Georgia
In first meeting since Trump win, Georgia election board defers to Legislature to implement plans
Georgia’s State Election Board voted Monday to request state lawmakers pass legislation next year making voter lists readily available to the public before and after elections.
Board members have decided to forward their recommendations to the state Legislature rather than launch their own rulemaking process, which has recently resulted in several of their initiatives successfully challenged in courts.
The controversial election board met for the first time since President-elect Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia and six other swing states on Nov. 5. Several of Georgia’s most outspoken critics of the way counties tally votes attended Monday’s meeting before the election board, which had become ground zero in the heated debates over election rules proposals pushed by Republicans and Trump’s allies.
Monday’s five-hour meeting was shorter, more sparsely attended, and less contentious than recent meetings before the election. Previously, three Republican board members had rushed to set up new election procedures in time for the 2024 general election.
Court orders prevented several rules from being enforced in this year’s election, a victory for critics who argued changes to certifying results and hand counting ballots could disrupt elections administration.
The Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to review the legality of the contested rules, including whether the State Election Board exceeded its authority by passing election law that should instead be passed by the state Legislature.
On Monday, Georgia election board members Janelle King, Janice Johnston and Rick Jeffares, who were praised at an Atlanta rally by Trump as “pit bulls” for victory, asked state lawmakers to pass legislation which would require each county to make publicly available a list of all eligible voters during and after every election.
Fulton County resident Lucia Frazier agreed to withdraw her two rules petitions in favor of having the board recommend that legislators take up the matter.
She proposed mandating that counties make a publicly available updated registered voter list ahead of an election, which would be updated until Election Day.
Frazier said she also wants state and county election officials to create an accessible database of everyone who voted during an election. Those files should contain the names of every voter, a copy of their voter ID, precinct, and check-in time, and the records must be available for two years after the election to anyone who requests them.
Frazier said she saw that during early voting Georgia Tech students had to wait for poll workers to confirm their registration because their names had not been updated on electronic poll devices.
Moreover, Frazier expressed frustration with the inability to obtain a prompt response to open records requests and the expense of getting lists of eligible voters from county and state election officials.
According to Frazier, in order to have a truly auditable election, a certified list of electors needs to be available before voting starts, and updated regularly throughout.
King said she heard similar complaints about people’s names not showing up on the poll pads during this election cycle. She moved to recommend the Georgia Assembly pass legislation making voter lists public and providing funding to defray costs for people who request the records.
“I have to add that I have major concerns about the amount of money we’re charging for documents that’s supposed to be readily available to the public,” King said. “I feel like it disenfranchises candidates. It disenfranchises voters.”
Democratic Election Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal said that publishing supplemental lists of eligible voters during an election could impose an administrative burden on counties. She stressed the need for a better understanding of this burden before making legislative recommendations.
Johnston said two things are essential for election integrity: knowing who is eligible to vote and who voted.
“I think we all agree that these are the basics of holding an election and administering election,” Johnston said. “There’s nothing secret about this. There’s nothing proprietary about it. This should be available to the counties, to the superintendents, to the candidates, to the campaigns.”
Tindall Ghazal said that because Georgia’s voter registration deadline is based on when the paper application is postmarked in the mail, it led to some counties still processing thousands of voter registrations after early voting was underway.
“I think it’s a huge problem that there was such a large backlog in some of these counties to process the registrations,” she said. “I need to have a better understanding of the administrative burden that we’re adding to the counties for posting these lists on a daily basis on top of everything else that they’re doing during an election.”
This story was provided by WABE content sharing partner the Georgia Recorder.
People cheer for President Trump en route to his speaking engagement at the Coosa Steel Corporation on Feb. 19 in Rome, Ga. Trump delivered remarks on the economy and affordability as the state started voting to replace the seat vacated by former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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ATLANTA — Voters in Northwest Georgia are choosing who should replace former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Voting closes in the district’s special election on Tuesday night.
The election will test the weight of President Trump’s endorsement of one of the candidates in a crowded race. Some voters say the president’s choice is not who they think would best support the conservative MAGA movement championed by both Trump and Greene.
Greene resigned at the beginning of this year, leaving Georgia’s 14th Congressional District without representation in Congress — and slimming the GOP’s majority in the House — following a bitter split with Trump.
Greene rose to prominence over five years in office as a strong ally of Trump, bombastically attacking critics and pushing the MAGA movement’s “America First” policy. Yet the two had a very public clash after she pushed for the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Greene has also been sharply critical of Trump’s actions abroad, saying he has strayed from his promises to focus domestically.
