Battleground state of Georgia braces for election day

Downtown Atlanta was quiet on the eve of one of the most bitterly fought presidential elections in years.

Was this the calm before the storm?

On the elevated walkway, known as the Beltline, runners and cyclists were out enjoying their evening exercise.

Voters of all kinds were in the mix.

"I voted last Friday for Donald Trump," one young woman on her way to a yoga class told RTÉ News, but she declined to give a reason.

"It's really shocking because you really don’t know who is going to win," a young male voter said.

"Hopefully Kamala wins – she’ll be the first female president, so I feel like that’s really big."

But even at this late hour, others were still sitting on the fence.

"I haven’t really thought about it - I think Trump, but I’m not sure," Atlanta resident Gary Walker said.

When was he going to make up his mind?

"On Tuesday," he said.

It’s this kind of swing voter in swing states that both candidates have been fighting for as they feverishly shuttled between the battlegrounds over the past few weeks.

Georgia is an important state in more ways than one.

It carries 16 electoral votes, making it one of the biggest prizes among the seven swing states.

Joe Biden was the first Democrat to flip Georgia blue since Bill Clinton won it in 1992.

But it was a very slim victory for Mr Biden.

And that made it ground zero for former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the last election.

"I just want to find 11,780 votes... Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break," the former president famously told the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger.

A slew of cases alleging election fraud followed. Most have since been dismissed or dropped but the memory of a contested election last time looms large over this one.

A Republican lawsuit filed late on Friday in Fulton County in Atlanta attempted to block the opening of polling stations over the weekend, on the basis that early voting should have ended on Friday.

The case was thrown out, but it was a sign that suspicions about election integrity were here to stay.

Over the past few weeks, as polls continued to teeter on a razor edge, Mr Trump certainly appeared to be once again laying the groundwork for a rejection of today's vote and accusing the Harris campaign of "cheating."

As tension mounts in the final hours, many here in Atlanta are just hoping for a decisive win one way or another.

Because they fear another close election would spell nothing but trouble.