(CNN) – With Tuesday's vote too close to call, the Atlanta mayoral race may be headed for a recount.
The latest count shows former state senator Kasim Reed leading City Councilwoman Mary Norwood by 620 votes, out of more than 84,000 cast. Reed claimed victory early Wednesday morning, but Norwood, who is trying to become the city's first white mayor in 35 years, said she will not concede and is open to a recount.
Provisional ballots are expected to be counted Thursday and the election could be certified at Noon on Saturday. Since the margin of victory will most likely be less than one percent of the total vote, the runner up is allowed to petition for a recount.
On November 3, Norwood won 46 percent of the vote, 4 points short of the 50 percent needed to secure victory outright. Failing to reach that threshold level, Norwood faced the runoff with Reed, who won 36 percent of the vote on November 3.
From CNN Politics
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come on, if you drag it out long enough you can beat the old record set by the SNL and GOPer from Minnesota
there is no election that should go unchallenged – thats the new policy
This is the problem with a run off situation. Norwood beat Reed by 13% points in the regular election. The majority vote getter should be the winner. No do overs.
Atlanta should have tried someone different. They will continue to head down the road of failure. We need new blood across the board, senators, governors, mayors, congress "all" this is no time to stick with the preferred colors of your candidates.
Only 84,000 people in the city of Atlanta voted? That seems like a pretty low interest level in their local politics.
Racist city.
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Housing Authority is demolishing all of the public housing in Atlanta and dumping the residents in high poverty neighborhoods in the suburbs via housing vouchers. And nobody cares because they're poor people. But, gee, those new "mixed use" developments going up on the former public housing sites sure are nice and shiny. It's fat times for developers when eminent domain becomes manifest destiny. Have a nice day!