Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s U.S. senators wishing for a Christmas runoff gift may have gotten a lump of coal heading into the holiday break instead after plans for political back-patting for a newly passed COVID-19 relief package were demolished.
President Donald Trump is calling for increasing the stimulus checks in the legislation to $2,000 per American rather than the $600 included in the relief bill, handing the two Democratic contenders in the Senate runoff elections new ammunition to blast the Republican incumbents over their response to the pandemic.
“Georgia families can’t wait: $2,000 checks should be passed now,” said Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church, who is running against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
“$600 is a joke,” said Jon Ossoff, the owner of an investigative journalism company running as a Democrat against Republican Sen. David Perdue.
The remarks came after Trump called the $600 stimulus checks “a disgrace” on Tuesday night, less than a day after Congress passed the $900 billion COVID-19 package, which had been delayed for months as each party blamed the other for hobbling negotiations.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, pivoted Wednesday to highlight foreign aid dollars in the COVID-19 bill that Trump and Senate Republicans have criticized, rather than saying outright whether she would support the president’s call for $2,000 stimulus checks.
“I’ll certainly look at supporting it if it repurposes wasteful spending toward that,” Loeffler said at a Cobb County rally.
Amid the COVID-19 debate this week, her campaign’s allies attacked Warnock over police body-camera footage showing an altercation between him and his ex-wife, who claimed Warnock drove over her foot with a car during an argument. Warnock insists he did not actually run over his ex-wife’s foot.
Perdue has not said yet whether he supports increasing the stimulus checks. His campaign released a new television ad Tuesday praising the COVID-19 relief package and criticizing Ossoff for not backing it.
Before Trump’s comments, both Republican campaigns hailed the package passed this week as a victory, touting its extension of small-business loans, emergency funding for schools and an additional $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits.
“We will continue to take historic action to protect and rebuild our communities from this unprecedented crisis and we will not stop fighting for the people of Georgia,” Perdue and Loeffler said in a joint statement.
Congress won’t be back in session until next week after a move by House Democrats to power through the $2,000 stimulus checks on Thursday was blocked. Trump has not yet signed the COVID-19 relief package with the $600 checks that Congress sent to his desk on Monday.
Meanwhile, Trump has also vetoed a defense spending package over a move to rename military bases named after Confederate figures. Perdue and Loeffler had backed the defense bill, prompting pressure from Democrats to override the veto despite the Republicans’ staunch support for Trump.
Georgia Democratic leaders quickly seized on Trump’s intra-party curveballs to blast Loeffler and Perdue as the heated runoff races for their seats head down the final campaign stretch to the Jan. 5 election.
“$2,000 is literally the difference between people paying their bills right now, being put out on the street, or eating right now,” said U.S. Rep.-elect Nikema Williams of Atlanta, who currently chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia.
Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House for at least the next two years, following President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in last month’s presidential election. A win by either Republican incumbent would block that scenario.
The three-week early voting period for the Jan. 5 runoffs began last week.
Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs have opened a flood of legal challenges over thousands of registered voters and the state’s rules on absentee ballots with less than two weeks to go until Election Day.
In the most far-reaching effort, the Texas-based conservative group True the Vote has lodged challenges against the eligibility of about 365,000 voters in all 159 Georgia counties, homing in on state law that lets local voters challenge the qualifications of other voters in their county.
That effort likely to favor Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler comes as Democrat-aligned groups seeking to restore nearly 200,000 voters to the rolls prepare to file another lawsuit after a federal judge tossed out their prior suit last week.
Meanwhile, the Perdue and Loeffler campaigns have signed onto two Republican-led lawsuits aiming to segregate the ballots of voters newly registered since the Nov. 3 general election and overhaul signature-match rules for absentee ballots. Both lawsuits were dismissed recently and appeals are pending.
Another Republican-backed lawsuit that was dismissed last week sought to outlaw absentee-ballot drop boxes for the runoffs and block county officials from processing mail-in ballots a few weeks before Election Day. State officials are allowing early absentee processing to give counties breathing room amid huge mail-in voting in Georgia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuits are yet another development in the intense competition for Georgia’s two Senate seats that will settle control of the federal government following President-elect Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump last month.
