2023 Legislative Session in Georgia begins January 9, 2023
Page will be updated during 2023 session.
Georgia's 2022 Legislative session ended on Sine Die, in the wee hours of the morning of April 5, 2022. A rather disappointing outcome.
Tuesday, March 29 @5pm If you can be there it would really help!!
Agenda-https://www.senate.ga.gov/committees/Documents/ethics3.29.22.pdf
Note: the Agenda has typos--States room 310 of CLOB and has Monday instead of Tuesday. So if you are able to attend, check the video screen at the elevators to verify the room number.
HB1464: Below you will find amendments that will be delivered to senators today. We are hoping they will offer these amendments today, or on Thursday. You can read or print them here, or print them from the Voterga.com Website.
HB1464 AMENDMENT
STRENGTHEN (not lift) PRIVATE MONEY BAN
Thank you for HB1464 and its language in Sections 14-16 to make ballots public record. This is the greatest fraud prevention provision the legislature could achieve in this session.
We would also like to see the ban on private money be strengthened instead of lifted. We now know that Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Technology and Civic Life distributed $330 million including $45 million to counties in Georgia to change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election using partisan policies established by Director David Plouffe. Plouffe was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and author of the book entitled “Citizens Guide to Beating Donald Trump”.
We have provided evidence showing the outcome was changed in Georgia by giving counties that money to fund partisan get out the vote efforts, drop boxes for ballot harvesters and complimentary technical resources for elections operations that resulted in electronic vote tampering. Last year, SB202 banned such future direct funding of elections but counties are trying to circumvent the law by accepting indirect money for purposes such as “diversity” and then routing it to the elections division for continued partisan uses.
The solution to these problems is to tighten, not lift, the ban as the Secretary of State has proposed in Section 1 and Section 3 in allowing the partisan State Election Board to distribute private money. The real solution is to modify Section 1 and 3 as follows:
Sec. 1, Ln. 42-44,
“(b) No superintendent shall take or accept any direct or indirect funding, nor paid or unpaid human resources, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government.”
Sec. 3 Ln. 93-95
“(f) No board of registrars shall take or accept any direct or indirect funding, nor paid or unpaid human resources, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government.”
Sec. 1: Strike lines 45-61
Sec. 3: Strike lines 96-109
Garland Favorito
VOTERGA.ORG
404 664-4044 CL
HB1464 AMENDMENT
PRESERVE OUTER ENVELOPES WITH BALLOTS
Thank you for HB1464 and its language in Sections 14-16 to make ballots public record. This is the greatest fraud prevention provision the legislature could achieve in this session. We also ask you to preserve the outer envelopes with the ballots.
There are six sworn affidavits including four from senior poll managers who testified under penalty of perjury that counterfeit ballots are mixed into the Fulton County mail-in ballots. If the outer envelopes that contain the mail-in ballots are made public, it will facilitate detection of mismatches between the number of envelopes and the number of mail-in ballots. That way the public can help ensure that no extra mail-in ballots were added into election results.
Outer envelopes contain no private information since voter names, addresses are election voting status are publicly available through the SOS office. Exceptions can be made to protect any ID numbers that may be under the seal of newer envelopes from disclosure
A simple change in Section 16 Ln 864 and 874, can accomplish this added protection for voters as show in the double underlined clauses below:
"21-2-500.
(a) Immediately upon completing the returns required by this article, in the case of elections other than municipal elections, the superintendent shall deliver in sealed containers to the clerk of the superior court or, if designated by the clerk of the superior court, to the county records manager or other office or officer under the jurisdiction of a county governing authority which maintains or is responsible for records, as provided in Code Section 50-18-99, the used and void ballots and the stubs of all ballots used; outer envelopes that contained the ballots, one copy of the oaths of poll officers; and one copy of each numbered list of voters, tally paper, voting machine paper proof sheet, and return sheet involved in the primary or election. In addition, the superintendent shall deliver copies of the voting machine ballot labels, computer chips containing ballot tabulation programs, copies of computer records of ballot design, and similar items or an electronic record of the program by which votes are to be recorded or tabulated, which is captured prior to the election, and which is stored on some alternative medium such as a CD-ROM or floppy disk simultaneously with the programming of the PROM or other memory storage device. The clerk, county records manager, or the office or officer designated by the clerk shall hold retain and preserve such ballots, outer envelopes and other documents for at least 24 months under seal, unless otherwise directed by the superior court, in a manner so as to prevent such ballots or other documents from being altered, amended, damaged, modified, or mutilated, after which time they shall be presented to the grand jury for inspection at its next meeting. Such ballots and other documents shall be retained andpreserved in the office of the clerk, county records manager, or officer designated by the clerk until the adjournment of such grand jury, and then they may be destroyed, unless otherwise provided by order of the superior court.