With Trump now in the second year of his second term, other high-profile spats with key parts of his MAGA coalition have erupted over his administration’s handling of other issues, including sweeping tariffs, immigration policy and more. More recently, rifts have emerged over the war with Iran.
Some, like Greene, argue that though Trump helped create the “America First” worldview, he is not the sole arbiter of what it looks like.
Most of the GOP candidates in the special election have said they want to focus on Trump’s priorities and the concerns of their district, rather than become headlines themselves — an approach they say Greene embraced in her public disputes with Democrats and even with members of her own party.
“The difference between Marjorie and I is I will not use the press to become a celebrity,” Republican Star Black said during a candidate forum on Feb. 16. “I will use the press to actually show what I have done — the accomplishments,”
Trump has endorsed Clay Fuller, a district attorney in northwest Georgia for the state’s Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit. He emphasized his support last month during a visit to Rome, part of the state’s 14th District, where he held a rally to tout his administration’s economic policy.
Fuller called himself a “MAGA warrior” at the event.
Republican congressional candidate Clay Fuller (left) shakes hands with President Trump as he arrives on Air Force One at Russell Regional Airport on Feb. 19 in Rome, Ga.
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“I really like him,” said rally attendee Jill Fisher. “I think he’s a strong candidate, seems like a very nice family man with some great values. And I think he’ll add a lot to Congress.”
Highlighting Fuller’s military service as an Air Force veteran, an ad for his campaign says, ” ‘America First’ is the story of his life.”
Fuller faces several other GOP candidates in the primary, including former state Sen. Colton Moore. Moore won elections for the state Legislature in the district before and is considered one of the most right-leaning lawmakers at the state level.
“I’m 100% pro-Trump,” Moore declared in his campaign announcement video.
He’s made a few headlines of his own. Last year, Moore was arrested for attempting to enter the House chambers in Atlanta to attend the State of the State address by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. Moore argued he had a constitutional right to enter the chamber. Moore had been banned from entering the chambers by the state’s Republican House Speaker Jon Burns for disparaging comments he made about a late Georgia lawmaker at his portrait unveiling.
Moore’s record matters for some GOP voters even more than Trump’s endorsement. Less Dunaway, 14th district voter, says he’s a strong supporter of Trump, but thinks Moore will do a better job carrying out the president’s agenda than Trump’s own pick.
“He actually knows what he’s doing,” Dunaway said of Moore. “He was a state representative, a state senator. He was the first one to fight the people over the 2020 election in Georgia.”
Moore was one of a group of GOP state lawmakers who called on lawmakers to investigate or impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she charged Trump and others with trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, when Trump and his allies pushed baseless claims of widespread election fraud.
Fuller insists Trump made the right choice in supporting his bid.
“I think they’re looking for someone to carry President Trump’s banner, support his agenda, and fight for him on Capitol Hill,” Fuller told Georgia Public Broadcasting last month.
Still some Republicans who attended the February rally left undecided.
“I don’t just blindly follow what [Trump] says,” said Clay Cooper of Rome.
Still, Cooper said that Trump’s endorsement means he will give Fuller more thought. “[Fuller is] someone that [Trump] thinks aligns very much with his messaging, with his actions, so that certainly weighs in,” Cooper said.
Unlike a partisan primary, all the candidates — Republicans, Democrats and third party candidates — will be on the same ballot for voters in the special election. If no one gets over 50% of the vote, the two top vote-getters regardless of party will advance to a runoff on April 7.
Follow the results below as polls close on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET.
NPR’s Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Mableton, one of Georgia’s youngest cities, is heralded as an example to follow for its artificial intelligence policies.
(Illustration: Marcie LaCerte for the AJC)
When you think about the American cities on the cutting edge of technology, which ones come to mind?
Maybe tech hubs like Austin, Texas; Boston; or San Jose, California? Maybe New York City or Los Angeles?
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Mableton Mayor Michael Owens embraces artificial intelligence, calling it an equalizer. (Courtesy)
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Mableton is home to Six Flags Over Georgia. (Courtesy of Six Flags Over Georgia)
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Creating boundaries
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Mableton officials cut the ribbon for the city’s first permanent office in May 2025 (Courtesy)
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Zachary Hansen, a Georgia native, covers economic development and commercial real estate for the AJC. He’s been with the newspaper since 2018 and enjoys diving into complex stories that affect people’s lives.
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