Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 29, 2019

Sir Walter Raleigh, founder of the first permanent English settlement in America, was beheaded on October 29, 1618 for conspiring against King James I.

Georgia’s first Royal Governor, John Reynolds, arrived at Savannah on October 29, 1754.

John Hancock resigned as President of the Continental Congress on October 29, 1777.

The New York Stock Exchange crashed on October 29, 1929, beginning the spiral to the Great Depression.

The first ballpoint pen went on sale at Gimbel’s Department Store on October 29, 1945.

Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia on October 29, 1971.

Guitarist Paul Barrere of Little Feat died yesterday, according to MSNBC.

“It is with great sorrow that Little Feat must announce the passing of our brother guitarist, Paul Barrere, this morning at UCLA Hospital,” Little Feat said in a statement.

“Paul auditioned for Little Feat as a bassist when it was first being put together—in his words, ‘as a bassist I make an excellent guitarist’—and three years later joined the band in his proper role on guitar. Forty-seven years later, he was forced to miss the current tour, which will end tomorrow, due to side effects from his ongoing treatment for liver disease.”

Bonnie Raitt tweeted, “I just heard about the passing of another dear friend, Little Feat’s Paul Barrere. A brilliant guitarist, singer and songwriter—a cornerstone of one of the greatest bands of all time. I’m glad he is free of pain and may he rest in peace.”

Barrere joined the Lowell George-led Little Feat prior the recording of the band’s breakthrough 1973 album Dixie Chicken; on the LP, Barrere co-wrote the song “Walkin’ All Night,” which the Rolling Stone review at the time called “the album’s purest rock & roll song.”

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Early voting continues to trend upward in Lowndes County, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.

Early voting totals from the second week of the mayoral race increased from 725 votes in 2015 to 1,233 votes in 2019 during the same period of early voting, according to the Lowndes County Board of Elections.

The 70% increase falls in line with the 68% increase seen from the first weeks of 2015 and 2019.

In total, the first two weeks of early voting increased 69% from 1,424 votes in 2015 to 2,411 votes in 2019.

This is the last week of early voting. It is open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Friday, Oct. 28 through Nov. 1, Cox said.

Early voting is held at the Lowndes County Board of Elections office, 2808 N. Oak St. The Nov. 5 election will be held at polling places throughout the city and county.

City races are also scheduled in other Lowndes County municipalities.

The Secretary of State’s office will purge the registrations of 330k inactive voters, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

The State of Georgia is planning to remove about 330,000 voters who haven’t voted recently from the rolls this December.

However, a new law requires the state to notify those voters in advance. Affected voters should receive notices by mail during November.

From the AJC:

The purge comes after Georgia canceled 534,119 registrations in July 2017, the largest single removal of voters in U.S. history.

Under a new state law, election officials will notify voters before canceling their registrations, a step that didn’t exist two years ago.

Opponents of Georgia’s cancellations say they disenfranchise voters who haven’t participated in elections in recent years but might do so in the 2020 presidential election.

“Voters should not lose their right to vote simply because they have decided not to express that right in recent elections,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the CEO for Fair Fight Action, a group founded by Abrams that is suing the state over voting issues. “Having a long history of voter suppression, the Georgia secretary of state’s office has a responsibility to guarantee that not a single voter is wrongly included on the purge list.”

“Accurate voter lists limit confusion and delays at polling places on Election Day, and make sure voters get to vote the complete ballot to which they are entitled,” [Georgia Elections Director Chris] Harvey said. “Accurate voters lists also allow county election offices to plan for polling place equipment and staffing needs. Accurate voter lists reduce the opportunities for mistakes or fraud.”

Though some voters will save their registrations from cancellation, eliminating roughly 300,000 of Georgia’s 7.4 million registered voters would represent a 4% reduction in the state’s voter rolls.

That rate of cancellations makes sense to David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, which advocates for accurate voter lists and secure election technology. He said the removals are reasonable because they’re lower than the number of people projected to have moved out of state in the past two years.

“People don’t usually call their state and tell them to take them off their voting list,” Becker said. “The numbers by themselves don’t raise any concerns.”

Voter registration totals are up in Georgia due in part to automatic voter registration, according to The Fulcrum.

Another 310,000 voters have been added to the rolls in Georgia so far this year, the state says.

It’s a sign that one of the most widely hailed ways for expanding turnout, automatic voter registration, is working exceptionally well in one of the emerging electoral battlegrounds of the coming decade.

Georgia is among the 18 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have created so-called AVR, all in this decade, and the result in the Peach State seems to be more new potential voters than in any of the other states. The Brennan Center for Justice, which promotes easier ballot access, says the rolls expanded from 6 million when the law took effect in 2016 to almost 7 million at the time of the 2018 midterm — estimating that as a 94 percent increase above what would have been expected without the new law. All the other sates saw the rolls swell after AVR, but no other state came close to Georgia’s boost, the progressive advocacy group says.

