Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 26, 2020

Colonists in Georgia signed a letter allowing the beginning of the slave trade in Georgia on October 26, 1749.

Georgia Sons of Liberty protested against the British Stamp Act on October 26, 1765.

A state Constitutional Convention at Milledgeville, Georgia repealed the state’s Ordinance of Secession on October 26, 1865.

President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act on October 26, 2001.

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:       2,923,403

Mail-in votes cast:        1,107,763

Electronic votes cast:          8,766

In-person votes cast:   1,806,874

Gun sales are up in Georgia, as evidenced by numbers of background checks, according to The Brunswick News.

The issuance of licenses for carrying a gun is rising in the state as well, according to probate court judges.

The increase in gun sales has raised public health concerns. More firearms increase the risk of more unnecessary deaths and injuries from gunshots, said Dabney Evans, an assistant professor of global health in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

Reasons for the rising gun sales include general uncertainty about the COVID-19 pandemic and recent civil unrest, along with election-related turmoil, Evans said.

“There is a lot of insecurity,” she said Thursday. “More people are feeling insecure, and many are feeling insecure for the first time. I think it’s worrisome.”

Through this September, the agency reported 658,000 checks in Georgia, as compared with 539,000 for all of 2019. The background checks in Georgia surged in June and July, after the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis in late May, which led to a murder charge against one officer and related charges against others. Anger over the case sparked widespread protests that at times turned violent.

“You’re seeing a lot of first-time gun buyers,” said John Monroe, vice president of GeorgiaCarry.org, an organization seeking to protect gun owners’ rights.

Governor Brian Kemp authorized (E.O 10.23.20.01) the transfer of $1.2 million dollars from the Governor’s Emergency Fund to the Georgia Department of Defense and Georgia Department of Public Safety to cover costs associated with security.

A panel of the 11th Circuit United States Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision requiring Georgia counties to print paper backups of voter rolls for election day, according to the AJC.

The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of a judge’s order that would have provided a backup copy of voter records in case computers fail on Nov. 3.

The panel’s two-page decision didn’t explain its reasoning. One of the judges dissented.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg last month had ordered election officials to prepare paper copies of records showing who is registered to vote and whether they’ve already voted, either by absentee ballot or during in-person early voting.

The 11th Circuit’s decision is the second time federal appellate courts have overturned recent election rulings in Georgia. A separate appeals panel previously reinstated Georgia’s deadline for absentee ballots to be returned by 7 p.m. on Nov. 3, rejecting an effort to count ballots if they had been postmarked by Election Day.

U.S. Circuit Judges Andrew Brasher and Barbara Lagoa, both appointees of President Donald Trump, supported the stay of the paper backup requirement. U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, dissented.

Former Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in Atlanta and Warm Springs, Georgia tomorrow, according to GPB News.

According to the campaign, the former vice president will deliver remarks in Warm Springs “on bringing Americans together to address the crises facing our nation,” where he will say that “Americans have always come together to triumph and overcome, and that we can, must, and will again now.”

The tiny town in Meriwether County just south of Newnan is a symbolic choice for Biden’s final message of a bruising battle against President Trump. Warm Springs is home to the “Little White House” retreat of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, where he sought to use the eponymous springs to treat his polio. Now a National Historic Landmark, the campus was also where Roosevelt developed many ideas for New Deal programs like the Rural Electrification Administration.

Later Tuesday, Biden will attend a drive-in event in the metro Atlanta area “to encourage Georgians to make a plan to vote during the last week of early voting.”

In the last few weeks, the Peach State has seen campaign visits from Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Dr. Jill Biden, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who headlined an early-voting rally in Atlanta after visiting with students from historically Black colleges and talking about her record as a prosecutor as part of a discussion on policy that affects Black men.

From the Ledger-Enquirer:

Multiple reports Saturday evening, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Bloomberg, say the former vice president will deliver remarks on “bringing Americans together to address the crises facing our nation” in the small west Georgia town.

Warm Springs, about 30 miles north of Columbus, is the site of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House, which he used as a personal retreat.

Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) was in Atlanta on Friday, according to the AJC.

Making her first visit to Atlanta since joining the Democratic ticket, Harris answered with an extended monologue aimed squarely at President Donald Trump’s attempts to woo Black men.The California senator’s visit was aimed at rallying Democrats to cast their ballots early and join the record number of voters who have already done so.

The overwhelming majority of African American voters in Georgia are expected to cast their ballots for Joe Biden, and it will likely require high turnout from Black voters to flip the state in Democrats’ favor for the first time since 1992.

But some recent national and statewide polls suggest Black men could vote for Trump at higher rates this cycle than they did four years ago, which could undercut Biden’s efforts to carry Georgia and other competitive states.

First Lady candidate Dr. Jill Biden will be in Macon and Savannah today, according to the Savannah Morning News.

