by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Lawmakers who want to overhaul the way Georgians vote heard a consistent message Thursday from election chiefs.
Hurry up! And give us money.
A law backed by Republicans in the General Assembly outlaws the Quick Response (QR) codes that the state’s voting machines use to transfer voter intent into each polling place’s database.
Poll workers will have to use a different method starting July 1, and the legislature has yet to identify it — or pay for it.
Local election chiefs and poll workers told a House study committee that convened at Savannah Technical College Thursday that they will need months to train workers.
“It cannot be rushed,” said Billy Wooten, the election supervisor in Chatham County, where the fourth hearing of the House study committee on election procedures was being held.
There is significant momentum in the state Republican party to use paper ballots.
Such a change could be expensive for a small place like Irwin County, said Ethan Compton, the election supervisor there.
“Property taxes will have to go up if we have to pre-print all of our ballots,” he said. “That is a cost that is going to be unacceptable to the people that I work for.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who announced this week that he is running for governor, has consistently said that the state’s voting machines work well and that elections have been accurate.
But a statistician from the University of California at Berkeley who was invited to speak, said Georgia’s system can be hacked. Professor Philip Stark also said the system lacks a paper trail that is trustworthy enough for reliable audits.
He recommended that the state use hand-marked ballots like most voters in the country. The results would be optically scanned on election night for a prompt result, then workers would do hand counts to confirm the outcome.
Instead, Georgia voters mark their vote on a touchscreen, and the machine then transfers the result to a printout bearing the selections and a QR code. The voter then enters the paper into a secured scanner. The ballot machine also produces a digital record on a memory card that each voter returns after using it to record their vote.
The system is known as a ballot marking device.
“With a ballot marking device, you’re making the voter responsible not just for their own mistakes, but also for the cybersecurity of the system,” Stark said. “It’s on them to determine whether the system misbehaved and misprinted their votes.”
With this kind of system, voters lack proof if a machine errs, he said. “It doesn’t give them any evidence that they can go back to a poll worker and say, ‘Hey, this machine flipped my vote’.”
About two dozen members of the public each got a moment to speak, some saying they lacked confidence in the election system and others endorsing it. So much information was shared during the four-hour hearing that the last speaker said she forgot what she was going to say.
Before her, Marilyn Marks, the director of the Coalition for Good Governance, told the lawmakers something that probably everyone could agree with despite the controversy surrounding elections and voting.
“You guys have your work cut out for you,” she said.
The next hearing will be Oct. 2 at the Georgia Piedmont Technical College campus in Covington.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A federal review of Georgia’s unique implementation of Medicaid found that two-thirds of the money went to administrative overhead rather than to medical assistance.
The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office also found that more than half of the $80 million spent on the program since 2021 went to contractors who helped the state overhaul its eligibility and enrollment system.
Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage demonstration project needed the overhaul because of the state’s work requirement. All applicants must prove they spent 80 hours working, attending college or doing community service during the month before applying.
They must continue those activities to stay insured.
A law passed by Congress this year makes other states impose similar work requirements.
The new GAO review was requested by four Democrats in the U.S. Senate, including Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. They oppose the work requirements.
Warnock’s office released the report Thursday.
In a briefing with reporters, a Warnock staffer criticized the lower-than-advertised program enrollment. There were about 7,500 Georgians insured by Pathways in May, the review said, far below the 25,000 Georgia had projected for the first year.
“This program is here to kick people off their health insurance,” said the Warnock staffer, who asked not to be identified.
The Pathways program technically started in 2021, but it did not get off the ground until 2023.
That pause likely drove up administrative costs, said the review.
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, blames the administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, for that pause. Kemp’s office said the Biden administration “put up roadblocks at every turn” to stop Pathways.
“Democrats like Senators Ossoff and Warnock are trying to rewrite history after four years of inaction and blame the State for costs associated with their own stonewalling,” Kemp’s office said in an emailed statement.
Georgia is applying to extend the program another five years. The state estimates it can enroll at least 18,000 in the first year of extension, increasing that to more than 30,000 by year five.
The federal government has budgeted $400 million for administrative costs to implement the same kind of work requirements in states across the country.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans who want to eliminate the state income tax vowed on Wednesday that they would not pay for it by taxing groceries and housing.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, secured agreement from a largely Republican study committee to neither impose a state tax on property or on grocery sales nor to increase the gasoline tax.
Tillery chairs both the Senate Appropriations Committee and a Senate committee that is studying how to abolish Georgia’s 5.19% income tax.
The move by Tillery, a candidate for lieutenant governor, illustrates the challenge. To eliminate the state income tax, lawmakers must either cut the budget or secure other sources of funding to maintain government services.
At their meeting Wednesday, senators heard from current and former officials from other states that do not have an income tax or are in the process of eliminating one.
Those states tend to rely on sales taxes, which take a proportionately larger bite out of the paychecks of consumers who earn less.
In Florida, for instance, three quarters of general revenues — $50 billion — come from a 6% sales tax, said J. Ben Watkins, the Sunshine State’s director of bond finance.
He told the senators at the Georgia Capitol that the absence of an income tax has driven population growth in Florida — and sales tax revenue along with it.
“People have flocked to the state — remote working, second homes, retirees,” he said. “Wy do people move to Florida? What is our secret to success in Florida? Warm climate and low taxes.”
