ATLANTA – The state of Texas filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Georgia and three other battleground states in last month’s presidential election.
The suit, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, charges the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with “significant and unconstitutional irregularities” in conducting the Nov. 3 election.
It asks the justices to delay next week’s scheduled Electoral College vote expected to finalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump and instead allow the legislatures of each of the four states to appoint the electors. All four states’ legislatures are controlled by Republicans.
“These flaws cumulatively preclude knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections,” the suit states.
The Texas lawsuit, spearheaded by the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, is the latest of dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump allies since the election, many aimed at the unprecedented flood of absentee ballots cast by voters wary of exposure to COVID-19.
Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs dismissed the lawsuit as “false and irresponsible.”
“Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring forward a single person who this happened to,” he said. “That’s because it didn’t happen.”
The lawsuit was filed on the “safe harbor” deadline for states to certify their slates of electors before the Electoral College meets in all 50 states next Monday.
It also comes on the heels of a series of legislative hearings in Georgia and the other battleground states Biden carried by narrow margins last month.
A Georgia Senate subcommittee heard hours of testimony last week from witnesses assembled by Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani alleging incidents of voter fraud in Georgia.
Another day of hearings is scheduled to take place Thursday before the state House of Representatives’ Governmental Affairs Committee.
Four Republican state senators have asked Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the General Assembly to consider overturning the results of the election in Georgia by appointing a slate of GOP electors to vote at the Electoral College meeting Dec. 14.
Kemp called such talk “simply unlawful and unconstitutional” Tuesday during a news conference called to discuss Georgia’s plans for distributing the new COVID-19 vaccine.
“For us to call a special session because of evidence that was presented in a Senate hearing does not address the way that evidence should be used to alter an election in Georgia,” the governor said.
“If that evidence is so overwhelming, there are options … to take those into a court of law, to present those to a judge and have the judge rule on those matters. This is not an issue that’s set up in the General Assembly for lawmakers or myself per the constitution and laws in the state to deal with.”
ATLANTA – Efforts to foster economic development and improve health care in rural Georgia are starting to pay off, a panel of business and academic leaders said Monday.
A public-private partnership launched last summer has begun pilot projects aimed at helping unemployed rural residents start their own companies, Barbara Rivera Holmes, president and CEO of the Albany Chamber of Commerce, said at the 32nd Biennial Institute for Georgia Legislators, an event held every two years in Athens to familiarize newly elected state lawmakers with issues they’re likely to face in the General Assembly.
The Partnership for Inclusive Innovation is an offshoot of a task force of political, business and academic leaders Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan formed last winter to spearhead efforts to make Georgia the technology capital of the East Coast.
The Start It Up Georgia pilot project was launched in August to help would-be entrepreneurs learn how to start and operate a sustainable business. The 12-week program put 43 mentors together with 350 program participants, said Holmes, a member of Duncan’s task force.
“They took people who were unemployed or underemployed and gave them a pathway to entrepreneurship,” she said. “It’s already shown its success.”
Holmes said a pilot project to spur investment in housing is underway in Albany, and five cities including Augusta are starting a third pilot.
Dr. Jean Sumner, dean at the Mercer University School of Medicine, praised the General Assembly for passing legislation that will help improve the quality of health care in rural Georgia. Her list included a tax credit that is raising money for rural hospitals, changes to the state’s Certificate of Need law aimed at fostering competition among health-care facilities in rural communities and a bill requiring greater transparency in financial disclosures by the state’s non-profit hospitals.
Sumner said Mercer is working with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta and Macon-based Navicent Health Inc. on a pilot project that will send medical residents to counties that lack maternity services once or twice a month.
“We lead the nation in maternal mortality,” she said. “It’s not the hospitals. [Rural] women do not have pre-delivery care.”
Sumner said a lot more needs to be done to improve the quality of rural health care. For one thing, she said, 10 of the U.S. counties with the highest death rates from coronavirus are in Georgia: Hancock, Randolph, Terrell and Early.
“These are communities of color,” Sumner said. “The reason death rates are so high is chronic disease. We have to change that.”
ATLANTA – President Donald Trump argued Saturday night why he should be declared the winner of last month’s presidential election while urging his Georgia supporters to re-elect the state’s two Republican senators in next month’s runoffs.
In Valdosta for his first public rally since losing to President-elect Joe Biden, Trump repeated the allegations of voter fraud he has leveled since President-elect Joe Biden was certified the winner four days after the Nov. 3 election.
“This election was rigged,” Trump said. “They found a lot of ballots and they got rid of some, too.”
Trump’s charges that Democrats cheated in Georgia – which Biden carried by a razor-thin margin – have stirred fears among Republican leaders that some GOP loyalists might stay home on Jan. 5 rather than support Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
But Trump said the stakes in the runoff are too high for Georgia Republicans to ignore. Victories by Perdue and Loeffler would keep the Senate in Republican hands, while victories by Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would turn over the chamber to the Democrats.
“You will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or a free country,” the president said.
Trump went on to paint a dire picture of what would happen if Democrats are allowed to control the White House and both houses of Congress.
America would become a land of open borders for illegal immigration where armed gangs roam free and law-abiding firearms have lost their Second Amendment right to bear arms, he said.
