ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is referring the cases of 17 Georgians suspected of having voted twice in 2022 to district attorneys in nine counties where those voters live.

These voters are suspected of voting once in Georgia in the November 2022 general election and again in another state.

“One illegal vote cast is too many,” Raffensperger said Tuesday. “Georgians deserve to have their voice heard fully, not have it diluted by bad actors.”

The allegations came to light as a result of Georgia’s membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a network of 24 states and the District of Columbia that share data on voters.

The cases of double voting came from Barrow, Chatham, Cobb, Douglas, Fannin, Forsyth, Fulton, Morgan, and Tift counties.

Voter turnout in Georgia has been on the upswing in recent election cycles. Georgia saw the largest increase in turnout of any state in the 2018 midterm election, and set turnout records in 2020 and 2022.

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ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp is talking up Georgia to foreign business and political big wigs for the second January in a row.

Kemp is spending the week in Switzerland attending the World Economic Forum, meeting business executives and political leaders and taking part in discussion panels.

“We get a lot of value being able to see, talk to, and pitch a lot of people in one place,” Kemp told Capitol Beat Tuesday in an exclusive interview from Davos, Switzerland. “The exposure we get is really helpful selling the state.”

The trip includes meetings both with executives from companies with an existing presence in Georgia and those that might be interested in setting up shop in the Peach State.

On Tuesday, the governor met with officials from Korean automaker Hyundai, which is building a massive electric vehicle manufacturing plant west of Savannah, and multinational technology company Cisco, which has offices in Midtown Atlanta. Tomorrow, the state will host a luncheon reception for 25 companies.

Kemp also participated in a panel discussion on the EV industry, which has become a major player in Georgia with both the Hyundai plant and a manufacturing facility Rivian is building east of Atlanta along the Interstate 20 corridor.

The governor will lead Georgia’s delegation to meetings elsewhere in Switzerland later this week before heading back home on Saturday.

Kemp, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his second term as governor expires in 2026, dismissed the notion that he’s out to burnish his own national and international profile by going to Davos.

“My No.-1 goal is selling our state,” he said. “That’s the reason I came to the forum.”

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ATLANTA – Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson isn’t daunted by U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s decision to seek reelection in the newly redrawn 6th Congressional District.

Richardson announced Tuesday that she still plans to run for the seat, which will pit her against McBath, D-Marietta, in May’s Democratic primary.

Richardson first indicated she would run for Congress before legislative Republicans drew a new congressional map during the General Assembly’s recent redistricting session. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, who forced the special session by ruling in October that the 2021 congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act, upheld the new map late last month.

McBath, who has been representing the 7th Congressional District during the last two years, immediately responded to Jones’ ruling by declaring her intention to run in the 6th District this year. The redrawn 6th is much friendlier turf for a Democrat than the new 7th, which now extends north through heavily Republican Forsyth, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties as well as portions of Cherokee and Hall counties.

The new 6th District includes central and southern Fulton County, South Cobb, eastern Douglas County, and northern Fayette County.

“When asked previously about whether I would stay in this race if the maps forced any current members of the Democratic Congressional Caucus to join this race in the 6th, I answered honestly that my intention in entering this race was never about challenging a sitting Democrat,” Richardson said.

“I entered this race solely focused on delivering for the constituents of the 6th, many of whom are my current commission constituents. … I have decided that I’m going to keep surfacing the issues that voters care about, because our voters deserve to know we are listening.”

Richardson noted that Republicans in the General Assembly also have drawn her out of her commission district, the only county commissioner in Georgia to suffer that fate. Cobb County officials are vowing to appeal a ruling this week by Cobb Superior Court Judge Ann Harris upholding the legislature’s authority to draw county commission maps.

