Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for November 18, 2019

Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 18, 1863.

Carl Vinson was born on November 18, 1883 in Baldwin County, Georgia. At noon on that day, U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented four time zones for the first time.

Efficient rail transportation demanded a more uniform time-keeping system. Rather than turning to the federal governments of the United States and Canada to create a North American system of time zones, the powerful railroad companies took it upon themselves to create a new time code system. The companies agreed to divide the continent into four time zones; the dividing lines adopted were very close to the ones we still use today.

Most Americans and Canadians quickly embraced their new time zones, since railroads were often their lifeblood and main link with the rest of the world. However, it was not until 1918 that Congress officially adopted the railroad time zones and put them under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Mickey Mouse debuted in a black-and-white film called “Steamboat Willie” on November 18, 1928.

On November 18, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled from Washington, DC to Savannah, Georgia by train for Georgia’s Bicentennial and delivered a speech at Municipal Stadium.

Carl Vinson was honored on his 81st birthday in Milledgeville, Georgia on November 18, 1964; Vinson did not run for reelection in 1964 and retired after 50 years in office.

President Richard M. Nixon flew into Robins Air Force Base for Carl Vinson’s 90th birthday on November 18, 1973; on the trip he announced the next American nuclear supercarrier would be named USS Carl Vinson.

On November 18, 1989, Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey signed the Abortion Control Act, the first abortion restrictions enacted after Roe v. Wade.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

The Georgia State Ethics Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission is seeking documents from Democrat Stacey Abrams, according to News Channel 9.

The Georgia ethics commission has filed a lawsuit seeking communications between Democrat Stacey Abrams’ unsuccessful 2018 campaign for governor and several third-party organizations.

But Abrams’ former campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo says they’ve already turned over thousands of financial records. She called the investigation politically motivated.

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission filed the motion in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday. It’s part of an investigation accusing the Abrams campaign of “unlawful coordination” with an outside organization.

The commission says the campaign isn’t complying with subpoenas issued last spring.

From WABE:

Former campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo said the campaign turned in thousands of pages of banking and campaign finance records but refused to release communications requested between the campaign and other groups, including the New Georgia Project and state Sen. Nikema Williams, then vice-chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia.

“The commission is responsible for campaign finance law here in Georgia. They’re able to investigate campaigns,” she said. “What they’re not able to do is use their power to investigate, to harass, to intimidate and go, on a hunch, that they think a thing may have happened…this commission is in violation of its fundamental right to enforce campaign finance law and is acting as a political arm of the governor’s campaign.”

She called the investigation a “political fishing expedition” due to the executive director of the commission David Emadi’s previous endorsement of Gov. Brian Kemp. Emadi also donated to Kemp’s campaign.

Emadi said in a statement the commission is “taking the same legal measures we have taken in all other cases where the respondent has refused to comply with lawfully issued subpoenas. We will allow the legal pleading to speak for itself.”

He called Groh-Wargo’s comments “baseless allegations by political operatives” and said the commission is committed “to conducting a full and fair investigation into all candidates from the 2018 gubernatorial campaign as a nonpartisan body just as we do in all other cases.”

Early voting in the runoff elections for three seats on Johns Creek City Council opens next week, according to Patch.com.

Early voting for the Dec. 3 General Municipal Runoff Election will be held Monday, Nov. 25 to Wednesday, Nov. 27 from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Early voting locations will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and include:

College Park Historical Building, 3675 Auditorium Way, College Park
East Roswell Branch Library, 2301 Holcomb Bridge Road, Roswell
Park Place at Newtown, 3125 Old Alabama Road, Johns Creek
Roswell City Hall, 38 Hill Street, Roswell
South Fulton Service Center, 5600 Stonewall Tell Road, College Park

Roswell also opens early voting next week for a city council runoff, according to the Rome News Tribune.

Post 3 candidates Christine Hall and Lisa Holland will face off in a runoff election Dec. 3. Election Day left Hall with 34.52% of votes, and Holland with 31.84% of votes.

Early voting starts Nov. 25 until Nov. 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Early voting locations include Roswell City Hall and the East Roswell Branch Library. Election day is Dec. 3.

Savannah will hold earlier early voting in a runoff election, according to the Savannah Morning News.

This week, Savannah residents will be able to cast early ballots for the Dec. 3 runoff that will decide the city’s mayor and District 6 alderman.

Advance in-person voting and absentee mail out for the runoff will begin Wednesday and go until Nov. 27.

For the mayoral seat, voters will choose between incumbent Mayor Eddie DeLoach and former 1st District Alderman Van Johnson.

Voters in District 6 will choose between incumbent alderman Tony Thomas and Georgia Southern University Police Department Capt. Kurtis Purtee.

Valdosta aims to open early voting today, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.

“The goal is still Monday morning at 8 a.m.,” said Deb Cox, Lowndes County supervisor of elections.

Election officials are targeting Monday, Nov. 18, as the start of early voting for the two runoff races in Valdosta, Cox said. Early voting will be held at the county board of elections, 2808 N. Oak St.

