Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for May 19, 2014

Button Gwinnett died on May 19, 1777 of a gunshot wound received in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh.

Georgia ratified the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which governs voting for President and Vice President on May 19, 1804.

The Battle of Spotsylvania ended on May 19, 1864. In Georgia, the Affair at Cassville occurred on May 19, 1864.

The Rubik’s Cube is 40 years old today.

When, in the spring of 1974, Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian professor of design, invented his eponymous cube, he had no idea that it would become one of the world’s best-selling toys. Nor did he envision that it would impact fields as diverse as science, art, and design – the subject of “Beyond Rubik’s Cube”, an exhibit at the Liberty Science Center, in Jersey City, New Jersey, that opened 26 April to celebrate the puzzle’s 40th anniversary. And he certainly couldn’t have imagined that, one day, his puzzle would be at the center of a competitive sport in which the top performers can re-solve it in less time than it takes to read this sentence aloud.

The first Rubik’s Cube competitions began in the early 1980s and were largely a promotional affair that vanished with the collapse of the initial fad for the puzzle. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Internet allowed hobbyists around the world to find each other and run competitions of their own. More than 1,700 competitions have taken place in 66 countries since the 2004 founding of the World Cube Association, a governing body modeled after FIFA, the arbiter of international soccer. (Unlike, soccer, however, there is no qualification for any of these tourneys, including the World Championship: anyone can sign up.)

On May 19, 1977, “Smokey and the Bandit” was released.

President Barack Obama delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College on May 19, 2013.

Historic Low Voter Turnout?

This weekend I downloaded the latest Secretary of State’s Absentee Voter File and through the end of the early and absentee voting period, 236,001 votes were cast. Early voting is finished, though the total will climb a little bit due to lag in reporting, and mail-in ballots being received.

Compare this to the July 31, 2012 Primary election, when 413,361 early votes were cast, and we have had 43% fewer votes this year than in the 2012 Primary.

Here are some turnout statistics from early and advance voting:

Early Voting by Gender
Female…….54%
Male……….46%

Early Voting by Ethnicity
White………..70%
Black………..26%
Hispanic……<1%
Asian………..<1%
Indigenous…<1%
Unknown…….3%

Early Voting by Party
Democrat……36.91%
Republican….61.92%
Nonpartisan….1.17%

Top Counties
Fulton………15,559
DeKalb…….15,772
Cobb……….12,141
Muscogee…..8,341
Gwinnett…….6,997
Richmond…..6,968
Forsyth………6,499
Chatham……5,509
Cherokee….6,850

Top Congressional Districts
CD2……..22,263
CD9……..21,835
CD10……20,926
CD1……..20,749
CD12……20,407
CD8……..19,899
CD3……..17,669
CD11……15,507

Below is a chart of Google Search volume for “Georgia Governor Election”.

Tom Crawford makes a cogent point about the interaction of low voter turnout and polling:

trends suggest it will be Perdue facing either Kingston or Handel in a hellacious runoff election. But if there’s one lesson we should have learned about Georgia politics, it is that polls in a primary campaign can be very unreliable. To illustrate, we need look no farther back than the Republican primary in the governor’s race four years ago.

For months in 2010, the poll results kept telling us that John Oxendine, a highly controversial insurance commissioner for 16 years, was leading the primary field and seemed to be the most likely nominee to run against former governor Roy Barnes in the general election. I’m not talking about dubious surveys conducted by sloppy polling firms, either. These included polls commissioned by the state’s largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on behalf of a consortium of Georgia newspapers that paid big bucks for the survey numbers. Just six days prior to the primary election, the Journal-Constitution released a poll showing Oxendine in first place with 31 percent among likely Republican primary voters, with Karen Handel at 23 percent, and Nathan Deal at 18 percent.

A look at the RealClearPolitics retrospective on the 2010 Gubernatorial Primary shows that, in fact, the polling picked up a surge for Karen Handel in the first or second week of July 2010, and from one week out, polling consistently showed Handel in first place.

The Gainesville Times discusses local turnout in Hall County and what it could mean on Tuesday.

Hall County is certainly not immune, but low turnout here might be even more pronounced in primary races this year for a few reasons.

First, several local races are uncontested. It also is a nonpresidential election year. And, finally, the primary date was moved up on the calendar this year to coincide with federal election schedules. Taken together, these factors spell trouble for turnout come Tuesday.