Jill Biden will be visiting both Savannah and Macon on Monday to encourage voters to get to the polls in the next two weeks.

Biden’s visit to Savannah comes after two appearances in the Hostess City by Donald Trump, Jr., who spoke at two campaign events on behalf of his father.

As of Wednesday around 783,000 voters have cast absentee ballots statewide. By this time in the 2016 election, roughly 103,000 mail-in ballots had been cast.

Statewide, more than 2 million people have already voted in the hotly anticipated election. Of those, more than 1.2 million had cast ballots in person during the three-week early voting period that started last Monday, marking a roughly 60% increase in the number of early voters compared to the same point in the 2016 election.

Donald Trump, Jr. rallied supporters in Macon, according to the Macon Telegraph.

Chris Grant, a political science professor at Mercer University, said the last-minute Trump push here was likely aimed at Black males, with whom the president has had some success connecting at the polls.

“(Trump Jr.) could be going to (Republican-friendly) Houston County just as easily,” Grant said.

But instead Don Jr. came to neighboring Bibb County, where two-thirds of the population in Macon proper is Black.

Though Hillary Clinton won 59% of the vote in Bibb County four years ago, Grant said the Trump campaign may be looking to make gains by “micro-targeting” Black voters.

While only a handful of the 200-plus rally-goers on Friday were Black, Grant said the campaign was focusing on the area’s television-news market. Cameras from every local station were there.

The New York Times breathlessly reports that some suburban voters in Georgia will (gasp!) vote for Donald Trump.

National polling has consistently shown that white college-educated voters are supporting Joseph R. Biden Jr. for president. But in Georgia, even as major demographic and population shifts have pulled the state leftward in recent years, a majority of such voters remain firmly in Mr. Trump’s camp.

Recent polling shows that these voters have helped Trump maintain his razor-thin lead over Mr. Biden for Georgia’s suburban vote. Their continued support is critical to the president’s chances in the state, whose 16 electoral votes are essential for his path to re-election and where polling shows the two candidates neck-and-neck overall.

Georgia may be in the Deep South, but a steady, decades-long influx of young, educated and nonwhite voters, coupled with a shrinking population of white voters without degrees — whose support helped fuel Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 — have put the state increasingly in play for Democrats. From historic turnout rates among infrequent and first-time voters in support of Stacey Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial race, to Lucy McBath’s triumph over Karen Handel in Newt Gingrich’s former congressional district that same year, down-ballot Democrats have proven the party’s viability in the Trump era.

According to more than a dozen such voters in and around Atlanta, what’s currently keeping them from jumping ship is not so much a deep affinity for Mr. Trump, but a fear of “lawlessness” taking root should Democrats take the White House. Trump has spent much of the past few months stoking those fears, his campaign sending texts with such warnings as “ANTIFA THUGS WILL RUIN THE SUBURBS!”

Polling suggests that in many battleground states where protests turned violent this summer, that message hasn’t broken through. But in Georgia, many voters said Mr. Trump’s “law-and-order” appeals had struck a nerve, and almost all cited a fear that the call among some progressives to “defund the police” would materialize during a Biden presidency.

Mr. Biden has said that he has no desire to defund the police, and Amanda Newman acknowledges that. But Ms. Newman, 51, who lives in the suburbs and works at a law firm in midtown Atlanta, also thinks Mr. Biden’s personal views are irrelevant — that a vote for Mr. Biden is in fact a vote for his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, as well as for progressives in the Democratic Party like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have pushed for policies like the Green New Deal. “I don’t think Joe Biden has an opinion until somebody tells him what it is,” she said.

Voter turnout continues at a record-setting pace, according to The Brunswick News.

By 8 p.m. Friday, 2.7 million ballots had been cast across the state, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Of those, 1.75 million were cast in person at early voting polls and another 946,753 were mailed in.

Both in-person and mail-in ballots overshadowed the first two weeks of early voting in the 2016 presidential election by a long shot. About 1.06 million ballots had been cast by this same time in 2016, 938,159 in person and 116,764 by mail.

By percentage, that amounts to a 106 percent increase overall, a 48 percent increase in in-person voting and a 645 percent mail-in increase.

Local turnout followed suit. Glynn County residents cast 17,530 total votes as of 4 p.m. Saturday, said Assistant Elections and Registration Supervisor Christina Redden. Exact figures weren’t immediately available, but a little over 7,000 voters used the new Ballard Community Building early voting location on Nimitz Drive. About 6,000 voted on St. Simons Island and 5,000 or so voted in downtown Brunswick.

The Glynn County Board of Elections had received 8,005 absentee-by-mail ballots as of Saturday, Redden said.

From the Associated Press via AccessWDUN:

Democrats have continued to dominate the initial balloting, but Republicans are narrowing the gap. GOP voters have begun to show up at early in-person voting, a sign that many heeded President Donald Trump’s unfounded warnings about mail-voting fraud.

