On Friday, voters in Georgia had their last chance to cast their 'early voting' ballot for the midterm elections. Next Tuesday, 8 November, is the official voting day for US Mid-terms. It will become clear if the former confederate state will remain blue, or if it will flip back to Republican Red. Grassroots activists have four days left to convince voters to go and let their voice be known - with a vengeance.
"I became involved in politics when I was ten years old," remembers Aunna Dennis, currently executive director of Common Cause Georgia, the local chapter of an NGO which tries to motivate citizens to vote.
"I had classmates who I didn't feel had fair access to proper food, or they were having to pay for lunch and they couldn't afford it. Things as simple as the need for a traffic stop at our busy intersection so we could cross the street to get to our school bus in a safe way."
Supported by her parents, she started petitioning her Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) "to talk about changes that need to happen in our community."
That was 26 years ago. Today, in the run-up to the November 8 Mid-terms, Dennis works 18-hour days with her small, but enthusiastic staff.
They canvass neighbourhoods, trying to talk and motivate people into going to vote, helping them with registration issues and trying to explain how one vote can make a difference.
"Georgia used to be the cradle of the confederacy," according to Dennis, pointing out that ending of policies of racial segregation were still happening "when I was a child" only 30 years ago.
"We still have relics of certain laws that really still permeate into our democracy."
Before the national Voting Rights Act in became law in 1965, several southern and western states demanded literacy tests in an attempt to prevent Black, Latino, and Native American citizens from voting.
But even after the literacy requirement was lifted, much confusion and uncertainty remained over registration procedures. They were made more opaque by complex re-districting, where the boundaries of constituencies could change.
This made it difficult for many voters to understand where they have to go to the polls - leading to rejected ballot papers, bureaucratic hassles and voter apathy.
Relentless activism by groups such as Dennis' Common Cause Georgia turned the tide - at least in 2020.
"It took only 11,000 votes to change the tie in our federal election," says Dennis.
"We've seen the shockwaves of people being so surprised that over seven million people came out for a general election and then they came back in January for a runoff election to elect our senators."
Dennis' Common Cause Georgia is not alone. A "multitude of different organizations" focuses on things like environmental rights, LGBTQ rights, people of color, immigrant rights.
"So we're talking about all those things collectively, about what is democracy and why this election matters."
Even if it's only Mid-terms.
"Historically, the numbers always show that there's less participation of voters in these midterm elections," says Roula AbiSamra, who is with the Amplify Georgia Collaborative, a pro-choice group consisting of seven organisations that became especially vocal after the overturing by the US Supreme Court of the Roe vs Wade legislation.
AbiSamra and Amplify lobby for better reproductive health rights, look for a strategy to counter the tide set by the Supreme Court and allowing states to decide on when abortion can be forbidden, and help women to find alternatives.
But she's optimistic that the mid-terms may bring some change, with pro-choice candidates such as Democrat Stacey Adams, who is running for the position of governor against the incumbent - and pro-life - Brian Kemp.
"There is quite a lot of new awareness about how important the non-presidential vote is on what happens directly in our states now," she says.
As abortion law has been returned to the domain of every state, it has been added to other, nation-wide concerns that became campaign issues such as gun control and affirmative action.
"These issues are on people's minds and they're all connected," she says.
