Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones Announces Bill Banning Ranked Choice Voting

Jones Robertson

Georgia Lieutenant Gov. Burt Jones (R) and State Senator Randy Robertson (R-Cataula) introduced SB 355 on Tuesday to ban ranked choice voting in the state.

Jones said in a statement that ranked choice voting “is designed to cause confusion and fatigue among voters.” Allegedly “pushed by dark money groups,” Jones added it “could cause a drastic increase in the number of ballots being thrown out, disenfranchising Georgia voters.”

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Georgia State Representative Who Drafted Voting Law Appointed Superior Court Judge, Setting Stage for Special Election

Barry Fleming

Governor Brian Kemp appointed Georgia State Representative Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) to become a Superior Judge in the the Columbia Judicial Circuit. Fleming drafted Georgia’s 2021 voting law, and reportedly faced reprisal from government officials because of the legislation.

Kemp revealed his judicial appointments in a Thursday press release that he appointed Fleming to the judgeship vacated with the retirement of Judge James Blanchard.

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Gov. Kemp Points Out MLB Dropped ‘Misguided Understanding’ of Georgia Voting Law as All-Star Game Returns to Atlanta

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) posted on social media to celebrate the return of the Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Game to Atlanta in 2025, noting the professional athletic organization changed its mind regarding Georgia’s 2021 voting law.

The MLB announced the Atlanta Braves will hold the 2025 All-Star Game at Truist Park in a statement posted to social media on Thursday. Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred stated that the Braves are “a model of success on the field,” and predicted that “Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta” will offer “a world class experience” to baseball fans in 2025.

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Federal Judge Again Rejects Dem Claims that Georgia Voter ID Law is Racist

A federal judge has upheld Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, marking the second time in a year that a court affirmed the law in the face of Democrat allegations the state’s voter ID requirement is racist.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, a Trump appointee for the Northern District of Georgia, last week rejected an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to stop portions of the state’s Election Integrity Act, which Georgia passed in 2021, from being enforced.

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Federal Judge Denies Justice Department’s Latest Attempt to Block Georgia Voting Law

A federal judge denied a preliminary injunction request from President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice on Wednesday after the administration sought to stop enforcement of the 2021 Georgia voting law they claim discriminates against black voters.

United States District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled the Department of Justice is unlikely to prove any of its claims at trial, and denied the Biden administration’s request to pause portions of the law.

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Georgia House Speaker Calls on MLB to Award Atlanta All-Star Game After 2021 Cancelation

Georgia’s House Speaker this week turned the heat up on Major League Baseball (MLB), which moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver last year in protest of Georgia’s SB 202 election integrity law. 

“Earlier this week, I wrote to [MLB] Commissioner [Rob Manfred] and called on him to announce a future All-Star Game in Atlanta,” said Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston (R-District 7). “Georgia’s Election Integrity Act made voting more accessible and secure. False claims to the contrary have been proven wrong. Time for him to make this right.”

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Kemp Takes Aim on Key 2022 Issues: Abrams Lied About Election Integrity, Supports the Defund the Police Movement, and Wants to Raise Taxes on Georgia Families

Governor Brian Kemp took to Twitter on Sunday to follow-up critiques of his Democrat gubernatorial opponent, Stacey Abrams, on vital 2022 political issues.

“Stacey Abrams lied about election integrity, supports the Defund the Police movement, and wants to raise taxes on Georgia families as they fight Bidenflation. I’ll keep fighting to ensure Georgia continues to be the greatest state in the country to live, work, and raise a family,” said Governor Kemp on Sunday.

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Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger Says Biden ‘Dead Wrong’ About Georgia Election Integrity Law, Hice Says Bill Was Enacted Due to Raffensperger’s 2020 Failures

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when speaking on The Brian Kilmeade Show, blasted President Joe Biden for previous comments about Georgia’s election integrity law.

Biden accused the state government of restricting access to vote with SB 202. However, the latest numbers show that a record number of individuals have voted early in the state’s primary elections.

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Two Stacey Abrams-Linked Nonprofits Involved in ‘Seven Figure’ Lobbying Effort Against Voter Integrity Bill

As the Georgia General Assembly seeks to pass a bill that would provide more legal recourse to ensure the integrity of the state’s elections, so-called “voting rights” groups are preparing to spend a small fortune preventing the law from passing. 

The Atlanta Journal- Constitution reports that three groups are ready to spend “seven figures” battling the bill.

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DeKalb County GOP Chair Blasts Brad Raffensperger for Claiming Credit for Georgia’s High Ranking Election Security Scorecard

The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation this month ranked Georgia first on its election integrity scorecard, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took credit. DeKalb County Republican Party Chair Marci McCarthy said this week, however, that Raffensperger was out of line to make such a statement. McCarthy wrote on the DeKalb County GOP’s website that Raffensperger “unilaterally weakened Voter ID protections and controls” and “did not strengthen them.”

