Legislative Session Week 7

As we race toward crossover day at the end of this week, I am discouraged by the kinds of bills that seem to be moving. There are bills restricting voting and the books our children can find in their school libraries. And the GOP has decided, again, not to expand Medicaid to all uninsured indigent Georgians. I promise, however, that I will keep advocating for my constituents in House District 90 and for Georgians all over the state.

On a positive front, I have an exciting announcement about the Okefenokee Swamp to share. Stay tuned, you’ll get an email about it later this week!

Call to action

I need your help.

I introduced a bill that would allow parents with children 5 and younger to move to the head of the line when voting, the same benefit we already offer the elderly and the disabled.

This is a pro-voter, pro-family piece of legislation that has bi-partisan support. I’ll be on NPR’s Morning Edition today speaking about it.

The bill has been held in the House Governmental Affairs Committee for almost a year, and time is running out to make this bill a law.

Please contact Rep. John LaHood, the chair of the House Governmental Affairs Committee, and ask him to schedule a hearing for HB 559 today or tomorrow. His email is john.lahood@house.ga.govand his Capitol office phone number is (404) 656-5105.

When HB 559 was heard in Government Affairs last year, the committee passed it unanimously. I’m not sure what has changed…other than it is an election year.

In this edition of the Draper Paper

SB 221: The End of Automatic Voter Registration?
HB 1207: Ballot Proofing– the Simple Way to Prevent Preventable Errors on a Ballot.
HB 1118: My Bill Offering Additional Protections for Election Workers is Getting a Hearing
High School State Football Champions Cedar Grove Saints Visit the Capitol!
Medicaid Expansion: Sometimes it Feels Like we are Charlie Brown Trying to Kick the Football.
Some Help with Property Taxes Might Be on the Way.
HD 90 Town Halls: Gresham Library, TONIGHT!
Advocates and Constituents at the Capitol.

SB 221: The End of Automatic Voter Registration?

For many years, Georgians have been able to register or update their voter registration whenever they visit the Department of Drivers’ Services. You get a new driver's license or update it, and a voter registration application with your updated information is automatically sent to your county election office, unless you opt out. We call this automatic voter registration.

There was the convenience of taking care of two important tasks in one stop. Plus by tying voter registration data to data for your official, state-issued ID, you ensure that you are registering to vote with high quality data.

As a result of the policy to implement automatic voter registration in 2016, almost all eligible Georgians have been registered to vote.

But Republicans are pushing Senate Bill 221 which would, among other things, eliminate automatic registration and replace it with an “opt-in” option. Their reasoning, frankly, is nonsensical. Hear it for yourself.

If the goal of Republicans is clean voter rolls, automatic voter registration is the best tool we have to keep voter rolls accurate. Eliminating it makes no sense. Unless, of course, your real goal is to slash voter registration rates.

I testified against SB 221 because I have unique knowledge of what happens when voter registration switches from automatic to opt-in. In 2021, in my former role of Voter Protection Director at the Democratic Party of Georgia, my work led to the discovery that Automatic Registration in Georgia had accidentally been turned off.

The Department of Drivers Services updated their website in 2021, and accidentally changed voter registration from automatic to opt-in. That small change – from automatic sign up to opt-in – had a massive impact on the number of registrations, as reported in the AJC in April 2022.

Once the problem was identified and the default to automatic registration was restored, voter registrations surged and returned to their previous levels.

So why take us back unless the plan is to make it harder for Georgians to register to vote?

Here is my testimony against SB 221 here. It wasn’t warmly received.

Another problem with SB 221 is it would make it easier to challenge the eligibility of registered voters.

Georgia law allows an individual to file an unlimited number of voter challenges. This has opened the floodgates to mass, meritless voter challenges being filed against eligible voters, chilling voting and flooding local election officials with administrative work. Many filed challenges have been little more than long spreadsheets of names and addresses. Challengers offered little, if any, first-hand knowledge of the voters they were trying to remove from the rolls.

SB 221 would make it worse for voters, for county elections staff and for local volunteer boards of elections by expanding the kind of “evidence” that can result in getting someone kicked off the voter rolls.

For example, a voter can be removed from the rolls if their birth date is missing or invalid on registration information. Or, a voter can be removed simply because a person with the same name is on the National Change of Address database maintained by the U.S. Postal Service (the mere presence of a name is sufficient to sustain the challenge and no verification that it’s the same person would be needed).

Voters could be forced to make time-consuming trips to boards of elections meetings to defend themselves in these ridiculous and unnecessary challenges to their legitimacy.

My idea for tempering mass voter challenges

Rather than making challenges easier I dropped legislation to bring some order to this trend of mass, meritless voter challenges that have overwhelmed some election offices.

Paid staff in targeted counties have had periods when they could do nothing but process these challenges and had to neglect their regular election duties.

My bill, House Bill 1254, shifts the cost of processing voter challenges to the challengers.

Using the Georgia Open Records Act as a guide, HB 1254 says there is no charge for the first 15 minutes of researching and processing challenges. After that first 15 minutes, challengers can be charged for the reasonable cost of processing the challenges. Hopefully this strikes the balance of allowing for good faith challenges, but deterring bad faith challenges filed with the express purpose of “gumming up the works.”

Unfortunately, HB 1254 remains in the Governmental Affairs Committee while the Senate Ethics Committee approved the egregious SB 221 last Thursday.