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ATLANTA – A federal judge has ruled in favor of a Texas-based conservative group in a lawsuit over its effort to lodge more than 364,000 challenges to Georgia voters’ eligibility.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, the same jurist who upheld state’s new congressional and legislative district maps last week, declared Tuesday that True the Vote’s actions did not constitute illegal voter intimidation as alleged by Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

True the Vote filed challenges in December 2020 ahead of two runoff elections that vaulted Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock into the U.S. Senate, claiming the affected voters appeared to be ineligible to vote because of changes in residency. Local elections offices rejected most of the challenges.

Jones found that the groups’ actions did not rise to the level of violating the Voting Rights Act.

“This decision is monumental,” said Jake Evans, lead attorney for True the Vote in the case. “It vindicates True the Vote in totality and establishes that eligibility challenges under Section 230 (of the federal law) are a proper method to ensure voter rolls are accurate.”

But other portions of Jones’ ruling criticized the organization’s process for challenging voters.

“As the federal court weighed the evidence presented about True the Vote’s tactics in the 2021 runoff elections, it did not hold back its criticisms of the Texas group’s methods,” said Cianti Stewart-Reid, Fair Fight’s executive director. “To the contrary, the 145-page opinion expressly states the court ‘in no way is condoning (True the Vote’s) actions in facilitating a mass number of seemingly frivolous challenges.’ “

A sweeping overhaul of state election law the General Assembly passed in 2021 after the Senate runoffs and after the lawsuit was filed allows individuals to file an unlimited number of voter eligibility challenges.

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ATLANTA – The Biden administration is stepping up federal funding of three planned intercity passenger rail projects in Georgia.

The Federal Rail Administration has awarded $1.5 million in grants to explore linking Atlanta with Savannah; Charlotte, N.C.; and Chattanooga, Tenn. The grants are part of $8.2 billion in new funding for passenger rail projects announced Thursday.

“Creating new transit options with routes connecting Atlanta to Savannah, Charlotte, Chattanooga, and cities in between would be a boon to our state and economy,” said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a member of the Senate Commerce & Transportation Committee.

The money comes from the bipartisan infrastructure spending legislation Congress passed two years ago.

The Atlanta-to-Savannah route – championed by U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. – would include potential stops in Athens, Augusta, and Macon. The $500,000 grant announced Thursday is in addition to $8 million in congressionally directed spending on the project approved in March of last year.

“Through the bipartisan infrastructure law, Senator Warnock and I are accelerating progress toward passenger rail networks to serve Georgia and the Southeast region,” Ossoff said. “This is a long-term project that will require cooperation and strong execution at all levels of government, but it has the potential to unlock huge gains in mobility and quality of life for Georgians.”

The Atlanta-to-Savannah project is envisioned as a high-speed rail project, as is the planned route between Atlanta and Charlotte. It, too, would include potential stops in Athens and Augusta and would terminate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The Atlanta-to-Chattanooga passenger rail line, which Warnock has pushed, would continue on to Nashville and Memphis.

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ATLANTA – The General Assembly’s Republican majorities gave final passage to new legislative district maps Tuesday over objections from minority Democrats that the state House and Senate maps violate the Voting Rights Act.

Voting along party lines, the Georgia House of Representatives adopted a new state Senate map senators had passed late last week. A short time later, the Senate approved a new state House map House lawmakers had passed last Friday.

Tuesday’s votes completed action on revisions to two of three 2021 redistricting maps U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled out of compliance with the Voting Rights Act in a decision handed down in October. The two legislative maps now head to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.

The third map containing new congressional district lines cleared the state Senate Tuesday in another party-line vote. The House will vote on the congressional map later this week, wrapping up a special redistricting session Kemp called following the judge’s ruling.

As ordered by Jones, the new House map creates five additional Black-majority districts, two in the southern end of metro Atlanta, one in the western portion of the metro region, and two in and around Macon.

“It fully complies with Judge Jones’ order,” said Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, vice chairman of the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee.

But Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler said Republicans went beyond the areas the judge identified as in need of redrawing to reduce Black voting strength in several other districts.

Sen. Tonya Anderson, D-Lithonia, accused Republicans of “partisan gerrymandering” aimed at maintaining the House’s GOP majority.

