by Dave Williams | Oct 15, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Early voting is off to a record-breaking start in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported Tuesday.
As of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, about 234,000 Georgians had cast their ballots on the first day of the early voting period, far surpassing the 136,000 who voted on the first day of early voting ahead of the last presidential election four years ago and more than any day of early voting in 2022.
Raffensperger said his office shipped out absentee ballots last week as scheduled, despite disruptions in South Georgia and the Augusta region caused by Hurricane Helene. Just more than 250,000 Georgia voters have requested absentee ballots, he said.
Blake Evans, director of elections for the secretary of state’s office, said Georgia has 350 early voting locations statewide. Voters can click on MyVoterPage.com for information on early voting locations in their county.
Raffensperger said the average wait time for early voting on Tuesday morning was just 57 seconds, even faster than the average wait time of three minutes posted two years ago.
“It’s going to be free. It’s going to be fair, and it’s going to be fast,” he said.
Raffensperger said state law now requires voters to show a photo ID no matter whether they vote early, in person on Election Day, or by absentee ballot. About 99% of voters use a photo ID to prove their identity, he said.
The secretary said his office conducted a statewide audit more than 20 months ago to ensure only U.S. citizens are registered to vote in Georgia. The agency works in information-sharing partnerships with other states and the Georgia Department of Driver Services to identify voters who may have moved out of state, he said.
“We understand how many people move each year in America,” he said. “It’s a lot to keep track of.”
Raffensperger urged Georgians to make a plan for how they want to vote.
“It’s your choice, but please make a choice,” he said.
Early voting in Georgia continues through Nov. 1, four days before Election Day,
by Dave Williams | Oct 14, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s 2024 Teacher of the Year is joining the state Department of Education to boost the agency’s teacher recruitment and retention efforts.
Christy Todd, who spent 15 years teaching in Fayette County Public Schools, will lead projects aimed at growing the teacher pipeline.
“Christy Todd is an outstanding educator who is passionate about ensuring her fellow Georgians can also answer the call to teach,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Monday. “I am thrilled she is joining us at the Georgia Department of Education as we work to recruit great teachers and make sure the classrooms of our state are places where they can build thriving careers.”
In her new role, Todd will work to build a statewide teacher recruitment website and a roadmap school districts can use to increase teacher retention.
“During my term as the 2024 Teacher of the Year, it became clear to me that if Georgia wants to remain the No.-1 state to do business, we must also become the No.-1 state for teachers to teach,” she said. “The economic futures of our state, communities, families, and students depend on Georgia’s public-school classrooms being led by highly qualified teachers.”
Todd spent most of her career in Fayette County at Rising Starr Middle School as a chorus director, music technology teacher, and founder of the district’s Community for Creativity initiative, which teaches students to create songs, podcasts, videos, and audiobooks.
Prior to teaching, she worked in nonprofit consulting and business development.
Todd holds a bachelor’s degree in music education from Shorter College and a master’s degree in music education from Florida State University.
by Dave Williams | Oct 13, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Illegal immigration and abortion dominated a debate Sunday between the two candidates for Georgia’s open 3rd Congressional District seat.
Republican Brian Jack and Democrat Maura Keller each focused on the issue that has most galvanized their respective bases, immigration for Jack and abortion for Keller.
Jack, a former White House aide to then-GOP President Donald Trump, said the Trump administration secured the U.S. border with Mexico, only to see an influx of illegal immigrants after the Biden administration relaxed enforcement of immigration laws.
“Every district in the country is now a border district,” Jack said during a livestreamed candidate debate at the Atlanta studios of Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Jack cited the murder of a 22-year-old nursing student killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens, allegedly by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, as an example of what can happen in an era of lax immigration enforcement.
“Laken Riley would still be a student at the University of Georgia if it were not for an illegal immigrant who took her life,” Jack said.
Keller cited the 2022 deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban took effect as an example of what can happen to pregnant women following the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
Medical care for Thurman was delayed because her doctors were worried about violating Georgia’s abortion law, while Miller didn’t seek medical care due to the same concerns.
“[Whether to obtain an abortion] is the decision of the woman, her health-care provider, family, and spiritual adviser,” Keller said.
Keller, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said the antiquated and understaffed Veterans Administration needs to be overhauled to provide better service to those who have served their country.
“Nobody should be on hold for 45 minutes only to be disconnected,” she said.
Jack said if he’s elected to Congress, he would push for moving some federal agencies outside of Washington, D.C.
“If you’re in Washington, D.C., you’ve got a 95% Democrat workforce,” he said. “If we move out of Washington, D.C., we can find better policy.”
But Keller said moving federal agencies away from the capital would be inefficient.
“We don’t need departments all over different time [zones],” she said. “When we need them, we need them now.”
Jack and Keller are vying for the congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-West Point. Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District in west-central Georgia stretches from Paulding and Polk counties south to Columbus.
by Dave Williams | Oct 13, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Republican congressional candidate Wayne Johnson criticized incumbent U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, Sunday for losing touch with Southwest Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District during 32 years in office and said it’s time for a change.
