Jimmy Carter, 100, casts his vote for Kamala Harris

The former president voted by mail, taking advantage of early voting in his home state of Georgia, where he is receiving hospice care.

Jimmy Carter departs after the funeral service for wife Rosalynn at Maranatha Baptist Church, in Plains, Georgia, last November. Picture: AFP

Fifteen days after turning 100, former US president Jimmy Carter cast his vote in the US election on Wednesday, fulfilling an earlier declared wish to live long enough to back Kamala Harris in the poll.

The former Democratic leader “voted by mail”, according to the Carter Centre, the non-profit he founded after he left the White House in 1981 to pursue his vision of world diplomacy.

The centenarian – who left office under a cloud of unpopularity, but has seen his star rise ever since – took advantage of early voting in his home state of Georgia, where he is receiving hospice care.

Mr Carter had told his family earlier this year that living long enough to vote for Harris and help defeat her Republican rival, Donald Trump, was more important to him than his centennial, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. In the end, he reached both milestones.

More than 420,000 people have cast their ballot since early voting began on Tuesday in Georgia, according to Gabriel Sterling, a state election official who posted the figures at midday.

Another 260,000 more making their choices by Wednesday evening. Another 33,000 mail ballots have also been accepted. That’s more than 600,000 votes cast in Georgia, compared to the record 5 million who voted in the 2020 presidential election in the southern battleground state.

Election Day is November 5.

Mr Carter, a one-term president, has been receiving end-of-life care in his hometown of Plains in Georgia since February last year.

He is the first-ever former US president to reach the century mark, another extraordinary milestone for the one-time peanut farmer who worked his way to the White House.

On Monday, voters lined up before sunrise, with many saying they had long ago decided whether they were choosing Ms Harris, Mr Trump, Libertarian Chase Oliver or Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

Two other candidates — independent Cornel West and the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Claudia De la Cruz appear on Georgia ballots, but their votes won’t be counted after the state Supreme Court ruled they didn’t properly qualify.

“I’m excited to vote against Donald Trump and for Kamala Harris,” said Anthony Engleton, a retiree who was voting on Tuesday in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. “The whole history, the record of Trump’s crimes and grifts shows he’s a con artist who’s all about himself.”

Both Democrats and Republicans try to drive their most committed partisans to vote early in Georgia, so they can focus later on less reliable voters. Trump did two events on Tuesday in Georgia, while top Democratic surrogates urged on voters in recent days.

AFP, AP