“Georgia Republicans thumbed their noses at a federal court order,” she said. “This map weakens the power of Black voters. It exists only to entrench the power of the majority party.”

Democrats also complained that the House maps pair four sets of incumbents who would have to run against each other, including three pairs of Democrats but only one pair of Republicans.

Similar arguments divided House Republicans and Democrats during Tuesday’s debate over the proposed state Senate map.

Rep. Rob Leverette, R-Elberton, chairman of the House Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee, said Republicans complied with Jones’ order that they create two additional Black-majority Senate districts in the southern end of metro Atlanta. Unlike the House map, the Senate map did not pair any incumbents, he said.

“This plan complies with the order and fulfills our obligation as a General Assembly,” Leverette said.

But Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, said the Senate map accomplished the goal of complying with the court order by moving almost as many Black voters out of existing Black-majority districts as into the two new Black-majority districts. A net of only 3,000 Black voters were moved into Black-majority districts, she said.

“This proposal is nothing more than an effort to maintain the status quo,” Draper said.

The Senate map the House adopted Tuesday is expected to allow Republicans to maintain their current 33-23 majority in the upper legislative chamber. Democrats had put forth an alternative map likely to help them gain two seats.

But Leverette said scoring political gains is not the purpose of the Voting Rights Act.

“The Voting Rights Act doesn’t protect political parties,” he said. “It protects voters.”

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ATLANTA – With the federal government barreling toward a shutdown later this week, Georgia Democrats are warning of lost paychecks for service members and federal civilian employees, interrupted Social Security and welfare benefits, and closed national parks.

While the U.S. Senate is moving forward with debate on a bipartisan stopgap funding bill aimed at keeping the government open after the end of the federal fiscal year at midnight Saturday, a small group of far-right House Republicans is blocking attempts by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to get a floor vote on a short-term spending bill.

The group of GOP holdouts includes two Georgia Republicans: U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome and Andrew Clyde of Athens.

If the government shuts down at midnight Saturday, nearly 64,000 Georgia service members could be forced to work without pay, according to a news release from the Democratic Party of Georgia. More than 167,000 Georgians who are federal civilian employees in jobs considered essential also may have to work without being paid.

Georgia seniors could see a delay in Social Security checks, while more than 220,000 low-income Georgia mothers, infants and older children could lose monthly food benefits.

“It’s shameful that while Georgia Democrats are working in lockstep to deliver for Georgia families, Georgia Republicans … are risking Georgians’ livelihoods with a devastating government shutdown in pursuit of their extreme agenda,” Georgia Democratic Party spokesperson Ellie Schwartz said this week.

“Republicans are forcing families to brace for two extremes: a government shutdown that would devastate Georgians or extreme cuts that would raise costs and slash funding for child care, schools, veteran services and more.”

For their part, the Republican holdouts are looking to use the budget impasse as leverage to force spending cuts upon reluctant Democrats and push other priorities.

For Greene, it’s cutting off further U.S. funding for Ukraine. President Joe Biden is seeking another $24 billion in additional security and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

“For weeks, I’ve been asking for Ukraine funding to be a standalone vote, not cash hidden inside of other bills. For a moment, it seemed like that would happen. But it didn’t,” Greene said this week in a statement aimed at her Northwest Georgia constituents.

“This means billions of your hard-earned money will be at the disposal of Joe Biden, his State Department, and his [Defense Department] to be spent on his proxy war against Russia.”

Congressional Democrats and some Republicans argue Ukraine must prevail in its war against Russia or Russian President Vladimir Putin will set his sights next on one or more NATO countries, forcing the U.S. to commit American ground troops.

Clyde has pushed for eliminating all federal funding for the prosecutors who have obtained indictments charging former President and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump with attempting to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“These bogus charges are undoubtedly intended to smear and take down President Trump, as well as hinder his ability to campaign effectively,” Clyde said late last month. “This overt election interference continues to undermine both our republic and our fair system of justice.”

