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Georgia election board under fire over last-minute rule changes

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Georgia election board under fire over last-minute rule changes


The Georgia State Election Board has been accused of voter suppression after introducing new rules before the 2024 presidential election.

The changes were voted in by the three Republican members of the election board, while the board’s two non-Republicans voted against them. The new rules allow local officials more power to dispute election results by adopting a new ballot-counting policy. They state that, if a result is disputed in an electoral area, all votes must be counted by hand to ensure that they match the official number of votes cast.

A year ago, a Georgia grand jury accused Trump and others of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. The former president has denied all charges against him and repeatedly said that the case is part of a political witch hunt against him because he is the GOP presidential nominee.

The case has been delayed ever since, with no prospect of going to trial, after one of the former president’s co-defendants, Michael Roman, a Trump campaign staffer and former White House aide, alleged in a court filing that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had improperly engaged in a romantic relationship with lawyer Nathan Wade, whom she had picked to lead the prosecution against Trump and 18 others.

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Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Georgia State University Convocation Center in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 3, 2024. Critics say new Georgia election rules will allow the former president’s campaign to disrupt…


Christian Monterrosa/Getty Images

The new rules allow local election officials to deny election certification until the dispute is resolved.

Critics say that it is being introduced so that Donald Trump can again contest the Georgia result and begin a process of disruption and delay if he loses the election.
The three Republican board members voted to adopt the new measures, while the other two members, a Democrat and an independent, voted against.

Newsweek sought email comment from the Georgia State Election Board and the Trump campaign on Wednesday.

The proposal was submitted to the board by Salleigh Grubbs, chairperson of the Cobb County Republicans.

“We have to have assurance, as Georgians, that what we see printed on our ballot is exactly accurate, and the only way to do that is by a handwritten affiliation on the precinct level,” Grubbs told the board at Monday’s meeting.

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Voting rights organization Fair Fight said the rule changes are being introduced so that Republicans would disrupt the election if Trump loses.

“Trump and his MAGA allies have taken over the Georgia State Election Board to try and give a veneer of legality to their illegal scheme to disrupt the certification of Georgia’s 2024 election results,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement.

“Many of Trump’s key election denier allies and Republican Party operatives are behind these illegal, anti-freedom changes to Georgia election rules, and it’s all with the goal of helping Trump win the Peach State, even if he doesn’t earn a majority of Georgians’ votes.”

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials (GAVREO) also opposes the new rules.

Legal analyst Joyce Vance also condemned the changes. The former Alabama prosecutor is a liberal commentator and a frequent critic of Trump. “Voter suppression is nothing new in the South. But anti-voting activity is ramping up in Georgia because the state that delivered its 16 electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020 along with two senators to create the Democratic majority in the Senate is firmly in play in 2024,” she wrote in her legal blog, Civil Discourse, on Tuesday.

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“The most significant rules change the three board members—each of whom questioned the results of the 2020 election—have slipped in just ahead of this year’s election is one that allows local election officials to delay or deny certification if they have concerns about the outcome. No standard for judging whether those concerns are valid was established,” she wrote.



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Man accused in fatal Georgia shooting spree dies in jail, officials say

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Man accused in fatal Georgia shooting spree dies in jail, officials say


(WSAV) — The man accused of shooting and killing three people in Dekalb County April 13 was found dead in his jail cell, officials confirmed Monday night.

Olaolukitan Adon-Abel was found unresponsive in his jail cell at 6:48 p.m., a Dekalb County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said. Life-saving measures were performed, according to officials.

He was pronounced dead at 7:17 p.m.

Adon-Abel was charged with malice murder, aggravated assault and firearms counts in connection to the shooting deaths of Prianna Weathers, Tony Mathews and Lauren Bullis.

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In 2025, Adon-Abel plead guilty in Chatham County Recorder’s Court to multiple misdemeanor counts of sexual battery for groping women in Chatham County under the name Adon Olaolukitan.

According to court documents, he was banned from Savannah for four years and ordered to undergo a psychosexual evaluation.

The official cause will be determined by the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office, and a standard internal review has been launched, according to officials.

At this time, the sheriff’s office said there are no indications of foul play. No additional details were released.

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2026 NFL Draft Scouting Report — Christen Miller, DT, Georgia

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2026 NFL Draft Scouting Report — Christen Miller, DT, Georgia


If you want proof that context matters in NFL Draft evaluation, look no further than Christen Miller’s career arc at Georgia. He arrived in Athens as a four-star recruit and spent his first two years buried behind first-round picks Jordan Davis, Devonte Wyatt, and Jalen Carter — three players who all heard their names called on Day 1.