On Oct. 15, Democratic registrants cast 51% of all ballots reported, compared with 25% from Republicans. On Sunday, Democrats had a slightly smaller lead, 51% to 31%.

The early vote totals, reported by state and local election officials and tracked by the AP, are an imperfect indicator of which party may be leading. The data only shows party registration, not which candidate voters support. Most GOP voters are expected to vote on Election Day.

Analysts said the still sizable Democratic turnout puts extra pressure on the Republican Party to push its voters out in the final week and on Nov. 3. That’s especially clear in closely contested states such as Florida, Nevada and North Carolina.

One sign of enthusiasm is the large number of new or infrequent voters who have already voted — 25% of the total cast, according to an AP analysis of data from the political data firm L2. Those voters are younger than a typical voter and less likely to be white. So far similar shares of them are registering Democratic and Republican.

They have helped contribute to enormous turnouts in states such as Georgia, where 26.3% of the people who’ve voted are new or infrequent voters, and Texas, which is expected to set turnout record and where 30.5% are new or infrequent voters.

From CNN via the Gwinnett Daily Post:

Across the country, Black voters are turning out in huge numbers. The stakes this year are especially high, they say, and nothing less than their health and safety is on the ballot.

So far this fall, African American voters are rushing to the polls at much higher rates than they did four years ago, when Hillary Clinton was on the ballot.

By Tuesday, more than 601,000 Black Americans had voted early in Georgia compared with about 286,240 two weeks before the 2016 election. In Maryland, about 192,775 had voted compared with 18,430. And California had over 303,145 — up from more than 106,360 two weeks before the election four years ago. That’s according to Catalist, a data company that provides analytics to Democrats, academics and progressive advocacy organizations.

In Georgia, many Black voters say they have been motivated to vote in person by what happened in 2018, when Republican Brian Kemp ran against Democrat Stacey Abrams for governor while serving as the state’s chief elections officer.

Kemp, who as Georgia’s secretary of state had promoted and enforced some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, was accused repeatedly before and during the campaign of seeking to suppress the minority vote. Kemp won narrowly, and Abrams argued that he had used his position to suppress Black votes.

Richmond County voters found a festive atmosphere for early voting, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

In a courtyard between Bell Auditorium and the James Brown Arena, the City of Augusta’s Souls to the Polls event invited hundreds of voters out to the polls Sunday afternoon. Dozens lined up by a Cafe 209 food truck for free lunches powered by World Central Kitchen, the mayor’s office passed out cups with masks and other protective items inside, and volunteers passed out beaded necklaces congratulating voters. All of this plus a DJ playing upbeat music that could be heard from down the street made for a party atmosphere.

On the opposite side of Bell Auditorium and across the street from the polls, several candidates got in some more campaign time, like Shawnda Griffin who is running for the District 1 seat on the Richmond County Board of Education.

Richmond County Board of Elections executive director Lynn Bailey said there was a good community spirit in the air over the weekend that drew thousands of voters. As of Sunday afternoon, she said everything was going well, 650 ballots had been cast and she expected that number to grow to 800 to 900 by the end of the day.

Three Richmond County polling places have changed, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

Residents who formerly voted at Crawford Avenue Baptist Church are being split between one new and one existing polling place.

Precinct 102 voters who used Crawford Avenue Baptist and live north of Walton Way will now vote at the Kroc Center, 1833 Broad St., according to Lynn Bailey, the executive director of the Richmond County Board of Elections.

Former Crawford Avenue Baptist voters who live south of Walton Way will join Precinct 111 voters at the Paine College HEAL Complex, 1255 Druid Park Ave.

After concerns about pedestrian accessibility were raised, Augusta University’s Christenberry Fieldhouse is no longer a polling place.

Precinct 302 and 507 voters who cast ballots at the arena will now use the Friedman Branch Library, 1447 Jackson Road, on Election Day.

The highest number affected is the about 4,000 voters who used Wildwood Christian Church on Tobacco Road.

Precinct 404 and 509 voters who used Wildwood have been moved 1.1 miles east along Tobacco Road to Windsor Spring Baptist Church, 3692 Windsor Spring Road, which is a Hephzibah address.

The changes are for Election Day voting only. Advance voting is being offered at four Richmond County sites, as is voting by mail or hand-delivery to a drop box or board of elections office.

A ransomware attack on Hall County government computers is slowing part of the absente ballot confirmation process down, but reportedly not affecting actual voting, according to the Gainesville Times.

The ransomware attack on Hall County government’s networks has slowed down signature verification for absentee ballots but has not affected residents’ ability to vote, according to county officials.

One of the databases elections staff can use to verify a voter’s signature has been down since Oct. 7, when the county discovered a ransomware attack that caused an outage of county phone and email services, in addition to other county software such as the programs used to process business licenses and building permits. Phone and email access, along with most other services, have been restored.

