Lines were sparse outside the Cobb County Regional Library voter precinct through noon on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Bills aimed at scrapping Georgia’s no-excuse absentee voting law and to increase identification requirements to vote by mail advanced in the Georgia Senate Wednesday.
The four bills, which passed by party-line votes out of two separate Senate Ethics Committee subcommittees, marked the first push by top Republican state lawmakers to move a slate of election bills focused on changes to absentee voting.
The most far-reaching measure would halt registered Georgia voters’ ability to vote by mail without providing a reason, ending a practice widely used in the 2020 election cycle by millions of voters wary of exposure to COVID-19 at in-person polling places.
Another bill that passed Wednesday seeks to boost voter ID requirements for requesting and casting absentee ballots, marking changes favored by top-ranking Georgia Republicans including Gov. Brian Kemp and House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
The bill would require registered voters to provide their date of birth, driver’s license number or other ID card number to request an absentee ballot, overhauling the state’s current system of verifying voter signatures on absentee request forms and ballot envelopes.
Two other measures that cleared Wednesday’s subcommittees would create a new state elections supervisor in charge of training local elections officials and restrict mobile polling places for use only when regular voting sites have lost power or been damaged.
The four bills now head to the full committee for consideration before potentially reaching the Senate floor.
The proposals address many claims former President Donald Trump and his allies made following the 2020 elections of widespread voter fraud that state officials and federal courts rejected as baseless. Trump lost the Nov. 3 election in Georgia to President Joe Biden by 11,779 votes.
Republican lawmakers have called many of the proposed changes necessary to restore voter confidence in the state’s election system and rein in mail-in voting after local elections officials complained they were overwhelmed during the 2020 cycle.
Their push to overhaul the absentee-voting process has been condemned by Democratic lawmakers who have framed the bills as attempts at voter suppression seeking to halt the momentum Democrats have built in recent elections.
Democratic lawmakers also slammed Republican state senators for holding Wednesday’s two subcommittee hearings at 7 a.m. – an unusually early hour for hearings in Georgia legislative sessions – and for not broadcasting the hearings via live-stream video for the public to watch.
“Clearly, we are trying to hide something from the public, the people we answer to,” said state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta. “This gamesmanship is unacceptable.”
Subcommittee hearings in the state Senate “are not typically streamed unless we have approval from leadership,” said Andrew Allison, director of the Senate Press Office, which is in charge of broadcasting meetings during the session.
The Georgia Senate Republican Caucus also stressed subcommittee meetings are not live-streamed, though the state House of Representatives does broadcast live video of subcommittee meetings.
The Republican caucus punched back at Democrats, saying their complaints “misrepresent election integrity efforts” and bashing the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus for soliciting donations in a message on Twitter criticizing the election bills.
“Ethics complaints are being considered,” the Republican caucus said.
ATLANTA – Georgia would observe standard time all year long under legislation that cleared a state Senate committee Wednesday.
Senate Bill 100 would do away with the current practice of switching back and forth between standard time and daylight saving time every six months.
“Most people want to stay on the same time all year,” Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, the bill’s chief sponsor, told members of the Senate Government Oversight Committee.
Watson cited studies that point to an increase in heart attacks during the two weeks in spring following the switch from standard to daylight time.
On the other hand, judges have been found to mete out harsher sentences to criminal defendants immediately following the switch from daylight to standard time in the fall, he said.
“It interferes with our sleep … for about a one- to two-week period every fall and spring,” he said.
Watson said his bill calls for going on standard time permanently only because federal law prohibits states from unilaterally going on daylight saving time all year.
He said most people would rather be on daylight time permanently if given the choice.
As a result, he has amended his original bill to provide that Georgia would observe standard time all year until Congress acts to allow states to switch to daylight time permanently. If and when that happens, the substitute version of the legislation the committee approved on Wednesday would move Georgia to daylight time all year.
Before the vote, freshman Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said going on standard time permanently could hurt businesses in Georgia. Earlier sunsets would lead to fewer daylight hours during the evenings for shoppers, she said.
“I’m concerned this would have a significant economic impact, particularly in the summer,” she said.
But Watson, who is a physician, said he’s heard from trauma surgeons who worry that later sunrises during the winter if Georgia goes on daylight time permanently would increase the risk of children being hit by cars on their way to school.
Watson’s bill isn’t the only one before the General Assembly dealing with time. The House State Planning and Community Affairs Committee approved legislation sponsored by Rep. Wes Cantrell, R-Woodstock, last month calling for Georgia to observe daylight saving time all year.
ATLANTA – Legalizing pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in Georgia would generate commercial investment and create jobs without using tax dollars, state Sen. Brandon Beach said Tuesday.
Beach, R-Alpharetta, pitched a proposed constitutional amendment calling for a statewide referendum on horse racing and a separate bill specifying how the industry would operate in Georgia at a hearing held by the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee.
Bringing horse racing to Georgia would produce an economic impact of more than $1 billion a year, not only from racetracks but from breeding racehorses, Beach said.
“When we first got into the movie business, a lot of people thought we weren’t going to be successful,” he said. “I think we can do the same thing in the equine industry.”
The difference, Beach said, is that horse racing can operate in Georgia without state subsidies like the large tax credit the state has provided for the past dozen years to lure film and TV productions to the Peach State.
“It’s all private investment,” he said. “We’re not going to have any public investment in this.”
The legislation calls for the construction of up to three mixed-use developments featuring a racetrack, hotels and restaurants. The facilities also could include convention space, entertainment venues and retail shopping.
One of the racetrack complexes would have to be located within 50 miles of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and require an investment of at least $250 million. The other two facilities would be outside the metro region and require a smaller investment of at least $125 million.
Portions of the betting proceeds would go toward education, health care, rural development and to efforts to address problem gambling and promote the horse racing and breeding industries in Georgia.
