Georgia U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath is pushing Gov. Brian Kemp for answers over the state’s decision to opt out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer EBT Program (S-EBT), also known as “Sun Bucks.”

The program provides low-income families with school-aged children a $40 benefit for every eligible child each month while school is out. 

Reps. McBath, Sanford Bishop, Nikema Williams, Henry “Hank” Johnson Jr., David Scott, and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff sent a letter to Kemp about the state opting out on Thursday.

“Committing to participate in Summer EBT in 2025 is a simple, commonsense step that will ensure that every child in our state, regardless of where they live, has access to food when they need it most,” the letter reads. “States that refuse to participate in Summer EBT for unsubstantiated reasons are needlessly putting children in jeopardy during the summer months.”

Officials say about 1.2 low-income children in Georgia would be eligible for the program.

The Peach State is one of 12 that did not participate this year or is not planning to participate in the program next summer.

“Unfortunately, current summer meal programs are not sufficient, and the needs of families in Georgia are not being met,” the letter reads.

The deadline for the state to commit to the program is Aug. 15.

You can read the full letter below.

Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization.

For a democracy to function, one simple, central fact must be clear to all: who won. There is no disagreement about the winner of the Super Bowl or the Olympic gold medal in the shot put, and the same should be true for election results. But in polarized America, we’ve lost that clarity and public consensus.

Different media environments present radically different pictures of the election landscape. Citizens increasingly trust only the information from their side of the political divide. Who won is starting to sound subjective — a very dangerous trend.

On Tuesday, the State Election Board in Georgia took a big step toward making it worse.

The board voted to grant the state’s county-level election boards new and unclear powers to conduct inquiries into elections before certifying the results. This decision gives a role in evaluating election results to boards composed mostly of political-party-affiliated members, whose work is not likely to be perceived as impartial. The decision also conflicts with longstanding case law that has interpreted county board certification as a ministerial, non-discretionary function. The new powers “would sow disorder in the state’s election administration process, which already has safeguards to ensure election results are accurate and reliable,” the Brennan Center for Justice and United to Protect warned in a letter to the board.

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Local certification of results, in Georgia and most other states, used to be a sleepy bit of bureaucracy. A county commission or election board would receive precinct-by-precinct results from the county’s lead election official and certify that the numbers added up correctly. Statutes and case law in many states make clear that this process is not a time for investigation of results or independent judgment.

These county bodies in Georgia and other states do not need discretion at this phase because other election elements amply protect fair results. State laws provide for multiple verification checks of preliminary results, including recounts and audits. Party poll watchers are allowed to observe election processes to check for any irregularities. Parties and candidates can challenge election results in court.

Since 2020, certification has become a battleground in the polarization wars. In six states, board members have sowed doubt and disrupted elections by refusing to certify results, often based on clearly arbitrary and subjective reasoning. “I do not trust these [Dominion voting] machines and I want Otero County to have a fair election for everybody,” said one New Mexico county commissioner who initially voted against certifying 2022 primary elections.

In New Mexico and other states, courts stepped in to ensure county boards or commissions complied with the law and certified the results. Those judicial actions kept certification problems from seriously disrupting election timeframes, but, because of the press attention, the standoffs contributed to distrust and uncertainty about results.

Some media coverage of the Georgia decision has mentioned a worst-case scenario of intentional certification delays designed to prevent Georgia’s electoral votes from reaching Washington in time to be counted, but there are strong arguments against the likelihood of this scenario. The county certification deadline in state law — one week after Election day — is quite early in the process, so any delay long enough to put electoral votes in jeopardy would clearly exceed the “reasonable” standard provided in the ruling, giving courts a clear path to intervene and force certification.

The principal argument in favor of Georgia’s new rule is that under the current “ministerial” approach, county board members must attest to results they haven’t personally confirmed. This concern can be addressed by clarifying a set of documents the boards should receive, a suggestion proposed by SEB Chair John Fervier.

It’s helpful to step back and take a comparative perspective on this debate. A recent study of 12 major democracies found that none has a separate certification step in their election process. In fact, none has the word “certification” (or its equivalent) in their election laws at all. What happens instead in those countries is straightforward: The people who run elections announce the results, courts hear any challenges and their decisions are final.

The best way for America to rebuild consensus about who won is not splintering decision-making among hundreds of ill-equipped partisan boards, but instead to follow the model described above: Prioritize the role of courts. As imperfect as they may be, no institution is better suited than courts to consider evidence, render judgment and anchor the rule of law in elections.

In 2020, dozens of courts across six battleground states decided 64 legal actions filed by the Trump campaign. All but one was dismissed, withdrawn or decided against the campaign. (See this report for an excellent summary of all cases.) Collectively, these decisions are the definitive verdict on who won the 2020 election, but they weren’t given the prominence they deserved. Too often commentary in mainstream media cited the opinions of experts on the trustworthiness of the elections, rather than decisions of judges whose rulings were, from the perspective of the rule of law, the last word on the matter.