The runoff election will feature a mayoral race between Scott James Matheson and J.D. Rice and a race for the Valdosta City Council at-large seat between incumbent Councilman Ben Norton and Adrian Rivers.

“We have to get the database in, the paper ballots in for provisional and mail-outs — we have to test the paper ballots and databases,” Cox said. “Then, we have to upload the database for the voting equipment so we can start early voting.”

The state does not mandate a specific start date for early voting in runoff elections, Cox said. The law states early voting can begin once official preparations are complete.

The official runoff election will be Dec. 3. All registered voters inside the city limits are eligible to vote in the runoff, even if they did not vote in the Nov. 5 election.

Dougherty and Lee Counties will hold early runoff voting next week, according to the Albany Herald.

Albany residents can add one more item to their Thanksgiving week to-do list: Casting a ballot for one of two candidates in the mayoral and Ward VI Albany City Commission runoff election in the days leading up to the holiday.

Early voting in the runoff between incumbent Mayor Dorothy Hubbard and Albany attorney Kermit “Bo” Dorough will be held on Nov. 25, 26 and 27, according to Dougherty Elections supervisor Ginger Nickerson.

There also is a runoff election for the Ward VI seat on the City Commission in which John Hawthorne faces Demetrius Young.

Early voting is from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. each day in Room 220 of the Government Center building at 222 Pine Ave., during the three-day period. On the Dec. 3 election, voters should cast ballots at their precinct.

Lee County voters also return to the polls in a runoff for a special election in state House District 152 to choose between Leesburg Mayor Jim Quinn and Bill Yearta, the former mayor of Sylvester. The winner will serve out the final year of the term of Ed Rynders, who resigned earlier this year.

The district also includes Worth County and a portion of Sumter County.

Early voting in Lee County also is Nov. 25, 26 and 27, from 8:15a.m.-5 p.m. each day, at 100 Starksville Ave. North, Suite C.

A U.S. District Court judge has ordered Florida to stop listing candidates of the incumbent governor’s party first on the ballot, according to the Washington Post.

A federal judge in Florida ordered the state on Friday to change the way candidates are listed on election ballots — a decision that Democrats in the crucial swing state say will take away an unfair advantage Republicans have enjoyed for years.

The current law says that whichever party holds the governor’s office can list its candidates first on the ballot in general elections. That hurts an opposing party, U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker said.

Walker heard testimony from researchers who said the “primacy effect” is real and can give a candidate a statistical advantage as great as 5.4 percentage points. Many voters tend to vote for the first name on the list of candidates, they said.

Walker wrote that evidence shows ballot order makes a difference in elections. And because “elections are a zero-sum game,” any system that favors one party hurts another, which violates the First and 14th amendments of the Constitution, he ruled.

“The . . . issue is whether the Constitution allows a state to put its thumb on the scale and award an electoral advantage to the party in power,” Walker said. “The answer is simple. It does not.”

Republicans in Florida argued that because the law has been in effect since 1951 — through both Democratic and Republican administrations — it should stand unchanged.

From the American Independent:

In Florida, since Republicans won the last governor’s race, that meant all Republicans running for local, state, or federal office were listed first on the ballot. According to the ruling, Republican organizations in the state initially claimed that Republican candidates would be “most directly harmed” by taking away their prime position on the ballot, but later tried to take back that claim.

In 2018, when the ballot order rule was in effect, Democrat Andrew Gillum lost his bid for governor to Republican Ron DeSantis by 0.4% of the vote. That same year, Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson lost to Rick Scott by 0.2% of the vote.

Walker’s ruling will force Florida to come up with a nonpartisan way to list candidates on the ballot. Walker offered several options, including the possibility of rotating which party is listed first on a county-by-county or precinct-by-precinct basis. Florida will be forced to implement this change before the 2020 election.

The lawsuit was brought by a group of Democratic organizations including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Democratic Governors Association (DGA), and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). (The author of this article is related to a DNC staff member involved in the case.)

On Nov. 1, Democratic groups filed ballot order lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. While the details of each states’ laws differ, each state lists Republicans first on their ballot.

Chatham County‘s voter rolls are growing faster than the population, according to the Savannah Morning News.

From 2014 to 2018, the county’s population increased by 15,998, but the number of registered voters increased by 51,251.

Chatham County Voter Registration Director Sabrina German points towards automatic voter registration, something Georgia started in September 2016.

“Before, you had to opt in and check the box, specifically say you wanted to register, and now you have to opt out if you don’t want to register. It’s one of those questions people just kind of glance over, so they automatically opt in. If you don’t uncheck it, you’re automatically registering,” German said. “I would say most people opt in.”

Now, anytime Georgia residents interact with the DMV, their voter registration is automatically updated — and it can be a high daily tally.

“We get at least somewhere around 200 to 300 applications per day, whether that’s a change of address or new registration,” German said. “Fridays and Tuesdays are our heaviest days, and on those days we get closer to 400, but on most days, it’s right about 300 applications per day.”

Some new voting machines malfunctioned during their first deployment, according to the AJC.

