Senate Ethics Committee, March 2, 2026

Transcript

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1. 0:19:54

   We're already way behind. Uh, I think the last person is signing up there, and we'll get those sheets, and we'll try to figure out what we're gonna do on that. Um, but before we, uh, do anything, um, I'm gonna ask, uh, Chairman Harbin, if he will, to, uh, to bless us before we get started.

2. 0:20:12

   All right, let me have your attention. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your, uh, just your goodness to us, Father. How well, dear Lord, we have been blessed by you. We ask, oh Father, that you would give us wisdom and discernment this morning, that Father, as we listen to what's going on, that Father, we would hear from you and hear from the people that are here. Thank you for the time. Thank you for your love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

3. 0:20:36

   Amen. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Uh, well, this is the, uh, Senate Ethics Committee. Um, I guess everybody's in the right room. Um- Got a full house. I was hoping some folks might, uh, walk out and be in the wrong room, but I'm not that lucky today. Um, first, quick order of business for the committee, uh, we do need to approve, uh, the Senate India, uh, Caucus. It should be in your, your folders, and we need to, uh, go ahead and get that out of the way real quick, and I would take a motion to approve.

4. 0:21:07

   Got a motion and a second. All those in favor say, "Aye."

5. 0:21:11

   Aye.

6. 0:21:11

   Any opposed? All right, we have a Senate India Caucus. Thank y'all for that. Um, first up, uh, Chairman Setzler, Senate Bill 573, if you will, please join us down front. And, um, obviously we have a lot to do today, Senator, so if you could be, uh, as brief as, as possible, we can, uh, get these bills moving along and get to everybody here today. And I'll turn it over to you.

7. 0:21:39

   Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of committee, bring before you today Senate Bill 573. Um, this bill recognizes that in a lot of, lot of our major local governments around the state, s- City of Atlanta, our consolidated governments of Augusta-Richmond, Macon-Bibb, Columbus-Muscogee, Athens-Clarke, um... Can you hear me okay? Um, there, there's been a, been a move to, i- in the direction of, uh, nonpartisan governance. Um, what f- 573 does is it recognizes the counties that are complex enough in their operations, um, complex enough in their demands that they would have appointed a, eliminated their elected coroner and put in place a medical examiner.

8. 0:22:24

   And in those counties, um, also, by the way, uh, the counties in question are Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Clayton, and DeKalb, those five counties. So this, this bill affects those five counties and those five counties only. Um, those counties also, in addition to have, having appointed a, a medical examiner, um, also have consolidated law enforcement powers under the commission. It's no longer the sheriff that does, that does, you know, patrolling. Um, they have police forces themselves. Uh, that those counties, the, the, the, the commissions of those counties would be nonpartisan.

9. 0:22:59

   Um, and the county offices of those counties would be nonpartisan. This is a recognition, um, with the kind of s- some of the frenetic partisanship we see in our, in our, in our culture today, that, uh, i- it's my belief, certainly from my community, I've had folks from my community and others around the metro come to me, people from both parties, that have said, "I think we would do better to have nonpartisan elections, um, for our commissions, uh, our clerks of court, um, tax commissioners, uh, and DAs and solicitors," and that's what this bill does. It recognizes the wisdom of that.

10. 0:23:30

    I'm glad to walk through some specifics. I'm glad to walk through, you know, some, some, a- any details folks have about that. But, uh, again, with the concentration of power, executive power, legislative power, police power, and investigation power, I think it's wise i- in, in the, just, just these five counties, um, I think it's wise that, uh, nonpartisan elections m- may be a more appropriate way to move forward. Glad to take questions.

11. 0:23:55

    All right. Questions for the committee. