Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 19, 2020

British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781,  ending the American Revolution.

On October 19, 1790, Lyman Hall, one of three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia, died in Burke County, GA. Hall was elected Governor of Georgia in 1783, holding the position for one year, and was an early advocate for the chartering of the University of Georgia.

On October 19, 1983, the United States Senate voted 78-22 to create a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be celebrated on the third Monday of January. The House passed the King holiday bill, sponsored by Reps. Katie Hall (D.-IN) and Jack Kemp (R-NY), by a vote of 338-90 in August. President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation on November 3, 1983.

The Ledger-Enquirer looks at the beginning of what would eventually become Fort Benning.

100 years ago, Camp Benning raised its flag on Oct. 19, 1918, almost two weeks after the first Army troops arrived on Macon Road where the Columbus Public Library and other public buildings stand. The only evidence from the MidTown site that housed 300 tents is a nearby monument in the neighborhood at South Dixon Drive and Mimosa Street.

That small camp led to a bigger location 8 miles down the road and redesignated Fort Benning on Feb. 18, 1922. The Maneuver Center of Excellence is home of the Infantry and Armor schools as the sixth largest military installation in the United States.

“Columbus has been a good neighbor to us and wanted us here,” said Scott Daubert, director of the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center. “They wanted us here. They courted the government.”

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Here are today’s General Election stats, drawn from the Absentee voter file released daily by the Secretary of State’s office:

Total votes cast:       1,577,434

Mail-in votes cast:          745,140

Electronic votes cast:          5,611

In-person votes cast:     826,683

President Trump visited Macon on Friday. From the Ledger-Enquirer:

“Eighteen days from now, we’re going to win the state of Georgia, we’re going to win four more years,” he said, adding that in 2016 he “won Macon, Georgia,” although Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by more than 12,000 votes in Macon-Bibb County. “We’re winning in Florida, we’re winning here.”

Trump also said Second Amendment rights were “under siege” and praised “school choice” while claiming Democrats disdained Georgian values.

“The radical left is doing everything in their power to protect their chosen candidate, who has no clue where he is…” he said. “They have nothing but disdain for you and your values and the values of Georgia. They flood your communities with criminal aliens, drugs and crime. They complain about guns and they want to end your Second Amendment [rights], but they want protections for themselves. They oppose school choice while sending their families to the best private schools.”

Trump said his pandemic response saved “millions of lives” and that the coronavirus was a “plague sent to us by China.” He said that the FDA will approve a COVID-19 vaccine “soon” and that 100 million doses will be available before the end of the year. Trump said the vaccine has been delayed, to some extent, due to “political reasons.”

“They send ballots out by the millions… we say ‘Who is sending them, where are they going, who’s getting them, who’s signing them?’ What the hell are they doing?” Trump said. “They know better than you do it’s a big con job. So we have to be very, very careful with the ballots.”

From another article in the Ledger-Enquirer:

Joel Herrin and Al Day plan to vote in their first presidential election this year. They said they “love Trump” and wanted to get an in-person look at “who we’re backing.”

“Me and my family run a small business,” Al said, adding it’s a pest control business. “I like the fact that Trump likes to keep small business owners in mind. I think that’s what’s going to help my future the most, is back Trump. I think the way he’s handled the pandemic, keeping people informed but not getting people into a panic, has made it to where I’m able to conduct my business.”

United States Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Atlanta) meets her opponents in an online debate today, according to the AJC.

U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face off against her challengers Monday in the first debate of a chaotic special election campaign, offering the top contenders the first chance to confront each other over divisive issues that have dominated the race.

There are so many candidates in the free-for-all contest that The Atlanta Press Club has divided it into two separate showdowns: The first, airing at 1 p.m., features 10 of the lesser-known candidates who qualified. The 3 p.m. airing includes the top contenders.

How to watch: The dual debates will be livestreamed at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m on GPB.org and air at 8 p.m. on GPB-TV and the Atlanta Press Club’s Facebook site. Because of the pandemic, the debate will be held online. The press club’s debate for Georgia’s other U.S. Senate seat was held last week.

Governor Brian Kemp last week renewed the COVID-19 Executive Order 10.15.20.01. From WRDW:

In a new executive order issued Thursday, Kemp says he’s extending the COVID-19 restrictions until Oct. 31 at 11:59 p.m.

The governor’s state of emergency also remains in place until Nov. 9, 2020.

More coverage of last week’s announcement of federal approval of Georgia’s health care waiver applications from Georgia Health News via the Valdosta Daily Times.

Federal health officials gave formal approval last week to Gov. Brian Kemp’s request for a waiver to expand health coverage options for low-income Georgians.

The plan under the newly granted Medicaid waiver is called Pathways, and it would increase eligibility for uninsured single adults with incomes up to 100% of poverty, about $12,000 annually. There are strict eligibility rules, called “qualifying activities,’’ where an individual must fulfill at least one. These include working at least 80 hours a month.

Because of those restrictions, Georgia officials have estimated that about 50,000 people will get coverage through Pathways. Critics, including many Democrats, note that this number is just a fraction of the 500,000 who would get coverage through a standard Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Kemp administration officials say the goal of Pathways is to get a person started with Medicaid coverage, then, as the person’s income increases, to move the person to employer coverage or to an individual policy purchased on the insurance exchange.

The second waiver request is for a plan called Access, which would feature “reinsurance’’ and a new portal for individuals enrolling in coverage for individuals. The feds have completed their review of that plan, and state officials expect it to be approved in the coming days.

From the Capitol Beat News Service via the Albany Herald:

Kemp joined Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in signing a waiver allowing Georgia to expand Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level. Current law limits Medicaid eligibility in Georgia to low-income mothers and children, and to the aged, blind and disabled.

The other waiver, aimed at serving uninsured Georgians who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to receive insurance premium subsidies through the ACA, is to be signed in the coming days.

The General Assembly passed legislation last year authorizing Kemp to pursue the two waivers. The state hired Deloitte Consulting to help develop the waiver applications, which were submitted to CMS late last year.

“We’re making health insurance accessible for those who need it most,” Kemp said.

The second waiver will replace the ACA’s healthcare.gov insurance enrollment website and let Georgians enroll directly with insurance carriers, local brokers or private sector web-broker sites.

From 11Alive:

Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma was on hand with the governor to laud the move by Kemp, who signed the measure. First Lady Marty Kemp and other state and federal officials were also on hand at the state capitol for the ceremony.

Verma said that she was happy, on behalf of the Trump Administration, to approve the state’s waiver request.

Verma said that the Trump Administration was looking forward to an expansion of the state’s program which they said would, “leverage the private sector and reduce premiums” for thousands of Georgia residents who can not currently afford insurance.

“Some will try to weaponize the legal system,”” Verma said, in an effort to circumvent the program.

But, she said, the Trump Administration would work to ensure that the program and others like it around the nation move forward to help citizens currently “burdened by the ACA and its dependence on government-based insurance.”

More than 1.4 million ballots have been cast in the General Election, according to the Rome News Tribune.

Raffensperger said in a release that 1,451,131 votes had been cast as of noon Sunday. Floyd County is one of the few counties offering weekend voting other than on Oct. 24, which is mandated by state law.

Early voters are choosing the in-person and absentee options in fairly equal numbers.

Overall, 793,385 in-person votes and 657,746 absentee ballots had been accepted as of noon Sunday.

Raffensperger compared that to the same period in the last presidential election, when 578,147 ballots had been accepted as of Oct. 23, 2016.

The bulk of that total, 490,147 votes, were cast in person, with 88,000 absentee ballots mailed in.

Sunday’s figures show a 152% percent increase in turnout overall. Breaking that down, it’s a 62.3% hike for in person voting and a 648% increase by mail.

From the Gwinnett Daily Post:

Early voting for the Nov. 3 general election has been record-breaking for Gwinnett County.

As of the end of Friday, a total of 49,505 Gwinnett voters had cast ballots in person during the first five days of early voting for this year’s general election.

A big part of why each day of early voting this year has set same day records for voter turnout is that this year marked the first time that Gwinnett has opened all of its satellite early voting sites for all three weeks of the early voting period.

Clarke and Oconee County voters are turning out at record pace, according to the Athens Banner Herald.

As of about 1 p.m. Friday — the fifth day of advance voting in Georgia — 3,165 Clarke County voters had cast their votes in advance, and the Board of Elections Office in downtown Athens had also received 9,095 absentee ballots, said Athens-Clarke County Director of Elections and Voter Registration Charlotte Sosebee.

That’s nearly 17% of about 73,000 active Clarke County voters.

Early turnout has been even higher in neighboring Oconee County, where 5,525 voters had come to the Oconee County Civic Center for advance voting as of early Friday afternoon, said Oconee County Assistant Director of Elections and Voter Registration Jennifer Stone. Add 3,223 absentee ballots that have so far been returned, and nearly 28% of Oconee’s 31,594 registered voters have already cast ballots.