Garland Favorito
VOTERGA.ORG
404 664-4044 CL
HB1464 AMENDMENT
BAN DROP BOXES TO ELIMINATE LOOPHOLES
Most voters have no idea how to find out where drop boxes are located but the ballot harvesters found them in 2020. Publicly available videos and evidence turned over to the Secretary of State show how outdoor drop boxes were used to inject illegitimate ballots into the 2020 election results. You have probably seen videos of ballot harvesters taking pictures of many ballots (for payment) and then stuffing them into drop boxes.
Drop boxes were implemented in 2020 with no legislative authority whatsoever. When SB202 codified drop boxes in 2021 it left several loopholes:
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The governor can declare an emergency and re-establish outdoor drop boxes;
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Poll workers are not required to challenge ballot harvesters who will be able to drop many ballots into indoor boxes;
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The drop box opening facilitates harvesting by being big enough to accept library books
Even if these loopholes are closed there is still the problem of equal protection under the Georgia and U.S. Constitutions. As soon as one county implements more drop boxes than another county, all counties and the state become vulnerable to costly Constitutional lawsuits. Therefore, we urge you to save taxpayers that risk and protect the voters against ballot harvesting by simply banning drop boxes all together. This is accomplished in Section 7 by striking lines 264-318 and replacing Line 264 it with language such as:
“(c1) outdoor drop boxes are prohibited”
Should it be the will of the committee decide to retain drop boxes, Section 7 Lines 279-284 should be modified to close the above loopholes as shown:
“The drop box location shall have adequate lighting and be under constant surveillance by an election official or his or her designee, law enforcement official, or licensed security guard who shall allow only one ballot to be deposited in the box by any one individual. During an emergency declared by the Governor pursuant to Code Section 38-3-51, drop boxes may be located outside the office of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk or outside of locations at which advance voting is taking place, subject to the other limitations of this Code section.
(2) The opening slot of a drop box shall allow only one ballot to be deposited at a time and not allow ballots to be tampered with or removed and shall be designed to minimize the ability for liquid or other substances that may damage ballots to be poured into the drop box.”
Garland Favorito
VOTERGA.ORG
404 664-4044 CL
We will attend the Ethics Committee Hearing on Tuesday March 23 @ 5pm. We will meet in room CLOB 307. HB1464 has passed the house and moved to the senate. Senate Ethics committee will take up the bill. Garland and members of the legislative committee have delivered some suggested changes to the bill that will greatly improve it. We will be attending meetings and encouraging all committee members to consider these improvements. See the link below.
VoterGA information on this bill: https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/HB1464-Improvements.pdf
Text HB1464: https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/62422Ethics
Committee members link:
Senate Ethics Committee, 2021-2022
Democratic members (4)Republican members (9)Third-party members(0)
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Max BurnsChair
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Dean BurkeVice chair
If you are interested in following/impacting HB 1013 please meet at the capital around 1:30PM. bring your paper signs. Wear dark colors to show support for bill changes/deletions. Then you should be able to attend the committee meeting, re: election related bills listed in HB 1464.
Action WEDNESDAY 3/9
at the GoldDome tomorrow starting at high noon.
There are multiple tasks:
ACTION 1-- At 12pm we will be handing out copies of the electronic manipulation press conference slides to all legislators.
ACTION 2-- At 2pm there will be a HOUSE GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE vote on HB933. You know the one. WE WILL GET TO SEE THE BALLOTS.
ACTION 3-- AT Special Election Integrity Committee meeting: Thursday 3-5pm. See link below for details. Agenda to be announced.
UPDATE: HB933 will be presented in a sub-committee meeting on Monday at 10am. The meeting will be held at the CLOB room 506. See the link below for more details. Always keep in mind that meetings are often cancelled and rescheduled.
Result: 5 from legislative group spoke. No vote yet. more to come.
If you have already signed up for the legislative committee-Please email me if you can attend this subcommittee meeting.
If you can attend this meeting and have not completed the form below, please complete so we can update you on legislative action.
Latest text for HB933--
https://legiscan.com/GA/text/HB933/2021
If you can’t attend…the subcommittee meeting on HB933 a phone call may be of great help! Many are supportive of this bill. But need to know if you support HB933. But many are against and we need to know why they do not like transparency.