There are about 95,000 registered voters in Hall County, but just 2,354 cast ballots during three weeks of early primary voting. Another 409 have returned absentee ballots.

“We’ve had a very low turnout,” Elections Director Charlotte Sosebee said.

The low turnout thus far promises one of two things come Tuesday: The polls will either be dead or swamped, Sosebee said.

The District 4 Public Service Commission Republican primary is perhaps the least heralded of all statewide contests.

The commission regulates the rates and services of Georgia Power, natural gas providers and telecommunications businesses in the state. The commission, however, does not regulate municipal utilities and electric membership corporations, such as Jackson EMC.

But incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, Hall County Commissioner Craig Lutz and Lavonia general practice attorney Doug Kidd each said they lament the ostensible truth that voters simply are unaware what role the commission plays in their lives.

Closer to home, South Hall races are running hot with two competitive contests that will help determine the course of public policy in the fastest-growing part of the county.

Ken Cochran and Kathy Cooper square off for the District 1 Board of Commissioners seat to replace Lutz.

Without any polling on the race, the front-runner going in is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, Mark Pettitt and Traci Lawson McBride are challenging incumbent Brian Sloan in the Republican primary for the Post 2 Board of Education seat representing South Hall.

Each candidate has promised not to raise the millage rate to increase the school budget.

Finally, Paul Godfrey will challenge incumbent Bill Thompson in the Republican primary for the at-large Board of Education seat.

In Douglas County, voting has also been slow, according to the Douglas County Sentinel:

As of around noon Friday, the final day of advanced voting, 4 percent, or about 2,800 voters, had cast ballots out of Douglas County’s roughly 70,200 active voters.

About two-thirds of the ballots cast in early voting were in the Republican Primary in Douglas County.

Douglas County Elections Supervisor Laurie Fulton said she was initially projecting between 20 and 25 percent of voters in the county to vote in the primary.

“I guess the best I could say is we hope we can reach that turnout,” Fulton said.

To still reach that projection, there’s going to have to be a heavy influx of voters showing up at precincts around the county on election day.

Advanced voting typically makes up around 30 percent of the total turnout in primary elections, Fulton said.

She speculated that voters may not be turning out to vote because the primary this year is two months earlier than usual and because she said there are “so many unknown names running for office.”

Walter Jones of Morris News places the importance of voter turnout in the context of the United State Senate race:

Anyone wishing a bigger say in government should vote Tuesday since signs of an unusually low turnout suggest every vote cast might carry more meaningful consequences.

“We are closing in on what appears likely to be a very weak, or low-voter-turnout primary on May 20,” said pollster Matt Towery, CEO of InsiderAdvantage. “We are now thinking that the actual vote on Tuesday could be at least 100,000 votes fewer than it was in the GOP primary of 2010, which was our last midterm and gubernatorial cycle.”

Early expectations are for an about a 16-percent voter turnout, which is less than half of the likely turnout in November.

On the other hand, heated mayoral races in Athens, Augusta and Columbus are driving turnout. As a result, Muscogee and Richmond were two of the five top counties in terms of early voting turnout. Already 8,500 people have voted in Columbus and 7,100 in Augusta, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, which didn’t release the Clarke County figures.

Candidates are doing what they can in the remaining hours to spur turnout. Most spent the weekend bouncing from one rally to another, and the statewide contenders who have the money will zoom around Georgia by plane on Monday. All the while, they are airing TV ads, sending mailers and having volunteers and machines call supporters.

“(GOP Senate candidate) Karen Handel clearly has the most targeted get-out-the-vote effort,” Towery said. “Her use of social media and automated phone calls to her base could give her an extra point or two in the final vote count. (Rival Jack) Kingston has turned around his TV ad campaign, running stronger ads and taking on (businessman David) Perdue. And Perdue is now attacking Kingston as well.”

Turnout in Gwinnnett is lagging as well, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post:

It’s going to be an interesting Election Day,” [Gwinnett Elections Superintendent Lynn Ledford] said. “I really can’t say (how many will turn out), but it’ll be interesting.”

During the early voting period last week, the turnout was light, Ledford said, but it was steady.

As of the end of the day Thursday, about 5,788 ballots had been cast in Gwinnett. That is down compared to four years ago, the last mid-term, gubernatorial election year, when about 9,300 votes were cast during absentee and advanced periods. But Ledford said she isn’t sure if that is an indication that the polling will be light on Tuesday.

“I’m sure there will be lines on election day, but I don’t think it’ll take longer to check in than to vote,” she said.