If the trend continues, it could mean almost three-quarters of a million new voters in Georgia by November 2020, when both of the state’s Senate seats will be on the ballot and a potentially decisive 16 electoral votes will be up for grabs in the presidential election. Last year only 55,000 votes separated Abrams from the winner, Republican Brian Kemp. The GOP has not lost a statewide race since 2006.

WABE reports on voter registration deadlines:

Deadlines for people to register to vote have long been an accepted part of American elections and aren’t typically mentioned alongside voter ID laws and purges, which Democrats contend are voter suppression tactics. But an APM Reports investigation has found that 87,000 Georgians were barred from voting in 2018 because they’d registered after the deadline.

National experts who have studied the issue say that registration deadlines don’t necessarily make elections more secure, as proponents claim, but they are a useful tool for preventing people from voting, especially those who don’t follow politics closely. Georgia has one of the strictest deadlines in the country; if you want to vote on Election Day, you must register at least 29 days in advance.

APM Reports found that 5,900 people in the Georgia 7th registered to vote in the 29 days before the election, meaning they’d missed the deadline and couldn’t vote in 2018, according to records from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. While not all of them would have necessarily made it to the polls on Election Day, the number of potential voters who didn’t even have a chance to cast a ballot was nearly 14 times the margin of victory in the race. A disproportionate number of those potential voters were people of color or young voters, groups that typically favor Democrats.

An APM Reports analysis found that a majority of those 5,900 voters who registered after the deadline lived in Democratic-leaning precincts. If they had voted for Democrats and Republicans at the same percentage as everyone else in their precincts — essentially voting the same way their neighbors did — then Bordeaux would have gained an estimated 383 more votes than Woodall.

That would have narrowed Woodall’s margin to a mere 50 votes, out of 280,000 ballots cast, a virtual tie.

White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Executive Director Scott Turner met with local leaders in Savannah, according to the Savannah Morning News.

Savannah hosted a Trump administration official on Monday for a talk and tour of the city’s opportunity zones that provide tax breaks for new development.

Local media were not allowed to stay at the roundtable meeting which was held at the publicly funded civic center. Turner and Mayor Eddie DeLoach did, however, speak with the media after the meeting for interviews.

Turner said holding a private meeting for the event was not a problem.

“That’s okay,” Turner said. “We do appreciate the media, but oftentimes when you are having private meetings like this, with people from the community, they speak more openly when the media is not there at that time.”

Mayor Eddie DeLoach said he wasn’t aware the media had been asked to leave until a reporter asked Turner about it.

This year’s Columbia County Fair will offer a chance to see Georgia’s new voting machines, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

Voters in the Augusta area will get a chance to try Georgia’s new voting system at the Columbia County Fair on Friday.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will be at the fair to show the new “secure paper-ballot voting system” during a mock election at the fair. The new system is replacing voting machines used in Georgia since 2002.

“Come by anytime to test drive this cool new system and see how easy it is to vote with a paper ballot that is both secure and auditable – while also being just as user-friendly as our current voting machines,” Raffensperger said in a release.

The new machines will also offer features like switching to larger print, getting a verbal readout of the ballot and other accommodations for physical handicaps, according to the release. People will also be able to register to vote, change addresses and ask questions to state officials at the demonstration.

According to the release, more than 6,000 touchscreen machines have arrived and undergone Georgia’s quality assurance testing. Six counties are using the new system as a pilot in municipal elections, while another county is voting on hand-marked paper ballots that will be counted by new Dominion scanners.

The Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registrations will show one of the new voting machines at a public meeting, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

The meeting is set for 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday in the Community Room of the City Services Center at 3111 Citizens Way, off Macon Road by the Columbus Public Library.

One of the new voting machines will be on display so residents can see how it works. The primary difference from the old machines is that the new ones are “ballot printers,” meaning that once voters have made their choices, they will have a “print ballot” icon to tap that prints out a hard copy of the ballot for voters to review before they cast it.

When the ballot’s cast, the printed version is stored, creating a paper trail record of the vote.

The county also is proposing moving two voting precincts to get them out of schools, a long-running trend. Schools are not considered preferable as voting polls because of traffic congestion when students are coming and going, and because of security concerns caused by strangers accessing school campuses that usually keep track of visitors for the students’ protection.

ICE detainees at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin filed a complaint, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

A group of men held in a Georgia detention center by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have filed a complaint alleging the facility’s staff members abused them and violated their human rights.

The complaint, filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, was written by the detainees and filed with assistance from Project South, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Detention Watch Network and Georgia Detention Watch, said Azadeh Shahshahani, Project South’s legal and advocacy director.

Congressman Doug Collins is encouraged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decision to reassess higher shoreline fees, according to AccessWDUN.

In June, the Corps planned to increase the fees in the South Atlantic Division, but now will delay the implementation of an increase until a national review of the shoreline management program fees is conducted.