“When you’re running for Congress, you’ve got to get in tune with the people in the district. … “[Bishop] spends 85% of his time in Washington,” Johnson said during what had been planned as a livestreamed debate with Bishop at the Atlanta studios of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Bishop, however, declined to participate.
Johnson, who worked in the Trump administration as head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Student Finance, easily defeated Chuck Hand last June to win the Republican nomination to challenge Bishop.
Johnson lives in Macon, which is outside the 2nd District. However, federal law does not require members of the U.S. House to live in the district they represent.
On Sunday, Johnson took a different position than most Republicans on the abortion issue. Having a daughter who suffered from an ectopic pregnancy in Louisiana and struggled to get proper medical care from doctors wary of that state’s strict restrictions on abortion, he said decisions on abortion should be left to women in consultation with their doctor and their conscience.
However, he added that the issue should be left to the states rather than Congress – the same position taken by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – and opposed late-term abortions.
Johnson called for expanding the federal government’s role in education through school-choice vouchers that would supplement legislation the General Assembly passed this year providing vouchers worth up to $6,500 to parents of children enrolled in low-performing public schools who wish to send their kids to a private school.
He also said he would support a direct federal loan program that would help consumers afford down payments on houses and cars and would be willing to pilot that program in Southwest Georgia.
Johnson said he would combine his experience in Washington with 40 years in business.
“I know how Washington works,” he said. “[But] l bring common sense.”
by Dave Williams | Oct 11, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Even the reddest of red states can promote safe firearm storage without stepping on the Second Amendment, officials from two red states told Georgia lawmakers this week.
Republican state Rep. Steve Eliason of Utah and Kathy Martinez-Prather, director of the Texas School Safety Center, testified before the Georgia Senate Safe Firearm Storage Study Committee about steps they’ve taken in their states to encourage gun owners to lock up their firearms without imposing mandates.
“Safe storage is low-hanging fruit … one of the easiest things we can do,” said Volkan Topalli, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Georgia State University, who appeared with the out-of-state witnesses at a hearing Oct. 10. “Safe storage is not opposing Second Amendment rights.”
The Georgia Senate created the study committee back in March, but the issue of safe firearms storage took on greater urgency last month when two students and two teachers were shot to death at Apalachee High School near Winder.
Another student at the school, 14-year-old Colt Gray, was arrested at the scene and charged with the murders, while his father, Colin Gray, also faces criminal charges for allegedly letting his son possess the AR-15 style rifle used in the killings.
The mass shooting at Apalachee High School was among 11 gun-related incidents that have occurred on school grounds in Georgia this year, second-most in the country, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun-violence prevention organization in the nation.
“Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for children and teens in America,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the group’s senior director of research. “We have to do better.”
The Texas School Safety Center was established in 1999 in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Columbine High School, where two students killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded 21 others in less than 20 minutes, an episode that sparked a trend of mass school shootings that continues today.
Martinez-Prather said the center’s mission is to provide research, training, and technical assistance to schools looking to create a safe and secure environment. The center reviews every emergency operations plan individual schools develop and produces educational materials on safe firearm storage for distribution to the schools at least several times a year, she said.
Since preventing school violence is not what teachers are accustomed to, the center fills that role, Martinez-Prather said.
“Educators do not get into education to be emergency managers,” she said. “School safety has always been a back-burner conversation.”
Eliason said the Utah legislature has passed a series of bills aimed at safe firearm storage with strong bipartisan majorities going back to 2013.
The Utah measures have used a variety of approaches. Under some of the bills, the state has bought and distributed trigger locks and biometric gun safes. Others have established tip lines that allow callers aware that a student may be planning a school attack to notify authorities.
“They’re preventable when communities detect early warning signs and intervene,” Eliason said.
Utah’s school safety legislation also includes a mental health component. A School Safety Crisis Line lets students who feel they may become a threat to themselves or others contact someone who can help.
“Every school shooter has some sort of mental health issue in their life,” Eliason said. “Students can talk to a licensed clinical social worker 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Another bill Utah lawmakers have passed allows people suffering mental health issues to put their name on a restricted list so they can’t buy firearms for whatever period of time they feel they need.
“Preventing access to firearms and getting mental health treatment go hand in hand,” Eliason said. “If you’re not focusing on both, you’re not getting to the root of the issue.”
Eliason said the key to Utah’s approach to safe firearm storage is that it’s voluntary. Since it doesn’t involve mandates, the state’s gun lobby has supported the bills, he said.
“They realize that working together, we can save gun owners’ lives,” he said.
Georgia Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, the study committee’s chairman, said he was impressed with the Texas firearm safety program and may propose something similar for Georgia. The panel is due to make recommendations, including any legislation it might introduce, before the General Assembly convenes for the 2025 session in January.