Trump gave Loeffler and Perdue strong endorsements. He said he didn’t know Loeffler before the Atlanta businesswoman was appointed to the Senate late last year to succeed retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson, but has come to admire her.
“There is nobody who fought harder for me,” Trump said.
Perdue, a longtime CEO, was elected to the Senate in 2014 and has been a key Trump ally.
“David’s been my friend for a long time,” the president said. “Nobody in Washington is more respected.”
Trump also reiterated his criticism of Gov. Brian Kemp for not backing his efforts to stop Democrats from stealing the election.
The president called Kemp earlier Saturday and reportedly asked the governor to call a special session of the General Assembly to address his concerns about how the election played out in Georgia. The president also asked for an audit of absentee ballot signatures.
“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said during the Valdosta rally.
While Kemp has asked the secretary of state’s office for an audit, he pointed out the governor does not have the legal authority to interfere in an election.
Loeffler and Perdue briefly joined Trump on the podium Saturday night.
“We want you to vote on Jan. 5,” Loeffler told the crowd. “If you’re our voice on Jan. 5, we’ll be your voice for years.”
“We’re going to fight and win those two [Senate] seats and make sure you get a fair and square deal in the state of Georgia,” Perdue added, addressing the president[DW1] .
Their Democratic opponents, Ossoff and Warnock, pointed in a news release Saturday following a joint rally in Conyers that Trump’s refusal to concede the election to Biden has touched off a damaging divide within Georgia’s Republican Party.
On the other hand, the Democrats are focused on issues that matter to Georgians, Ossoff and Warnock said in the release.
“He and I are going to fight the good fight on behalf of health, jobs, and justice in the great state of Georgia and in the United States,” Warnock said.
ATLANTA – A group of Georgia House Democrats called on state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler Friday to open a call center to help process unemployment claims.
Members of the House Democratic Caucus Subcommittee on COVID-19 said they have received complaints from jobless Georgians of long wait times to receive benefits or resolve appeals.
“The holidays are upon us,” said Rep. Sandra Scott, D-Rex. “We need for our constituents and the citizens of Georgia to receive their unemployment benefits.”
Reacting to the surge of Georgians thrown out of work during the coronavirus pandemic, the labor department launched a pilot project last month allowing claimants to schedule an online appointment with an agency representative to ask questions about their claim.
But Scott said the two-hour window the program sets aside for representatives to call claimants to schedule an appointment is inadequate.
“This is not a call center. It’s an appointment scheduler,” she said. “Open up a real call center.”
Butler said the labor department is working on opening a call center soon in Dalton, with two more expected to follow during the first quarter of next year.
Members of the subcommittee said they also are getting complaints from constituents who have not received unemployment benefits despite getting a notice that their claim is valid.
In other cases, payments are made for one to three weeks and suddenly stop without notice or explanation.
Some whose claims are denied are waiting three to four months for a hearing,
“The lack of communications from the Georgia Department of Labor is unacceptable,” Scott said. “[The agency] must find a way to help people get paid.”
The subcommittee is also asking Butler to hire and train additional staff to investigate and resolve claims and issue a report evaluating the timeliness of benefits payments.
Butler said the agency is adding 20 appeals hearing officers, 15 claims examiners, and 10 additional fraud investigators. Another 50 were added last month to assist with fact finding for eligibility reviews, he said.
Also, the department is working with Georgia State University to offer students part-time positions helping to process appeals, the commissioner said.
From mid-March through the end of last week, the labor department paid out more than $16 billion in unemployment benefits to almost 4.1 million Georgia claimants, more than the last nine years combined.
ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia fell last week even as the state Department of Labor warned recipients that the federal portion of their benefits is about to run out.
Jobless Georgians filed 19,183 initial claims with the labor department last week, down 9,905 from the previous week. The decline occurred after an increase in claims the week before that ran counter to a weeks-long downward trend.
Meanwhile, unemployment benefits distributed through several federal programs created by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act last March are due to expire during the week ending Dec. 26 for claims filed by individual Georgians and on Dec. 30 for employer-filed claims.
“We will continue to process and adjudicate all of the claims we receive, paying all eligible benefits as quickly as possible,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “Congress will decide if a new program will be implemented or extensions will be put in place.”
Pressure is building on Congress to enact a new economic stimulus package before the holidays to replace the CARES Act, but the outcome of the current negotiations is far from certain.
The labor department is encouraging claimants of federal unemployment benefits to continue requesting the payments after the programs expire in case Congress either passes new legislation or extends the current programs.
Since last March 21, when the coronavirus pandemic began to hit Georgia’s economy hard, the labor department has paid out more than $16 billion in unemployment benefits to almost 4.1 million Georgia claimants, more than the last nine years combined.
During the last week alone, the agency paid out $120 million in state and federal benefits.
The job sector accounting for the largest share of initial unemployment claims last week by far was accommodation and food services with 5,716 claims. The administrative and support services sector was next with 2,059 claims, followed by manufacturing with 1.853.
More than 164,000 job openings are currently listed on EmployGeorgia. The labor department offers online resources for finding career opportunities, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