“I’m very encouraged that the Corps took our concerns seriously and made the decision to hold off on increasing permit fees. Residents of the Ninth District living on or near Lake Lanier and Lake Hartwell—and those throughout the southeast living near Corps waterways—will no longer be hit with significant and unexpected fee increases come January.” [said Collins]

“I want to thank Brigadier General Holland for meeting with me today to discuss my concerns and explore ways in which the Corps could accomplish their intended goal without placing an undue burden on individuals and families living throughout the southeast. I look forward to continuing to engage with the Corps as they study this issue.” [said Collins]

The Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education held a retreat, according to the Savannah Morning News.

Whitfield County and the City of Dalton remain at loggerheads in service delivery negotiations, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.

Amid a failed day of mediation, trading negotiating offers in letters and with a Thursday deadline from the state to reach an agreement on a new service delivery agreement, Whitfield County Board of Commissioners Chairman Lynn Laughter said the City of Dalton is on the verge of pushing the county and the four municipalities within it “off a cliff.”

“I would say to the city to at least please sign an extension until February so we don’t go off a cliff on Oct. 31, and they said that wasn’t in the best interest of their citizens,” Laughter said. “I don’t understand that because Friday morning we will be a non-qualified government and that means losing massive money, state grants, state permits … It is a cataclysmic event for the county and all four cities.”

The Council of State Court Judges recognized Chatham County State Court Chief Judge H. Gregory Fowler with the Ogden Doremus-Kent Lawrence Award, according to the Savannah Morning News.

The City of Register in Bulloch County has three contested elections, according to the Statesboro Herald.

Five people seek three seats on the Register Town Council in the upcoming city election, with two incumbents being challenged and one running unopposed.

G. Ann Ross will serve another term in council Seat 5, as no one qualified to run against her, according to information from Bulloch County election Superintendent Pat Lanier Jones.

Incumbent Tanya Boyd, holding council Seat 3, faces opposition by challenger Shannan Grubbs. Running for council Seat 4 are Alfred L. Jones, incumbent, and challenger William “Bill” L. Ingram.

Glynn County is considering changes to voting locations, according to The Brunswick News.

To give Glynn County voters more options, the board plans to open a new early voting polling place in the county-owned Ballard Complex at the corner of Community and Old Jesup roads.

In an effort to save money, elections staff members have also been looking into moving a polling place from its current location in a church to the Brookman Recreation Building in Baldwin Park, just off U.S. Highway 82.

Because the Georgia legislature recently passed a new law overhauling state elections and requiring paper ballots, security in the Ballard building would need to be beefed up, the memo stated.

According to the memo, the elections board believes that, at a minimum, the polling area would need to be equipped with an “alarm system and/or video surveillance along with changing the locks to the building and adding a lock to the internal closet that would store the scanner and ballots each night,” estimated to cost $967.

Hundreds of tons of rocks will be dropped in St Simons Sound to stabilize the capsized M/V Golden Ray, according to The Brunswick News.

Some 6,000 tons of aggregate rock will be placed with precision accuracy around the hull of the ship, which has rested on its port side in the sound since it overturned Sept. 8 while heading out to sea with a cargo of 4,200 vehicles. The object is to halt erosion of sand and scouring of sediment around the 656-foot freighter, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Himes, spokesman for Unified Command. Particular emphasis is being placed on shoring up the seabed around the 25,000-ton ship’s bow and stern, Himes said. Unified Command consists of the Coast Guard, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Gallagher Marine Systems.

Coastal Georgia experiences some of the highest tide differentials on the Eastern Seaboard, and currents move swiftly through the St. Simons Sound to the rhythms of ingoing and outgoing tides.

“The erosion process, the currents, are scouring and moving sediments from underneath the bow and the stern,” Himes said. “That’s why we’re applying the aggregate down there, to prevent further erosion. That prevents further stress on the hull of the ship.”

As of Monday, salvage crews had pumped 290,000 gallons of fuel from the tanks of the Golden Ray, leaving about 10,000 gallons remaining, Himes said. Crews are continuing to pump the remaining fuel from the ship, he said.

Rome has collected more than $400k in taxes over the same period last year, according to the Rome News Tribune.

Although the more than $400,000 increase in sales tax revenue so far this year over what was collected by this time last year cannot be definitively attributed to an increase in tourism alone, it could be one indicator of the success of Georgia’s Rome Office of Tourism, City Manager Sammy Rich explained Monday after Commissioner Randy Quick shared the budget figures during the City Commission meeting.

The Macon Telegraph reviews the candidates for Mayor and Council in next year’s elections.

Nine candidates have now filed paperwork with the Board of Elections office to raise funds to run for mayor, and another says he will file soon.

The election will be held May 19. Qualifying will be held March 2-6. Candidates do not have to file papers for fundraising in order to qualify, so the true field of candidates will not be known until qualifying is over.

Current Macon-Bibb Mayor Robert Reichert is term limited from seeking office again. His term expires at the end of 2020.