Democrats and Republicans not committed to Trump say the former president must be held accountable for his efforts to subvert the U.S. Constitution by defying the will of the majority of American voters who supported Biden in 2020.

Other GOP holdouts are objecting to the budget process itself, the perennial 11th-hour scramble in Congress to pass a single omnibus bill each year that covers the vast majority of spending, rather than the more orderly system of taking up the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies one at a time.

But Democrats say such qualms aren’t worth shutting down the government. “Make no mistake: If the government shuts down, leaving thousands of Georgians without the paychecks or services they rely on … Republicans will be squarely to blame,” Schwartz said.

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ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady at 3.1% last month for the ninth consecutive month, three-tenths of a point below the national jobless rate of 3.4%, state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson reported Thursday.

Georgia’s labor force increased for the seventh straight month to nearly 5.3 million, an all-time high. The number of employed grew to just more than 5.1 million, also a record.

Jobs were up a slight 0.2% in April from March but have risen 2.3% compared to April of last year to almost 4.9 million, another all-time high.

“The state’s economy continues to soar with low unemployment and job growth in virtually every sector,” Thompson said.

Job numbers in the private education and health services sector grew to 655,900, followed by an increase of 518,400 in the leisure and hospitality sector.

Initial unemployment claims last month were up by 15% over March to 25,407. Over the year, initial jobless claims rose by 46%.

More than 154,000 job listings were posted online last month for Georgians to access. The top industries for openings included health care with 32,300 openings, retail trade with 18,400, and accommodation and food services with 13,300 openings.

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ATLANTA – Georgia’s 2024 presidential primaries will place next March 12, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Thursday.

“Georgia is a bellwether state,” Raffensperger said during a news conference at the state Capitol, acknowledging the Peach State’s relatively new status as one of a handful of swing states in national politics. “If you can win in Georgia, you will win nationally.”

In announcing the mid-March date, Raffensperger – a Republican – rejected a recommendation by the Democratic National Committee late last year that Georgia’s presidential primaries be moved up to February, which would have made Georgia the fourth state to vote.

Democrats argued an early primary date in Georgia would have added to the diversity of the electorate during the early primaries. Iowa and New Hampshire, currently the first states to hold party caucuses or primaries, are majority white.

Emory University finance professor Thomas More Smith released a study in February that showed early primaries in Georgia could generate nearly $220 million in economic impact.

But Raffensperger said holding the Georgia primaries in mid-March, a week after multiple states vote on Super Tuesday – would work to Georgia’s advantage both politically and economically.

“We believe a March 12 date maximizes Georgia’s influence and has the greatest economic impact,” he said.

Two weeks of early voting will take place prior to the primaries.

Democrat Joe Biden easily won the party’s Georgia primary in 2020 with 75% of the vote, building on momentum from his first primary win in South Carolina. Biden then went on to become the first Democrat to carry Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992 when he narrowly defeated Republican President Donald Trump to win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

As an incumbent, Trump was unopposed in the 2020 Georgia GOP primary.

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ATLANTA – Gov. Brian signed bipartisan legislation Tuesday establishing a mental health support program grant for veterans and their families.

House Bill 414, which the General Assembly passed unanimously, will provide matching grants to nonprofits that serve veterans, subject to the availability of funding.

“This important legislation provides support and resources for the brave men and women who have worn a uniform for our country, and Georgia is proud to be a state that honors and values its veterans,” Kemp said during a signing ceremony inside the state Capitol.

The Georgia Department of Veterans Service will run the program, with grants to be awarded to applicants based on certain eligibility criteria. To be considered for funding, applicants must provide behavioral health services using evidence-based practices, train staff members in military culture, and connect veterans or members of their families with needed community-based mental health services in a timely manner.

Applications for grant funds will be available soon. Nonprofit community behavioral health-care providers with experience in treating military service members and veterans are encouraged to apply.

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