The defensive tackle assembly line at Georgia is nothing short of extraordinary, and Miller patiently waited his turn. By 2024, his turn had arrived, and what NFL scouts saw was a prototypically built interior defender who carries his 321-pound frame with impressive athleticism and natural leverage.

Miller’s greatest asset is his run defense. He is a solid anchor — quick to press his hands into blockers, disciplined about maintaining gap integrity, and stout enough to hold the point of attack against double teams that would cave lesser prospects — but he’s not dominant.

His lateral mobility is a genuine differentiator for a man his size; he can scrape down the line to close on outside runs or loop inside on stunts without losing his footing or pad level.

That combination of power and movement is why Georgia trusted him on the field for passing downs, and it’s why scouts project him as an immediate contributor against the run at the NFL level.

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The legitimate questions surrounding Miller center on his pass-rush production and his still-developing anticipation skills. Over his entire collegiate career, he accumulated only four sacks — never cracking two in a single season.

Still, Miller’s athleticism stands out immediately — he carries his size well and shows the lateral quickness you don’t always find at his frame. His hands have some pop, and he’s flashed the ability to jolt interior linemen off their spot. But he’s a prospect defined more by his floor than his ceiling.

Source: Mockdraftable

No single trait rises above average, which means his pass-rush production will hinge on technique and motor rather than any physical advantage. He also needs to improve as a finisher — getting close isn’t enough at the next level.

The traits for pass-rush development are present: he has good first-step quickness, flashes as a one-gap penetrator, and showed enough in stunt packages to keep offensive linemen honest. But he has yet to build a consistent, go-to counter move when his initial rush is neutralized. Against better competition, his reaction time to the snap can be late, and he can drift out of his gap assignment when he tries to freelance for a big play.

What Miller offers any franchise is a high floor with a realistic upside trajectory. He comes from one of college football’s most technically demanding defensive line programs, coached by coaches who regularly develop NFL talent.

He plays with a motor that never stops. He competed in SEC trenches for two-plus seasons and was named to the All-SEC First Team as a senior. The experience and winning culture he brings — two state championships in high school, a national championship at Georgia — will matter to coaches who value locker-room character.

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The ceiling here isn’t flashy, but it’s tangible: a reliable, two-down starting defensive tackle who keeps blocks clean and lets linebackers run free. In a league that increasingly prizes versatile, multi-technique interior linemen, Miller’s ability to play the nose or the B-gap makes him a schematic asset for even-front and two-gap systems. Don’t sleep on him because his sack totals are modest — evaluating him solely by that metric would miss the forest for the trees.

Miller’s fit in Green Bay is an interesting one. The Packers are switching to a 3-4 base defense under new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, and they lack a proven run-stuffing nose tackle while being long overdue for a meaningful investment on the defensive interior — which is exactly the profile Miller fits.

The team brought him in for a pre-draft visit, signaling genuine interest, and his skill set maps cleanly onto what Green Bay needs. His calling card — an elite run defense grade that ranked second among all FBS defensive tackles — translates directly to what Gannon will ask of his interior linemen, and his versatility to play nose in an odd front or kick out to three-technique in sub packages only adds to the appeal.



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Democrats Are Ready to Reclaim Georgia. Is a Former Republican the Man for the Job?

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Democrats Are Ready to Reclaim Georgia. Is a Former Republican the Man for the Job?


NORCROSS, GEORGIA — Geoff Duncan, former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, won’t stop apologizing.

He’s sorry for supporting the state’s 2019 “heartbeat bill,” which bans abortion at around six weeks, after a fetal heartbeat is detected. He’s sorry for facilitating the passage of a “constitutional carry” bill in 2022, which allows most people to carry a concealed handgun with no license or background check. He’s also sorry for opposing Medicaid expansion, arguing at the time that it was not fiscally responsible.

“I’m sorry for those positions and any harm that they may have done,” Duncan told me.

Duncan first rose to prominence as one of the Republicans who resisted President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 win in Georgia. Duncan has been speaking out against what he calls Trump’s “toxic” and “dangerous” Republican Party since leaving office in 2023, and even endorsed Kamala Harris and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2024. After being excommunicated from the Georgia Republican Party in January 2025, Duncan switched parties in August. He is now running for governor as a Democrat in what will be one of the most closely watched races in the midterms.

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