Rep. Steven Sainz – Chair PHONE 404-656-0178
Rep. Alan Powell – Vice Chair PHONE 404-463-3793 most likely supportive
Rep. Shaw Blackmon. (Sponsor of the bill)
Rep. Rhonda Burnough- Doesn’t appear supportive definite call-404-656-0116
Rep. Joseph Gullett-404-656-0178 most likely supportive
Rep. Rob Leverett- 404-656-0188 most likely supportive
Rep. Mesha Mainor- 404-656-0126- doesn’t appear supportive
Rep. Shea Roberts-404-656-0220. Definite contact- originally co-sponsored and then dropped her name off the bill.
Rep. Mary Frances Williams-770-424-9084 doesn’t appear supportive
Rep. Bruce Williamson-770-267-2566 most likely supportive
Rep. Rick Williams (Ex-Officio) 404-656-0254 most likely supportive
Rep. Micah Gravley (Ex-Officio) 404-656-5025
The bills we are following closely and trying to help urge legislators to pass are below!
Chairmen Burns, and Gunter,
Based on our year-long analysis of election integrity issues from the 2020 and 2021 elections, we have identified six key bills and language that will help close existing loopholes and protect the voters in the 2022 primaries. Three of the six we identified are in each of your committees. These are:
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HB933 will make physical ballots public records. We are convinced that we can demonstrate there was electronic manipulation of the election results and the physical ballots will reveal election irregularities to help us to determine how to fix it
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SB538 will allow the state to provide special mail-in ballot security paper to the counties for elections. There are six sworn affidavits of counterfeit ballots in the Fulton County election results. This will help prevent counterfeiting of ballots in the future
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HB1317 and SB325 will ban drop boxes. We now know that ballot harvesting teams with up to 242 people operated in Georgia to stuff ballot drop boxes. SB202 left many holes in the drop box language such as lack of equal implementation across counties, allowing the governor to reinstate drop boxes, allowing for an opening large enough to facilitate ballot harvesting, etc.
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SB233 will eliminate faulty Dominion machines and add comprehensive auditing. We will provide evidence in the next two weeks that there was electronic manipulation of certain county election results. This bill can hep make sure it does not happen again
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HB1402 will ban indirect private money from influencing elections. SB202 only banned direct private money and private entities are circumventing the law by funneling money to elections directors indirectly though county commissions. This bill must also be enhanced to ban complimentary technical resources that are being supplied to the counties for nefarious purposes by implementing a simple language change to the already cited 21-2-71 (b) and 21-2-212 (g) such as:
"No state department or agency, county, municipality, consolidated government, state-wide or local authority, or other state or local government entity, nor any officer, agent, employee, or elected official of any such entity shall take, solicit, or accept any donations, funding, grants, or gifts from any private individual or non-governmental entity for any purpose related to elections, including preparing for, administering, or conducting an election; registering voters; and voter education.”
In addition, we need immediate action to ban unsecure cloud computing for the voter registration system. The current SOS plan that would place the system outside of the State of Georgia’s control and vulnerable to a variety of security issues experienced by customers forced to use the selected Salesforce vendor. Our suggested change is as follows:
"21-2-211.
(a) The Secretary of State shall establish and maintain a list of all eligible and qualified registered electors in this state which shall be the official list of electors for use in all elections in this state conducted under this title.
(b) (1) As used in this subsection, the term "equipment" shall include, but not be limited to, computer hardware; computer software; modems, controllers, and other data transmission devices; data transmission lines; scanners and other digital imaging devices; and printers residing in the State of Georgia and maintained under direct control of the Secretary of State without reliance on the internet.
(2) The Secretary of State is authorized to procure and provide all of the necessary equipment to permit the county boards of registrars to access and utilize the official list of electors maintained by the Secretary of State pursuant to this Code section, provided that funds are specifically appropriated by the General Assembly for that purpose.”
These bills and language improvements need hearings and votes. Please let us know what we need to do help make that happen as the future of our Republic is literally at stake.
Sincerely,
Garland Favorito
VOTERGA.ORG
404 664-4044 CL
Schedule: Georgia General Assembly - Schedule (ga.gov)
THE SCHEDULE ABOVE SHOWS ALL SCHEDULED MEETINGS . SOME WILL BE ADDED WITH VERY LITTLE NOTICE. SO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OFTEN.
Please complete the form below
Share the above flyer with everyone!!
General Information
Masks required. Bring your license to enter building. Most meetings will be held in the Legislative Building beside the Capitol.
Address: 240 State Capitol SW,
Atlanta, GA 30334
Parking lot is on Capitol Avenue across the streets from Liberty plaza and across the street from the Legislative Building. See overhead layout below.
