See also The Guardian's video on the Georgia Governor race: Stacey Abrams v Brian Kemp: inside the bitter battle for Georgia's soul
The closely watched governor's race in Georgia, however, told a more contentious story, as the Democrat Stacey Abrams vied to become the first black woman elected governor in US history. Abrams was running against the Republican Brian Kemp, who as Georgia's sitting secretary of state remained at the helm of the office tasked with overseeing its elections.Leading up to the election, Kemp's office put at least 53,000 voter registrations on hold -- the majority of which applied to black voters -- citing Georgia's so-called "exact match" law. The restrictions could have prevented thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots due to minor discrepancies with other identification documents that included missing hyphens, middle initials or accent marks in a name.
Abrams, who narrowly trailed Kemp as returns poured in on Tuesday, refused to concede.
"We are going to make sure that every vote is counted, every single vote," she said. "In a civilized nation, the machinery of democracy should work for everyone, everywhere."
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North Dakota: Voter suppression tactics alone may have prevented Senator Heidi Heitkamp from winning re-election.
In North Dakota, voter ID rules pushed by Republicans and upheld by the supreme court may have barred thousands of Native Americans from voting in Tuesday's general election. The restrictions required that voters show their current residential address in order to vote. But many Native Americans who live on reservations do not have street names and instead use PO boxes.
In 2012, the state's incumbent Democrat, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, was elected in part due to the support of Native American voters. She lost on Tuesday to her Republican challenger, Kevin Cramer, although the margin was large enough to suggest voter suppression tactics alone did not cost Heitkamp the race.
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Voting machine errors already roil Texas and Georgia races
The errors would appear to work to the advantage of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke.
By CHRISTIAN VASQUEZ and MATTHEW CHOI 11/05/2018 05:10 AM EST
"This machine problem is essentially threatening to call into question the entire election in Texas," said Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project. Five states -- Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Delaware and New Jersey -- still rely entirely on paperless voting machines, even as most others have switched to scanned-in paper ballots that resemble an SAT test. Seven states still use the paperless machines partially, including Texas and Pennsylvania.
The issue has prompted particular controversy this year in Georgia, where voting integrity groups filed a lawsuit demanding that the state switch to voting machines that use paper ballots. Their opponent in that suit was Kemp, who as secretary of state is Georgia's chief election official. In a ruling in September, a federal judge declined to force Georgia to replace its paperless machines before Tuesday's midterms but agreed with plaintiffs that continued use of those systems could harm their constitutional rights to a free and fair election.
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