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, one of three Democrats on the 11-member committee, pushed back, saying sales taxes place a relatively higher burden on low-income earners than an income tax.
But Sarah Hicks, a former budget director for the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said businesses are attracted by the absence of an income tax. Those businesses create jobs that attract workers and grow the economy, she said.
“I think people go where jobs are, and they go where they know what to expect,” she said.
About half of Texas’ revenue comes from the state’s sales tax, Hicks said.
At a previous hearing, in August, the nationally known anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist recommended a gradual reduction in the income tax rate on the path to elimination.
Georgia is already going that direction. The General Assembly voted to reduce the income tax rate from 6% to 5.75% in 2022, gradually lowering it to 5.19% this year.
Tillery ended the meeting after securing the votes against offsetting taxes to groceries, property and gas. He said the next hearing will be in mid- to late-October.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger wants to follow the trail of Brian Kemp, who used his title as Georgia secretary of state to launch into the governor’s office.
Raffensperger joined the field of Republican contenders Wednesday, on a platform that includes more jobs, less taxation, immigration controls and other traditional GOP hallmarks, including guns, God and — these days — opposition to anything “woke.”
Like Kemp, he is focusing on voters who work hard for their money.
“Hardworking Georgians are struggling to put food on the table,” Raffensperger said. “Parents worry about their kids being indoctrinated in the classroom. Too many families live in fear of gangs, cartels, and violent criminals.”
Raffensperger earned the enmity of President Donald Trump by contradicting his claim that Georgia’s 2020 election results were inaccurate. Now, he must now try to win the 2026 GOP primary election against a Trump-backed candidate.
Trump has endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was already running against state Attorney General Chris Carr for the GOP nomination.
Jones is a longtime ally of Trump, whose voting base is driving state Republican politics. Their influence is so strong that they got the state Republican Party to adopt a resolution in June to bar Raffensperger from running as a Republican, though the party chief doubted it was legally enforceable.
Should Raffensperger win the GOP nomination, he will face the survivor of an increasingly crowded primary for Democrats.
There are standard Democrats in the field: Jason Esteves, who resigned from his Atlanta-based state Senate seat last week to focus on his campaign; former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Michael Thurmond, who has been elected statewide as labor commissioner, has served in the General Assembly, and recently ended his second four-year term as the elected CEO of DeKalb County.
And there is now an unusual contender who will be appealing to Democratic voters: Geoff Duncan, Jones’ predecessor in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Duncan was a Republican when he led the Senate in that role, but — equally reviled by the Republican Party due to his clashes with Trump over the 2020 election — he recently switched parties. Duncan entered the race for governor Tuesday as a Democrat with an anti-Trump platform, calling Trump’s attacks “a badge of honor.”
Raffensperger, a businessman who rose to state office after serving on the Johns Creek City Council and then in the Georgia House of Representatives, is not only following Kemp’s path but also his strategies.
Kemp has clashed with Trump, too, but has managed to remain popular with Republicans.
Raffensperger said he wants to build on Kemp’s legacy by taking on the radical left, “woke” corporate America, and criminal immigrants.
Raffensperger also vowed to eliminate special interest tax breaks while at the same time seeking to incentivize companies that are reshoring long-term jobs in Georgia and in poor areas.
In an appeal to Trump’s base, he also said he wants to purge “woke” school curriculum, protect girls from transgender athletes while banning puberty blockers and transition surgeries, fortify schools with more safety grants — and work alongside Trump and congressional leaders on the economy, immigration and policing.
Raffensperger has tried to recover from his clash with Trump over his own handling of the 2020 election, with reassuring messages about security. He has routinely purged inactive voters and offered audits of the accuracy of election outcomes.
His departure from the secretary of state’s office was telegraphed earlier this month, when his former lieutenant, Gabriel Sterling, joined the campaign to succeed Raffensperger. Sterling promised that Georgia’s elections are safe and that he would keep it that way.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp joined other political leaders near Social Circle Tuesday to turn shovels at a ceremonial groundbreaking for the future Rivian electric automobile plant.
The government-subsidized project is expected to create 7,500 jobs by 2030, after construction begins in earnest next year and the first vehicle rolls off the line in 2028.
The company says it will eventually make 400,000 automobiles a year there.
Rivian paused construction last year but then inked a $6 billion loan with the U.S. Department of Energy and announced plans to move ahead in January.
Georgia taxpayers had already purchased and prepared the land that the state is leasing to the company through a quasi-governmental third party.
The unusual transaction was a way around local zoning that restricts the 2,000-acre property to agricultural uses.
Nearby landowners sued in Morgan County Superior Court, hoping to force the project through the normal zoning process.
But the state intervened and moved to compel the plaintiffs to pay its legal costs, asserting the lawsuit was frivolous.
A judge ruled for the nearby landowners last week, saying they raised an unanswered question about whether the state could bypass local zoning for a for-profit project.
One of the landowners, Alan Jenkins, held a protest sign at the edge of the property as Kemp and the others were digging.
Georgia “fouled” legacy farmland to prepare the land for the company, said Jenkins, whose sign called for protecting the local watershed.
“Rivian, a touted green company, is taking advantage of the state having done the dirty work for them,” he said.