Kay Wimpye, registration coordinator with the county elections office, told The Times Wednesday, Oct. 21, that employees can still verify voter signatures by manually pulling hard copies of voter registration cards.

“As long as the ballot is here, it’s time-stamped, it’s secured in the office, the ballot will be accepted. It’s just taking us a little longer to verify those signatures,” Wimpye said.

“Moral turpitude” is a term undefined in the Georgia Code that may be problematic for people convicted of a crime and seeking restoration of their full civil rights. From the Savannah Morning News:

When the Chatham County Board of Elections meets Tuesday to decide whether Chatham County Commission District 2 candidate Tony Riley is qualified to run for public office, his political fate will hang on how the board interprets the concept of “moral turpitude.”

Riley, a convicted felon who served 16 years in prison before a 2011 release, signed a qualifying affidavit in March stating he was at least 10 years removed from serving time for any felony offense of moral turpitude. His attorney, Will Claiborne, will argue that Riley’s crime, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, does not meet that standard.

Crimes of moral turpitude are generally viewed as those that shock the conscience or are inherently contrary to the rules of morality or inherently contrary to the duty one owes to society in general. The law offers little additional insights on defining moral turpitude.

“So it’s up to the elections board to determine whether they believe that being addicted to drugs 25 years ago is a crime of moral turpitude. And we, for our part, don’t believe that it should count as a crime of moral turpitude on this set of facts,” Claiborne said.

From a 2019 article in the AJC:

Under the Georgia Constitution, those who have been convicted of a “felony involving moral turpitude” can’t be registered to vote until their sentences are completed. But the state has never defined which felonies involve “moral turpitude,” and election officials interpret the Constitution to mean that all felonies limit voting rights.

The General Assembly could pass a bill saying what “moral turpitude” means, or legislators could simply list which offenses qualify for reinstatement of voting rights, Jones said.

Currently in Georgia, felons’ voting rights are automatically restored upon the completion of their sentences, including parole, probation, restitution, fines and other costs. Felons must re-register to vote after they’re eligible to do so.

A committee to advocate for passage of an E-SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for Education) in Glynn County has been formed, according to The Brunswick News.

“We just want to make sure everybody understands what ESPLOST does, how the collections are done and who helps pay for that,” said Jeff Bennett, past chairman of the board of the Golden Isles Camber of Commerce and a member of the Glynn United for Education committee.

“I think it’s very important that the Golden Isles knows that, based on past studies, over 50 percent of sales tax revenue in Glynn County is paid for by outside citizens, people from outside the community, and we’re very fortunate that we live in a community like this because it really makes a lot of sense for SPLOST to be used to raise money for the community for capital projects.”

School system officials are not allowed to promote the ESPLOST vote, Bennett said.

The new ESPLOST would be a continuation of the current 1 percent sales tax for educational purposes. The new ESPLOST will begin to be collected at the termination of the ESPLOST currently in effect.

At least two staffers for United States Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Atlanta) have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the AJC.

Loeffler took her own test on Friday, which she said was negative. She plans to participate in Monday’s scheduled vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Senator Loeffler is more energized than ever to vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as the next Supreme Court Justice on Monday before returning home and traveling the state to meet with hardworking Georgians,” a Saturday statement from her office said.

Loeffler’s team would not provide the names of the staffers, the date of their positive tests or if they are displaying symptoms of illness. Her office also did not say if these staffers had any direct interaction with the senator or if Loeffler planned to take any additional precautions.

Monday’s vote on Barrett’s nomination is expected to pass largely along party lines with most Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed. Republicans currently have enough votes to confirm the new justice, according to CNN and other outlets, but that would change if more than a few Republicans dissent or are absent.

Congressman Doug Collins (R-Gainesville) campaigned for the United States Senate in Columbus, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

Georgia Congressman Doug Collins was met by an enthusiastic crowd of more than 250 supporters outside of the Columbus/ Muscogee GOP Headquarters at 4225 Holley Ave. Collins said he is making more than 60 stops while campaigning for one of Georgia’s two seats in the U.S. Senate.

“Four thousand miles, three feet off the ground, 65 miles an hour in a 150,000 mile SUV sitting right over there. We see the people of Georgia,” Collins said.

“We’ve got people here that we’ve not seen before,” said Alton Russell, chairman of the Columbus/ Muscogee Republican Party. “It’s not that they’re new Republicans, they’re just new people to kind of get involved so it’s a very exciting crowd and a plus for Columbus.”

Collins was joined onstage by Georgia congressman Drew Ferguson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Agriculture Gary W. Black Sr., and former governor of Arkansas, political commentator, and 2008 and 2016 Republican U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

The University of Georgia‘s graduation ceremony in December will be online, according to the Athens Banner Herald.