The AJC looks at Peach County, which has voted for the winning Presidential candidate in all but one election since 1992.

The county’s voters have picked the eventual presidential winner in just about every election since 1992, swinging from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in the past two races. The exception was 2000, when Al Gore captured Peach County by a scant 15 ballots, mirroring the razor-thin national vote.

As Trump and Biden fight over battleground Georgia — and many polls show a deadlocked race in once-solidly Republican territory — the race in Peach County echoes the contest across the state.

The county’s population is roughly 44% Black, and turnout among African American voters rose to 73% in 2012 during Obama’s reelection campaign. Four years later, Black voter participation in the county plummeted to 54%, cinching Trump’s victory in Peach.

“That really stood out to me,” said Dave Wasserman, an editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, who recently highlighted Peach County as one of the nation’s most important bellwethers. “It was more about turnout than persuasion.”

“How Peach County votes this year could show how Georgia votes. But it would also be a good indicator of how much rural African American enthusiasm there is,” Wasserman said. “These voters came out before, but turnout is going to be higher across the board this time — and the proportions matter.”

Now a county of about 27,000 voters, local races have tightened with each shift. Peach County Sheriff Terry Deese, a longtime Democrat, is running for reelection as an independent against a Democratic challenger. On the five-member County Commission, Republicans hold a 3-2 edge.

Some local Republicans aren’t overly confident. Tom Morrill, a longtime Peach County GOP organizer, said he expects a surge in absentee ballots and increased turnout from students at Fort Valley State University, a public historically black university a few miles from downtown.

“We’ve had a really good record in the past, but it’s always been a very, very tight race here. But this year, it’s going to be a real problem for Republicans,” said Morrill, a retired former president of the local chamber of commerce.

If turnout is key in Peach County, early signs point to a sharp increase. About 15% of the county’s electorate had already cast early ballots as of Thursday, according to number-crunchers at the Georgia Votes data site, including about 1 in 5 voters who didn’t participate in the 2016 election.

The Chatham County Board of Elections voted to disqualify Commission District One candidate Tony Riley, according to the Savannah Morning News.

The Board of Elections called for his disqualification, making Republican Larry “Gator” Rivers the de-facto winner. Riley and the local Democratic party appealed and will argue their case to allow the race to go forward at a disqualification hearing set for Oct. 27.

Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson and her independent opponent, Keith Higgins, will meet in a forum, according to The Brunswick News.

Bulloch County will add an Absentee Ballot Drop Box behind the County Annex, according to the Statesboro Herald.

This box, which looks like a freestanding curbside mailbox wrapped with the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag, is at the edge of the main parking lot behind the County Annex, which has a 115 North Main St. address, but the parking area is on the Walnut Street side. Not beside the elections office, the drop box is actually closer to the Board of Commissioners entrance, in front of the brick wall surrounding the base of the cellphone tower.

The posters on the box also lay down the law about who may “possess or deliver” a ballot for another individual. Besides the voter, persons allowed to do this include the voter’s parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, spouse, son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, an individual who resides in the same household as the voter or the caretaker of a voter with disabilities as defined in state law.

Absentee ballots can also be returned by mail or placed in a previously established drop box on a locked-down table inside the elections office lobby. The new, outdoor box does not replace it, as both are being maintained, said Bulloch County Election Supervisor Patricia Lanier Jones.

Her announcement that the new outdoor drop box was operational went out as a record-setting first week of in-person early voting was drawing to a close. From Monday through Friday, 2,923 Bulloch County residents voted in-person in the elections office at the County Annex, Jones reported.

Columbia County does not have an Absentee Ballot Drop Box, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

At a meeting Tuesday, the county’s Management and Internal Services Committee failed to advance a motion that would have brought a funding request to the full Board of Commissioners to pay for a drop box.

Commission Chairman Doug Duncan, who sits on the management committee, said he made the motion, which died for lack of a second, because he wanted the full commission to discuss the boxes, particularly “serious concerns over their security” and how that could affect an election.

A state rule requires drop boxes to be monitored around the clock, and the $3,218 funding request for a Columbia County box included $500 for “video surveillance/monitoring/recording.”

That monitoring is one of the reasons why about 30% of Georgia counties don’t have the boxes, though that percentage might be lower.

Those counties tend to be very small. According to state records through September, more than half of the 46 counties that don’t have boxes have populations of less than 20,000 people.