More coverage from ABC news.

HB 1207: Ballot Proofing– the Simple Way to Prevent Errors on a Ballot

The House passed a bill I co-sponsored that would require local election officials to give candidates a copy of the final draft of a ballot to proof before it's printed.

Right name and spelling? Right party affiliation? Incumbency noted?

Candidates would have 24 hours to get back to election officials with any corrections.

That means no surprises when voters see their ballots for the first time. And no need to correct ballots and then retest balloting machines in the middle of voting – something that happened in some places in District 90 in November.

Hopefully House Bill 1207 will get a Senate committee hearing soon.

HB 1118: My Bill Offering Additional Protections for Election Workers is Getting a Hearing.

The House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee is set this week to consider House Bill 1118, which I proposed to support our vulnerable and fearful election and poll workers who are just trying to do their jobs in today’s political atmosphere of hate and violence.

The bill as it is currently fashioned does three main things:

1) Allows election officials to report incidents of intimidation or harassment to an existing State-run hotline. The Attorney General, State Election Board, and GBI then review each report within 24 hours and can arrange for security or can investigate further. All information to the hotline is compiled in a report and presented to the General Assembly annually;

2) Extends existing protections from just poll officers to all election workers and credentialed observers; and

3) Protects the personally identifying information of poll officers, election workers, and credentialed observers.

You may recall the details of the public harassment campaign against two Fulton County election workers – Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman – following the 2020 presidential election. Conspiracy theorists terrorized both women for simply doing their jobs.

This continues all over Georgia, with election workers facing threats and harassment.

Supporting our front line democracy workers should be something we all care about, and I’m happy to say I have bipartisan support on this bill.

The committee meets at 1 p.m. Wednesday, and the public can watch. There are two options; come to the State Capitol in person or watch the meeting via live stream with this link. The meeting agenda is here.

And if you are an election worker and have a relevant experience to share, you are welcome to testify.

I’m honored HB 1118 has been recognized by the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections.

High School State Football Champions Cedar Grove Saints Visit the Capitol!

I don’t have any teenage boys in my house – yet – but I welcomed the excitement and enthusiasm of an entire state champion football team at the Capitol!

The Cedar Grove High School Saints, principal Clifton Spears, head coach John Adams, athletic manager Shewanda Patillo, and team managers Nyala Phelps, Heaven Williams, and Summer Willis were recognized in the House chamber last week for winning the 2023 Georgia high school AAA state football championship. It was their fifth state title in eight seasons.

The Saints earned the title by defeating the Savannah Christian Raiders 49-28 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on December 13.

Some stats:

– The Saints scored four unanswered touchdowns to break a 14-14 tie.

– Senior quarterback E.J. Colson threw for 259 yards and four touchdowns, becoming the Georgia Public Broadcasting Player of the game.

– Junior linebacker Keith Bass had 12 tackles to lead the Saints defense.

– Senior defensive end Chase Kerns had 11 tackles, two sacks, and three tackles for loss.

This magnificent team was warmly recognized by the House for their well-deserved reputation for excellence and for performing with courage and precision over months of training and competition.

It was an absolute delight – and lots of fun – to honor them.SB 390:

Medicaid Expansion: Sometimes it Feels Like We Are Charlie Brown Trying to Kick the football.

When the 2024 session began, some key Republicans said maybe this year would be the year Georgia expanded Medicaid, the government healthcare program for the poor and disabled.

After a short while, though, that changed because Gov. Brian Kemp soured on the proposal, saying he wanted more time to push his version of healthcare for the poor. Alas, the governor’s Georgia Pathways to Coverage has not caught on as promised; it’s not even close.

Then earlier this month, Republicans flip flopped again, saying maybe now is the right time to offer Medicaid to all of Georgia’s uninsured and not limit it to poor children and the disabled.

But a few days ago it changed again when a key Republican filed a bill to create a study commission to look at expanding Medicaid, something 40 other states have already done.

House Bill 1339 says a nine-member commission would report proposals for “quality improvement of healthcare for Georgia’s low income and uninsured populations.”

The commission’s deadline is Dec.1.

A study commission kills any hope of expanding Medicaid in Georgia any time soon. And in the meantime, tens of thousands are going without healthcare.

We’ve had enough meetings. We’ve had study committees. And we’ve looked at the pros and cons of offering Medicaid to those who would not be eligible at this time, about 400,000 Georgians

There is no doubt that Medicaid expansion works. It would be good for rural hospitals, the health of Georgians, and for our economy.

Some Help with Property Taxes Might Be on the Way.

I have signed on to a Senate bill that would exempt Atlanta residents who are 65 or older and whose income is less than $100,000 to get a exemption on the portion of property tax that goes to schools, which many of you know is a huge chunk of your annual bill. Senate Bill 439 has already passed the Senate and it is now in the House Intergovernmental Coordination Committee.

This would be a huge benefit for older homeowners who struggle to cover their property taxes that are mostly for a service they don’t use – schools.

At the same time there is another tax bill that also could benefit senior homeowners who pay school taxes. House Bill 987 would provide state dollars to supplement lost funds if local school districts drop their millage rates from 14 mills to 10 mills. Districts that already have millage rates below 14 would not be eligible. This bill has already passed the House and is in the Senate.