ATLANTA — In the Senate chamber of the Georgia State Capitol Monday came a sound that isn’t often heard in the building: cheers.

Joe Biden is officially the state’s choice for President of the United States. 

After three counts of the presidential contest in Georgia — the original tally, an unprecedented hand audit and another recount at the behest of President Donald Trump’s campaign — the state’s 16 electors cast their ballots for a Democratic president and vice president for the first time since 1992.

Among the group of Georgia’s electors are high-profile Democrats including Congressional 5th District Congresswoman-elect Nikema Williams, former 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, former Georgia House minority leader Bob Trammel and Dean of the House Calvin Smyre. Various other elected and former local officials and civil rights activists make up the remaining electors.

“This has been a long time coming,” Abrams said who was voted as the presiding officer over the meeting. “But I believe we’re in the right place at the right time.”

Each elector cast two separate ballots: one for the president and one for vice president. The votes were recorded on six certificates and sent to the President of the United States and Vice President Mike Pence, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the Archivist of the United States David Ferriero and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Soon, Congress will meet and count the electoral votes from all 50 states. The President of the Senate will then announce the results and declare Biden and Kamala Harris the elected President and Vice President of the United States.

The emotional vote solidifying Georgia’s choice of Harris for Vice President marked a day in history, when Georgia’s Black Democratic leaders cast ballots for the first woman and first Black and Asian American to hold the second highest office in the country.

“Not only did we flip Georgia blue, and not only did we restore the soul of our nation, but we’re sending the first Black woman to the White House,” Williams said who is also an alumna of Harris’ sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.

But, she made sure to add, this moment didn’t come as a result of luck.

Democrats have celebrated the mobilization of Georgia voters over that past four years that led to the outcome in their favor. Voter mobilization groups Fair Fight Action, founded by Abrams, and offshoot the New Georgia Project have been praised for their efforts to register new and minority voters.

The significant shift of Atlanta’s suburbs from red to blue was a deciding factor in Biden’s victory while the more than one million absentee ballots cast ultimately pushed him ahead of Trump during the slow tally process.

Biden himself echoed surprise during a speech on election night: “We’re still in the game in Georgia. Although that’s not what we expected.”

Georgia’s Democrats hope that the state’s flip from red to blue will be a harbinger of change across the country. The weight of the U.S. Senate is on Georgia voters’ shoulders in the upcoming Senate runoffs that will decide the balance of power in the upper chamber.

“This is a moment for me that I have dreamed about,” Abrams said. “We stand, not for ourselves and not for our party, but for the people of Georgia. It is on their behalf that we took up this charge of being electors and it is on their behalf that we are ensuring the nation is led by a good man who believes in the soul of our nation and all of its people.”

Despite severe pushback from Trump and Georgia Republican lawmakers, elections officials found no evidence of widespread irregularities with Georgia’s November general election and certified that the majority of voters in the state backed Biden for president. Only a narrow margin of 12,000 or so votes separating the Democrat and the Republican incumbent.