But other small counties have them, such as Quitman County, with about 2,300 people. Eleven of the state’s 20 smallest counties have them. Chattahoochee and Dooly counties, both with populations under 15,000, each have two boxes.

Columbia County has about 156,714 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2019.

From the Gainesville Times:

[Hall County elections director Lori] Wurtz’s office had sent out 27,137 absentee ballots, enough for 21.6% of active voters in Hall, and accepted 8,792 ballots as of Friday, Oct. 16. And 15,414 Hall residents had voted at one of eight polling locations by the end of Thursday, Oct. 15, or 12.3% of active voters.

Concerns also have been raised about the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of absentee ballots. In August, the Postal Service, having cut overtime and late deliveries, began warning states that it can’t guarantee all mail ballots will be received in time to be counted.

In a statement from Rick Badie, Postal Service spokesman, if a ballot is mailed without postage or insufficient postage, “it is the Postal Service’s policy not to delay the delivery of completed absentee balloting materials, including mail-in ballots.

Completed ballots must be turned in by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. They can be mailed to the elections office, turned in at the elections office or an early voting location, or placed in the drop box outside the government center.

Clarke County will have a new Sheriff after the November election, according to the Athens Banner Herald.

With the primary defeat of Ira Edwards, who wore the sheriff’s badge for 20 years, the office will be filled by either Robert Hare or John Q. Williams after the Nov. 3 general election.

Edwards, a five-term incumbent, narrowly lost in the Democratic primary to Williams, who now faces Hare, the Republican nominee.

Hare worked for the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office and attained the rank of sergeant before resigning to campaign for sheriff.

Williams, who currently works in the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, has also attained the rank of sergeant.

The Savannah Morning News profiles the candidates for Chatham County Coroner.

The Augusta Chronicle profiles the candidates for Richmond County Board of Education District 10.

Bulloch County Sheriff Noel Brown and his challenger will meet in a forum on Tuesday, according to the Statesboro Herald.

Gang violence appears to be increasing in Albany, fed by social media, according to the Albany Herald.

[A]nearly decade-long feud between the C.M.E. Rattlers and a Bloods-related group is still going strong and being stoked by social media exchanges between the rivals, Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said.

The rash of violent crimes has included a number of drive-by shootings in which homes have been riddled with bullets from high-powered weaponry. Most recently, a 14-year-old boy was among the victims who have been killed in 2020.

Much of the violence over the past several months can be traced back to nine years ago, when gunfire first broke out between the two gangs, Edwards said. The district attorney’s office, local law enforcement, and state and federal agencies are actively working to get a handle on the violence.

“They’ve been at war since, I would say, at least 2011,” Edwards said. “That’s when one of the first incidents occurred between the Bloods and the Rattlers.”

“I think that, my observation is that COVID caused many people to, No. 1, have the mindset we need to stay in place,” he said. “But there was apparently some communication on social media. A lot of gang activity is facilitated through social media.

“A lot of things that have happened have been the direct result of social media between gangs that ramped up the conflict.”

Hall County Chief Superior Court Judge Kathlene Gosselin extended the judicial emergency order for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit, which serves Hall and Dawson counties, according to the Gainesville Times.

“Despite the implementation of and adherence to safe operating guidelines in this circuit, a number of courthouse employees have tested positive for COVID-19,” according to Gosselin’s order.

The order said each county will only have one trial until the end of 2020, and the COVID-19 jury committee will reconvene to make adjustments before the second phase of jury trials begins in January.

Dalton City Council will hear a report on establishing Tax Allocation Districts, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.

Dalton voters in 2014 gave the City Council the authority to create TADs, which are based on the idea that development in an area will increase property values. In effect, the taxes a local government can collect for general purposes inside a TAD are frozen at what the property was worth when it was created. Taxes collected on additional value are dedicated to pay for infrastructure, land, buildings, public artwork or other amenities to attract a developer or developers to that area. That “extra” money does not go into general revenue.

In 2015, the council created two TADs, one covering the downtown business district and the other at the Dalton Mall and the area closely surrounding it.

Council members are working on a master plan for West Walnut Avenue and said a TAD could help finance any changes the plan calls for.

Council members are also scheduled to vote on approving issuing $100 million in bonds for Dalton Utilities to upgrade its electrical assets.

James Dasher resigned from Rincon City Council ahead of a move outside the city, according to the Savannah Morning News.

Dasher served eight years on the Effingham board of education and was in his ninth year on the Rincon city council.

Mayor Ken Lee said the vacancy will be filled by a special election on a date not yet determined.