The Electoral Count Reform Act, critically important legislation passed by a bipartisan majority in Congress, is based on the same core principle that courts have the key role in election disputes, and partisans — such as the vice president and members of Congress – –have minimal discretion. This is the direction we should be taking. Recent legislation passed in Michigan and Minnesota also reflects this approach, clarifying that the certification process is “purely ministerial.”

When the Georgia Legislature reconvenes, it should join this trend and override the SEB ruling.

A Georgia Senate special committee investigating the professional conduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis spent several hours Friday hearing testimony about the broad discretion district attorneys have over their budgets.

Republican state lawmakers trained their sights on DA discretionary spending after a Fulton Superior Court hearing revealed that Willis had hired a special prosecutor she was romantically involved with.

 In the Senate Special Committee on Investigations hearing, the majority of the focus was on rules and regulations for District Attorney offices throughout the state, including a DA’s ability to hire special prosecutors and the allocation of other budgetary expenses.

Committee Chairman Bill Cowsert, an Athens Republican, said the hearing was intended to address concerns that county commissioners, the public, and others may have that Georgia DAs have too much control over how to run their offices. 

Cowsert said he is concerned about budgetary disparities between less populated counties and “wealthy counties” that can afford to provide significantly greater funding resources for their district attorneys.

“I hate to see us have smaller counties that feel like they don’t have enough personnel because their counties can’t supplement it or they’re not playing their politics well enough or are not on the right side of the blue or the red to be getting the federal grants coming down,” he said. 

The Senate committee’s hearing Friday was its first time meeting since May 23, when a former Fulton juvenile diversion program director alleged that Willis’ and DA staff improperly spent federal funds on gang prevention and empowerment programs. 

Willis’ Fulton Superior Court 2020 presidential election interference case is now on hold while the Georgia Court of Appeals reviews a motion filed by Trump and several co-defendants seeking to remove Willis from the case. Their argument is that Willis should be disqualified as a result of an undisclosed romantic relationship he had with Nathan Wade, who she hired as a special prosecutor to oversee a case. Wade was paid about $700,000 from the county as the case’s lead prosecutor before he resigned this March under scandal. 

 Over the past few months, the committee has heard from expert witnesses ranging from a defense attorney who helped uncover the Willis romantic affair, high ranking Fulton County officials, and others. 

Willis remains at odds with Cowsert’s panel over whether she should be forced to comply with a subpoena to testify before the committee.

The special investigation committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 13.

On Friday, three current and former district attorneys testified about how state, local, and federal grants  trickle down to DAs offices. 

The statewide Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia oversees how DAs allocate state money, as well as how they provide resources such as assigning independent prosecutors to assist DAs’ offices in handling specialized cases. 

It is not the council’s responsibility to discipline or remove district attorneys for misconduct, which is handled by a board of the State Bar of Georgia that determines whether a lawyer has violated a state’s professional conduct rules, the witnesses said Friday.

At Friday’s hearing, legislators wondered how they could help develop more ethical guidelines for district attorneys, including directing a controversial new prosecutors oversight commission to develop a code of conduct for local prosecutors

A majority of the state’s 50 district attorneys handle cases for several counties within a judicial circuit, operating on a shoestring budget compared to larger metropolitan areas, said T. Wright Barksdale III, district attorney for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit.

Wright said that county and judicial district types of cases differ greatly, and that while the county provides prosecutors with operating expenses, accountability for district attorneys takes place at the ballot box with the public deciding whether the money is being spent appropriately.

Fulton County’s district attorney’s office was recently criticized in an county audit, resulting in the DA’s attorneys arguing Willis as a constitutional officer has the authority to hire special prosecutors and case experts.

“The county can come in next year and say, ‘We don’t agree with that’ but the public needs to understand the county commissioners are giving large amounts of money to people that are spending it however, they have culpability and responsibility to make sure that what’s being spent is appropriate,” Wright said. 

Porter suggested that county officials could try to reduce funds they believe were misappropriated in the next budgetary cycle, which could further encourage DA’s  to follow county government regulations.

Porter said district attorneys have the same legal authority to control their budgets as other constitutional officers such as sheriffs, who are generally able to spend the state’s money as they see fit. The new prosecutor oversight commission will develop similar ethics conduct guidelines as the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the panel that oversees Georgia judges, Porter said. 

A prosecutor’s disciplinary panel also investigates complaints filed against district attorneys, including the current complaint already filed against Willis related to the 2020 case.  Willis has called the attacks from Trump and the GOP machine a “witch hunt” against her because she’s a Democrat and Black woman who stands up to Trump’s attempts to illegally overturn his loss in Georgia’s 2020 election.

Cowsert said  he’s concerned that Georgia doesn’t have universal consistent codes of conduct for prosecutors.

“What are the ethical guidelines? What are the fair expectations of our citizens?” Cowsert said. “The reason is because, as far as I can tell, they’re only bound by the disciplinary rules and ethical guidelines of the State Bar of Georgia that apply to all attorneys.”

This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.