Activists tell state panel nearly all their challenges have been dismissed
Eight county election boards are facing investigation by the State Election Board over their handling of thousands of challenges aiming to cancel voter registrations.
The board launched the investigation after activists expressed concerns that county-level election officials had dismissed almost all their challenges since Georgia’s latest voter challenge law — Senate Bill 189 — went into effect July 1.
The investigation is aimed at Athens-Clarke, Bibb, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett and Jackson counties.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett, alone, have rejected more than 45,000 voter eligibility challenges since July.
Those 45,000 were on top of more than 350,000 other voter challenges filed since the 2020 election. State laws passed since then — driven by conservatives who questioned Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over then-President Donald Trump, despite numerous investigations, recounts and court proceedings confirming the results — allow any registered voter to file an unlimited number of challenges.
State Election Board member Janice Johnston said she thought challengers provided valid evidence for county election boards to consider.
“It appears that there is some sort of process going on with blanket refusals to even accept a challenge or investigate a challenge,” Johnston said.
The board — led by Johnston and two others who have questioned the outcome of the 2020 election — has attracted controversy for altering election policies so close to November’s presidential election.
Board members this past week also:
- Voted to make pictures of ballots public within three days of Election Day, allowing candidates and voters to check the count. The proposal, however, has yet to be finalized.
- Raised objections to Fulton County’s plan, reached in agreement with the secretary of state’s office, to hire a team of monitors to oversee its performance in conducting this year’s elections. Some members of the State Election Board wanted to appoint their own monitors, with Johnston proposing election skeptics be included as appointees.
Credit: Facebook
Credit: Facebook
U.S. Senate panel asks Georgia hospital for information about abortion policies
A U.S. Senate panel is seeking information from eight hospitals in states that limit abortion access, including Georgia, involving their policies concerning the procedure.
The request comes after reports of several patients who encountered dire consequences because care was either delayed or denied.
Those patients include Amber Thurman, whose August 2022 death was first reported by ProPublica. Thurman waited 20 hours for treatment at Piedmont Henry Hospital after traveling to North Carolina, where she received abortion pills. When the abortion didn’t complete, she developed sepsis. She died on an operating table.
ProPublica reported the state’s maternal mortality review board determined Thurman’s death was preventable.
“Across the country, there are reports that women are being turned away by emergency departments when they seek emergency reproductive health care, even in instances where medical professionals determine that, without such care, the patient is at risk of serious complications, infection or even death,” said U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.
Wyden said the women were “caught between dangerous state laws that are in clear conflict” with the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a federal statute that guarantees stabilizing medical care to anyone who goes to an emergency room in a hospital that receives Medicare funding.
Georgia law bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity. That’s typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant. The state allows later abortions to be performed in the cases of rape, incest, fetal anomaly or to save the life of the mother.
The Finance Committee has also sought information from hospitals in Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas.
Harris and allies, so far, have booked more future ads in Georgia than Trump
Vice President Kamala Harris and her allies have dedicated $35 million for television and online ads in Georgia for the homestretch of the presidential election.
Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have booked $25 million for state ads over the same period.
The presidential campaigns and associated super PACs have laid out more than $68 million on Georgia television ads so far this year, with the spending almost evenly split among Democrats and Republicans, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Democrats hold a slim edge in the state on digital ads supporting Harris, paying almost $52 million, or 54% of total spending.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Georgia congressional delegation ups pressure on postmaster general
Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has proposed changing the way the postmaster general is hired, giving the president the power to make the appointment with the Senate confirming a nominee.
After serving an initial five-year term, the Senate would have to approve a second term.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s nine House Republicans sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy asking for assurances that absentee ballots won’t be lost in transit ahead of the November election.
DeJoy has faced a lot of heat coming from Georgia.
Over the past several months, every member of the state’s congressional delegation has expressed frustration about postal delays and urged him to act. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have also called on DeJoy to resign.
In their letter, the House Republicans noted “many of our constituents have lost faith in mail delivery by the (U.S. Postal Service) in Georgia due to delays caused by the implementation of the United States Postal Service Delivering for America Plan.”
That plan, announced in March 2021, called for consolidating services as one component, and included opening the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center in Palmetto in February.
The letter mentions that most of the complaints deal with problems at the Palmetto facility.
DeJoy has said in the past the Postal Service was working to increase staffing and improve services there. More recently, he told reporters he was certain the Postal Service would be ready to handle the influx of ballots by mail nationwide in the coming weeks.
Under the current system, a president does not have the power to directly fire a postmaster general.
Credit: AP, Courtesy photo
Credit: AP, Courtesy photo
Georgia votes for Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz will not count
Running for president in Georgia has been a yo-yo experience for Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz.
First, an administrative law judge recommended they not appear on the state’s November ballot. Then Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said they would. Two Fulton County Superior Court judges, in separate rulings, disqualified the two far-left candidates — West is running as an independent, and De la Cruz is the standard-bearer of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
The campaigns for both candidates then appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled this past week that votes for West and De la Cruz will not count.
The decision ended a two-month legal battle in which the Georgia Democratic Party attempted to block the two candidates from the ballot, fearing they could siphon votes away from Vice President Kamala Harris and help former President Donald Trump. The Georgia GOP intervened on behalf of West and De la Cruz.
The ballot, however, will include West’s and De la Cruz’s names.
Attorney Elizabeth Young, representing Raffensperger during a hearing this past week, told the high court there is not enough time to remove their names from printed ballots and programmed voting machines.
Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, polling locations will be required to prominently display signs notifying voters that ballots cast for either candidate will not be counted.
West and De la Cruz cleared the minimum of 7,500 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot, but state law requires those signatures to be submitted in the name of one of a candidate’s state electors. The Fulton judges held that none of their presidential electors submitted signatures in their own names.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
Kemp withdraws endorsement of GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is no longer backing North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who was linked in a CNN report to a series of inflammatory comments on a pornographic website.
Kemp pulled his endorsement after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained photographs of him speaking at an August fundraiser in North Carolina for Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor.
“The governor attended the fundraiser as vice chair of the Republican Governors Association and will not be offering further support to the Robinson campaign,” said Cody Hall, a senior Kemp deputy.
CNN recently reported Robinson, who is an African American, claimed years ago in the comments section of a porn site that he was a “black Nazi” and that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography. Robinson has denounced the report and said he will remain in the race.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, the chair of the RGA, also withdrew his support for Robinson, and the RGA announced it no longer plans to provide funds to the North Carolinian’s campaign.
Maybe it’s just a molehill: Trump ad features wrong Georgia’s mountains
Sometimes the political landscape isn’t what you think it is.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign recently launched digital ads imploring Georgia voters to check their registrations.
The ads featured, as a backdrop, a mountain range — just not the Appalachians of North Georgia. It turned out to be the Caucasus Mountains in the Republic of Georgia, not a place that should figure in this year’s election.
The ad was pulled from Facebook early Monday shortly after it appeared in the Politically Georgia newsletter. The ad tracking firm AdImpact said about $6,000 worth of the ads ran on Facebook from Sept. 10 until Monday.
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