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Major League Baseball Embraces China, Even as It Mistreats Georgia, Columnist Says

Major League Baseball (MLB) is, according to one Washington Examiner commentator, “chasing after the Chinese market while pretending that places such as Atlanta are the locus of evil in the modern world.” Commentary Fellow Zachary Faria said in the publication this week that the MLB “is taking a page out of the NBA’s book when it comes to social justice politics.”

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Georgia Officials File Motion to Dismiss U.S. Department of Justice’s Lawsuit Against SB 202

Georgia officials have filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) lawsuit against the state’s new voter integrity law, Senate Bill 202. Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr this week released a statement and called the lawsuit “politically-charged” and said it seeks “to intrude into the State of Georgia’s constitutional authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of its elections.”

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Mitch McConnell Mocks Amy Klobuchar, Other Democrats for Georgia Hearing

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly disapproves of a field hearing that U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) held in Georgia last week to undermine that state’s new voter integrity law, Senate Bill 202. This, as Klobuchar and four other Democratic U.S. senators who attended refused to answer The Georgia Star News’ questions about other states whose voting requirements are stricter than Georgia’s.

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Georgia SOS Brad Raffensperger Issues Challenge to Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden After DOJ Lawsuit Announced

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reacted harshly Friday to news that U.S. Justice Department officials, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, will sue the Peach State over its new voting law Senate Bill 202. “The Biden Administration continues to do the bidding of Stacey Abrams and spreads more lies about Georgia’s election law,” Raffensperger said on Facebook Friday.

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DOJ Suing Georgia over Election Integrity Law

The Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to sue the state of Georgia over its recently-enacted election integrity law, according to Friday reports. 

SB 202, according to Washington Post, “discriminate[s] against Black Americans,” and is “is the first major voting rights case the Justice Department has filed under the Biden administration and comes as Republican-led state governments across the country have been seeking to impose broad new voting restrictions in the wake of President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump last November.”

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Stacey Abrams Refers to Georgia’s Voter Integrity Law as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and others said at a Thursday night town hall that Republicans nationwide are passing voter integrity bills to prevent black people from voting. During this virtual town hall, Abrams told audience members to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass the For the People Act. Some people also refer to the bill as H.R. 1. The For the People Act, if enacted into law, would nationalize federal elections. The proposed law would require that states automatically register residents to vote and also require absentee ballot drop boxes. The For the People Act would also eliminate state restrictions on mail-in voting, require same-day voter registration, and gut state voter identification laws.

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Stacey Abrams Spars with Republicans over Whether Georgia’s Elections Law Is Racist During Senate Hearing

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sparred with Stacey Abrams Tuesday during a hearing on Democrats’ voting rights bill and election reforms that Republicans have introduced in states across the country.

The hearing consisted of testimony from officials on opposite sides of the issue, including Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens and Jan Jones, the Republican speaker pro tempore of the Georgia House, but most questions from lawmakers on both sides were directed towards Abrams. Democrats largely focused on GOP-led policies that they likened to those from the Jim Crow era, while Republicans blasted the comparison and said that the bills’ goals were to make it harder to cheat, not to vote.

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Will Smith Pulls Movie from Georgia Over Voter Integrity Law

A big name actor-turned-producer says he will not film his upcoming movie in Georgia after the state passed a voter integrity law requiring identification to vote with an absentee ballot.

“Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith will move production on their big-budget, runaway slave thriller ‘Emancipation’ out of Georgia in protest over the state’s controversial new voting restrictions,” NBC reported.

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Abrams Blames Republicans for Economic Blow After Leading MLB Boycott

After leading a boycott against Major League Baseball’s All-Star game, originally scheduled to be held in Atlanta, failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is backtracking and blaming Republicans for the negative economic impact that the boycott will have on Georgia. 

“Republicans who passed and defended Senate Bill 202 did so knowing the economic risks for our state,” Abrams said in a statement posted to her Twitter account. “They prioritized making it harder for people of color to vote over the economic well-being of Georgians.” 

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Donald Trump Says Georgia’s Voter Integrity Law Didn’t Go Far Enough, Faults Brian Kemp and Geoff Duncan

Former U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan this week and suggested Democrats in the state got the better of them. “Too bad the desperately needed election reforms in Georgia didn’t go further, as their originally approved bill did, but the governor and lieutenant governor would not go for it. The watered-down version, that was just passed and signed by Governor Kemp, while better than before, doesn’t have signature matching and many other safety measures, which were sadly left out. This bill should have been passed before the 2020 Presidential Election, not after,” Trump said in a written statement.

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