Perdue and Loeffler will need to overcome challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock to stave off a Democratic takeover of Washington, D.C., for at least the next two years. A win by either Republican incumbent would block that scenario.
The runoff-focused lawsuits also come as Trump and his allies continue casting doubt on Georgia’s election system, particularly its rules for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. Republican officials have also voiced concern out-of-state voters may flock to Georgia to illegally cast ballots in the runoffs.
The county-specific challenges by True the Vote relied on national change-of-address records to allege around 124,000 registered voters have left their county of residence and around 240,000 no longer live in Georgia, according to the group’s website.
“Filing the challenges preemptively, before absentee ballots are opened, will help ensure only legal, eligible votes are counted in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoff elections,” said the group’s founder and president, Catherine Engelbrecht.
Their efforts have met little success so far as elections boards in several counties including Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb have already shot down the challenges, while Muscogee County officials last week let a challenge to more than 4,000 voters move forward.
As counties mull the challenges, the voting rights group Fair Fight – founded by 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – is poised for a legal battle to squash True the Vote’s challenges before they can take effect if any local elections boards approve them.
“Georgia voters have the right to combat these shameful and abusive tactics in federal court, and we look forward to making the case that these challenges violate federal law,” Fair Fight said on Twitter. “Our message to True the Vote: Get out of Georgia and leave our voters alone.”
Meanwhile, four groups suing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to reinstate nearly 200,000 voter registrations are set to file another lawsuit after losing in court last week. The judge ruled the lawsuit came too late, citing hesitancy to tamper with voter rolls so close to Election Day.
A similar too-late-in-the-game judgement last week struck down the Georgia Republican Party’s lawsuit to keep ballots cast by new voters who registered between Nov. 4 and Dec. 7 from being counted in the same batches as other ballots.
A separate lawsuit brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to overhaul how signatures on absentee-ballot envelopes are verified was also tossed by a federal judge this week, though an appeal has been filed.
The Perdue and Loeffler campaigns joined both of those suits.
Also dismissed in federal court last week was a lawsuit brought by the 12th Congressional District Republican Committee that sought to scrap absentee-ballot drop boxes that were installed across Georgia for the Nov. 3 election, and to halt counties from processing mail-in ballots as early as this week.
So far, nearly 2 million Georgia voters have cast ballots by mail or during the three-week early voting period for the Senate runoffs. Early voting started on Dec. 14.
The line stretched around the block at South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton where voters waited in line for hours to cast ballots on the first day of early voting in the Nov. 3 general election on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Lawmakers on a state House committee overseeing elections offered a preview Wednesday of the heated debate over changing Georgia’s rules on mail-in ballots and verifying voter signatures set to play out during the upcoming legislative session.
The House Governmental Affairs Committee took testimony from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his top deputies who want to end no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia and shift to stricter voter ID laws after the controversy of last month’s presidential election.
In the latest of several fraud-focused hearings, Raffensperger urged lawmakers to back absentee-voting law changes to both ease pressure on local election officials and boost confidence in the system’s integrity – despite no evidence of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election.
He called for ending the ability of voters to request mail-in ballots for any reason in Georgia and requiring stronger ID verification for absentee ballots than signatures on envelopes, such as by using voters’ driver’s licenses instead.
“Blame-shifting is not productive and it doesn’t fix problems,” Raffensperger said. “All of us need to be focused on finding solutions that improve the elections process and make it secure and accessible for voters so there is strong trust and confidence in the system.”
The proposed changes come as Raffensperger faces a storm of criticism from supporters of President Donald Trump, who continues to claim his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes in Georgia was rife with fraud. State election officials have said his claims are not true.
Several Republicans on the committee indicated more changes may be needed for mail-in voting than those pitched by Raffensperger, such as clamping down on mobile voting units outside precincts and increasing security for absentee ballot drop boxes – or even outlawing the boxes entirely.
Others agreed with a proposal by Raffensperger to give his office more power to remove poor-performing county elections officials and board members, but added he ought to install more state monitors in local offices to oversee counting procedures on Election Day.