Horse racing would generate revenue from three sources: pari-mutuel betting during at least 60 days of live racing, betting on simulcast races conducted at tracks in other locations and betting on historic racing machines, similar to slot machines, located at the racetracks.
Beach said the historical racing machines at tracks in Kentucky generated $700 million in 2017 and nearly $1.4 billion in 2018.
“There’s a lot of money in these historical racing machines,” he said.
Several committee members questioned whether racetracks could operate successfully in Georgia without casinos, pointing to examples of racetracks that have struggled financially without them.
Beach said members of the Georgia Horse Racing Coalition, which supports legalizing pari-mutuel betting on horse racing, have assured him racetracks can make a go of it without casinos.
Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, expressed concern that requiring racetracks to be at least 125 miles apart would disqualify Macon, which is closer than that to Hartsfield-Jackson.
Beach responded that he would be willing to amend those distance numbers in the bill.
The legislation also drew criticism from representatives of religious groups.
Mike Griffin of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board said legalized gambling doesn’t make economic sense. He cited a study showing that every $1 in gambling revenue generates $3 in social costs including gambling addiction and family bankruptcies.
Paul Smith of Citizen Impact, a network of pastors, used a slippery-slope argument.
“Once we get horse racing, it’s hard to argue we won’t get the next type of gambling,” he said. “It will be difficult to do one without the other.”
Opposition to legalized gambling among church congregations has played a large part in sinking past efforts in the General Assembly to approve casino gambling and horse racing.
But Beach cited polls showing strong support for legalizing horse racing in Georgia.
“I don’t think anybody’s going lose a primary or general election letting voters decide whether to allow pari-mutuel betting on horse racing,” he assured his Senate colleagues. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Gov. Brian Kemp and state lawmakers detailed proposed changes to Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law on Feb. 16, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – State officials unveiled details of a bipartisan bill Tuesday aimed at revising Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law to limit who can detain someone suspected of a crime.
The first major criminal-justice measure proposed in the 2021 legislative session, sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, would repeal a current Georgia law that broadly allows private citizens to detain someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt.
It would still allow owners and employees in businesses including restaurants, as well as security guards and out-of-jurisdiction police officers, to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property – so long as they’re handed over to local authorities within an hour.
The proposed changes would not affect the state’s stand-your-ground law or any other legal protections for Georgians who seek to reasonably defend themselves from crimes committed against themselves or others, officials stressed at a news conference Tuesday.
“Our bill to overhaul the citizen’s arrest statute is a balanced approach to protecting the lives and livelihoods of ourselves, our friends [and] our neighbors, while also preventing rogue vigilante-ism from threatening the security and God-given potential of all Georgians,” said Gov. Brian Kemp.
Kemp, joined by more than a dozen top state lawmakers from both parties, called the state’s current Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law “an antiquated law that is ripe for abuse.”
He said the bill stems from the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020, when two white men who suspected him of robbing a nearby home under construction shot him dead while trying to detain him.
The two men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, were arrested months later after protests over police brutality and racial injustice swept across the country and drew attention to the lack of action in the case by coastal Georgia authorities. They have pleaded not guilty, citing the citizen’s arrest law.
Anger over Arbery’s death and protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota on May 25, 2020, convinced a bipartisan slate of Georgia lawmakers last June to pass legislation outlawing hate crimes in the state. The citizen’s arrest bill follows up on that measure, Kemp said.
“Like the anti-hate crimes legislation, reforming Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute is first and foremost about who we are as a state,” Kemp said Tuesday. “In Georgia, we value lives … regardless of race, creed or culture.”
The bill comes as Democratic lawmakers push a wide-ranging package of criminal-justice reform proposals including bans on certain police tactics like no-knock warrants and chokeholds, citizen-led oversight of inquiries into officer-involved shootings and stronger standards for use-of-force training.
Republican lawmakers have taken a less-expansive approach to criminal justice this session, so far filing bills to ease employment challenges for people on probation and carrying out Kemp’s priority to crack down harder on human trafficking.
So far, Reeves’ measure on citizen’s arrests faces the best odds for passing in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, despite wariness by some Democratic leaders to accept the proposed legal protections for business owners to detain suspected criminals.
Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, who is the legislature’s longest-serving member, sought to quell concerns from within his party Tuesday by assuring the bill has backing from criminal-justice advocates and has elicited “excitement” from Arbery’s family.
“I think we’re on pretty good footing,” Smyre said after the news conference. “We assured the [Arbery] family and those in Brunswick that citizen’s arrest would be our next move. … It would have been an abdication of our responsibility if we had not touched citizen’s arrest early on in this legislative session.”
The bill also has support from James Woodall, the president of Georgia’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, saying he “fully endorses” Reeves’ measure.
“We urge members of both parties and in both chambers to do the same,” Woodall said.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that would make it easier to enroll low-income children in Medicaid.
Under House Bill 163, children in families that are eligible for food stamps could be enrolled in Georgia’s Medicaid program automatically rather than having to go through the normal application process.
“For many families, this is difficult,” said state Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, chairman of the House Health and Human Services Committee and the bill’s chief sponsor. “They don’t have computers, they live in South Georgia where there’s no internet, or don’t have a car to go to the DFCS [Division of Family and Children Services] office.
“We have children today who are eligible for Medicaid but aren’t getting it because of this glitch.”
If it becomes law, the “express lane” bill would allow an estimated 60,000 additional Medicaid-eligible Georgia children to enroll in the joint state-federal health coverage program, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.
Cosponsors of the bill include Reps. Houston Gaines, R-Athens; Katie Dempsey, R-Rome; Spencer Frye, D-Athens; Eddie Lumsden, R-Armuchee , and Mesha Mainor, D-Atlanta.
