corps Gen. Tony Zinni said during a call with reporters. “I think one of the obligations is to protect the rights of your service members that serve under you … and ensure that their voice is heard and their vote is counted.”
On Friday, the president tweeted vague questions about military ballots in Georgia in an effort to continue to raise doubts about the integrity of the election process.
“Where are the missing military ballots in Georgia? What happened to them?” he tweeted.
Gabriel Sterling, the Voting System Implementation Manager for the Georgia secretary of state, said Friday that while military ballots had been issued but not yet counted, there is no evidence that they are “missing” and that they are likely in the process of being delivered back to Georgia.