“Perception becomes reality,” said Rep. Darlene Taylor, R-Thomasville. “And with our elections, this has caused a lot of lack of confidence in our election process. … A lot of this is a local issue [and] I think you need to have more oversight over them.”
Meanwhile, suspicions of voter suppression are growing among legislative Democrats worried Raffensperger and Republicans may use the fraud claims as an excuse to overhaul election laws too much during the General Assembly session that starts next month, potentially disenfranchising voters.
Their fears stem from the Republican-controlled state legislature’s ability to revise election rules at a time when Democrats are making gains in Georgia, most recently with Biden’s presidential win, which benefited from huge numbers of mail-in votes cast amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No-excuse absentee voting has been used safely and effectively by both parties since 2005,” the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus wrote on Twitter. “Ending the practice in order to try and turn back the tide of Democratic participation in Georgia is voter suppression.”
Raffensperger’s office sought to frame no-excuse absentee voting as a burden on county election officials who were swamped with around 1.3 million mail-in ballots last month and forced to effectively run three separate elections for absentee, early and in-person voting.
Struggles in places like Fulton County to tally thousands of absentee ballots in the intensely close election also worsened many Georgians’ suspicions of fraud, highlighting how ill-equipped the state’s election system is to handle large numbers of mail-in ballots, said Raffensperger’s general counsel, Ryan Germany.
“We’re in a state where you’re going to continue to have close elections, where you’re going to continue to have very spirited responses on both sides,” Germany said. “The processes are designed to promote confidence, and we need to make sure all of our processes are set up that way.”
The 2021 legislative session of the General Assembly starts on Jan. 11, days after the hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, which are shaping up for similarly tight results as the presidential contest. With control of the federal government hanging in the balance, turnout is expected to be historically high.
Georgia Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey (right) gave updates on COVID-19 vaccine distribution and the worsening winter outbreak alongside Gov. Brian Kemp (left) at Emory University’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center in Atlanta on Dec. 22, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Seniors and staff in Georgia’s nursing homes are set to start receiving COVID-19 vaccines next week as positive cases continue increasing across the state amid the winter holidays, Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials said Tuesday.
Elderly-care facility residents who have been among the hardest hit since the pandemic sparked in March should start receiving doses next Monday of a vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company Moderna, the second vaccine to roll out so far in Georgia.
The vaccine boost comes as Georgia continues to see a spike in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations during the winter holiday season. Georgia reported its highest-ever daily case number of 6,242 positive cases on Tuesday, said state Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey.
The worsening winter outbreak has prompted officials to open 60 intensive-care beds at the Georgia World Congress Center starting next week in preparation for peaking capacity at local hospitals, Kemp said. He urged Georgians to take caution this week as families and friends gather for the Christmas.
“This long battle, as long as it’s been, we know it is coming to an end with this vaccine before us,” Kemp said at a news conference Tuesday. “But that being said, we cannot let up.
“We have to continue to focus on celebrating safely to get us through the holidays as normally and as quickly as possible so that we can continue the methodical reopening of our economy and weathering this COVID-19 storm until we can get everyone in our state vaccinated.”
State officials expect to receive 174,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine in the initial distribution phase, adding to the roughly 125,000 doses Georgia has received so far of the vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Workers at local hospitals and health departments in Georgia have been first in line to be vaccinated following federal approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this month. Officials are pushing to vaccinate all the state’s health-care workers sometime in January.
About 20,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine should be in next Monday’s shipment to elderly-care facility residents and staff. The Moderna vaccine can be stored at less-cold temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine.
“We are seeing a miracle of modern science happen right before our eyes,” Kemp said Tuesday. “And it is well needed, I’ll tell you.”
Roughly 95% of the state’s elderly-care facilities have signed up since October to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and have providers arrive on-site to administer doses to residents and staff, Toomey said.
Hundreds of health-care facilities, clinics, primary-care physicians and pharmacists have signaled to state officials their willingness to receive the vaccine and administer doses in the coming months.
With vaccines rolling out now for hospitals and elderly-care facilities, Toomey said she anticipates workers in critical jobs like Georgia’s school teachers should start receiving the vaccine in February.