Voting machines rebooted in the middle of voting. Computers couldn’t program the cards voters use to activate voting machines. One voter inserted a driver’s license into the voting machine, causing it to go blank.

Those were some of the 45 incidents reported during a test run of Georgia’s new voting system, according to a summary from the secretary of state’s office. The pilot was conducted in six counties, where 27,482 ballots were cast in this month’s election.

“These problems are mainly human based,” [SOS COO Gabriel] Sterling said. “We can train and train, and our plan is to train again. That’s going to be the main thing that’s going to make these things work properly.”

Sterling said he’s confident that the state’s voting system will be ready for the presidential primary, and all equipment is scheduled for delivery by late January.

The Georgia State House Special Committee on Economic Growth will meet tomorrow in Valdosta, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.

Hosted at the James H. Rainwater Conference Center, the House Special Committee on Economic Growth will hold a meeting open to the public, 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19. The committee, co-chaired by Georgia State Reps. Brett Harrell (R-Snellville), Alan Powell (R-Hartwell) and (R-Savannah), was formed to research new revenue streams and new opportunities to grow the state economy. One of those opportunities would be the possible legalization of gaming, or gambling.

“The most important thing that we can receive when we come to Valdosta is the input from local citizens,” Harrell said. “We want to hear firsthand from the citizens. Are you interested in having an opportunity to vote on this issue?”

“All of this is about economic development, of course,” Stephens said. “The tax revenues that will come in to close the gap on the HOPE scholarship, but even more important now is we all three believe that health care is an even bigger issue to fund with tagging who are underinsured and uninsured, including hospitals.”

The State House Juvenile Justice Committee discussed changing the age at which minors must be charged as adults, according to The Brunswick News.

Georgia treats 17-year-olds like adults when it comes to criminal matters, but is one of only three states that still do so — most 17-year-old offenders in the United States go through their state’s juvenile court processes. A bill that would change that could get a boost this coming legislative session, and legislators took a serious look at it in a Friday committee hearing.

“There are a lot of factors to consider when we are considering such a significant policy change for the state, and this meeting here, the meeting of the Juvenile Justice Committee, is one of several that are planned as we kind of work through this process,” said state Rep. Mandi Ballinger, R-Canton and committee chairwoman.

Ballinger introduced H.B. 440 during the last session of the General Assembly in February, but it did not move out of committee.

Regardless of whether the legislature passes H.B. 440 in its current or a similar form, some teens would still come under the purview of their local superior court — state law mandates that anyone older than 13 be tried as an adult for a handful of major felonies, from armed robbery that involves guns to certain sex crimes and homicide.

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Charlie Bethel spoke about ethics in his hometown, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.

“Ethics are the shared values of a community or a society,” he said. “They are the personal morals of the members of that society woven together into a network. Textiles are a fabric composed of a network of many different fibers.”

Bethel, a Dalton native, spoke Tuesday at Dalton State College as part of the University System of Georgia’s Ethics Awareness Week, a program required by the Board of Regents for each college and university in the system.

But he noted that many people regarded as moral exemplars are people who actually defied the ethics standards of their community. He pointed to Harper Lee’s 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” where the protagonist, attorney Atticus Finch, defies the ethics of the small Southern town he lived in to defend a black man accused of rape.

Bethel said if people feel some of the ethical standards of the community they live in are wrong, they have an obligation to change those community ethical standards.

Free public wifi is now available in part of midtown Macon, according to the Macon Telegraph.

Wi-Fi Macon is a project of Middle Georgia State University’s School of Computing in partnership with Cox Communications and Macon-Bibb County.

The service is available along Poplar Street between Rosa Parks Square and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

“Public Wi-Fi is such an important part of any downtown or growing metropolitan area because it helps the community and the citizens to stay connected,” said Kevin Floyd, associate dean for the School of Computing. “There are a lot people in communities that don’t have access to the internet. We often take that for granted.

The project is funded for 18 months through a $39,848 Downtown Challenge grant from the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, according to a memorandum of understanding between the mayor and the university approved by the Macon-Bibb County Commission.

Gwinnett County Commission Chair Charlotte Nash will present a proposed 2020 budget Tuesday, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

The proposed budget will be unveiled during a presentation at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, and Nash said there will be a focus on public safety — something that has been a recurring theme in recent county budgets — as well as the county’s court system.

The court part in particular may not be much of a surprise given ongoing growth in the court system. That includes construction of a new courtroom wing at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center and Gov. Brian Kemp’s recent appointment of Magistrate Judge Angela Duncan to fill a new seat on the Gwinnett Superior Court bench.

The budget presentation will take place in the Board of Commissioners’ conference room on the second floor of the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center, which is located at 75 Langley Drive in Lawrenceville.

Nash did give the Daily Post some sneak peaks Friday on what to expect in the budget, including 30 additional police officer positions and two additional ambulance units which are being added to address growing demands for services.

“Like most large organizations, we are increasing our efforts in the cybersecurity area, which is a costly undertaking but which cannot be ignored,” the chairwoman said. “We continue to move capital projects forward with much of the funding being the result of the last SPLOST referendum.”