The vaccine likely will not be widely available to the general public until summer 2021, officials have said. An online dashboard has been created to track progress on the vaccine’s distribution.
“With now the Moderna vaccine, we can literally cover the state in vaccination,” Toomey said.
Like Pfizer’s vaccine, the Moderna vaccine was developed using new technology that mimics the virus’ DNA to create immunity, not by injecting small amounts of virus as has traditionally been done with vaccines. That method helped developers produce the vaccine within months instead of years.
Clinical trials showed both vaccines have mild side effects like temporary arm pain and under-the-weather feelings. Emory University in Atlanta oversaw trials of the Moderna vaccine with thousands of local participants, including a large number from minority communities.
Ahead of the wider rollout, officials and health experts are urging Georgians to trust in the vaccine’s safety and to get vaccinated as soon as they can to better halt COVID-19’s spread.
“Vaccines don’t save lives, vaccinations do,” said Emory Healthcare CEO Dr. Jonathan Lewin. “As soon as you have the opportunity to receive the vaccine, please be sure to do that.”
More than 500,000 people in Georgia have tested positive for COVID-19 so far. As of Tuesday, the virus had killed 9,503 Georgians.
Georgia K-12 public schools have the option not to count year-end tests toward students’ final grades this year due to schooling hardships from the COVID-19 pandemic following a vote Monday by the state Board of Education.
State law requires scores on the annual Georgia Milestones tests to account for 20% of the cumulative grades for most of the state’s public-school students, from the third grade up to their senior year.
But this year, the Milestones scores can be counted essentially zero after State School Superintendent Richard Woods won approval for his proposal to water down the tests so students and teachers can have some relief as they continue working through tremendous challenges due to the virus.
“I firmly believe this is the right thing for kids,” Woods said after Monday’s vote. “We must ensure students and teachers are not penalized for circumstances beyond their control.”
School districts now have leeway to recalculate final course grades for the fall semester and count the tests as 0.01% if they want, a state Department of Education spokesperson confirmed. The same 0.01% weight can also apply for year-end tests in the upcoming spring 2021 semester.
Critically, each district also has the option to count the test scores higher than the 0.01% weight for students’ final grades in their local schools if they choose, the spokesperson confirmed.
Woods’ 0.01% proposal gained huge support from students, teachers, parents and school advocates across the state after U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos shot down his request in September to relax federal requirements on standardized tests this year with the pandemic.
DeVos insisted on using the tests to gauge school performance despite the impacts of virtual learning, which has upended how teachers instruct the state’s nearly 2 million students.
But Woods, backed by Georgia’s largest teachers’ union, pledged to gut the tests.
“Don’t worry about the tests,” Woods told local school districts in September. “We will abide by federal law, but we are also going to take the high-stakes power of the tests away.”
Despite his pledge, Woods’ plan was nearly killed in October when several state board members agreed with DeVos that the test weights should stay put, both to track how much students are learning and keep them from shrugging off their studies if the tests have no teeth.
“I’m not ready to give up on this year,” said Mike Royal, a 10-year board member who opposed scrapping the test weights entirely.
Royal joined other board members in October to hack the tests’ weight down to 10% instead of 0.01%, triggering a 30-day public comment period required before a final vote. That decision was met with intense backlash, the board to ditch the 10% alternative last month and back Woods’ original proposal.
“It has been an increasingly challenging year,” board Chairman Scott Sweeney said after Monday’s vote. “We still have a tremendous amount of work before us.”
Georgia schools are staring down another rough road to close out the 2020-21 term after shifting to online-only courses last spring and returning to uncertain classroom settings in the fall. Many districts remain strictly virtual while others have given students the option to resume in-person studies.
Meanwhile, standardized tests in Georgia are in the crosshairs after Woods outlined plans in October to continue shrinking the importance of year-end assessments and give local school districts more flexibility to evaluate student and teacher performance – ideas that Gov. Brian Kemp also supports.
That follows legislation the General Assembly passed this year that eliminated four year-end tests in Georgia high schools and one in the third grade, marking a win for the governor as he pushes to lock in support from educators ahead of his bid for reelection in 2022.
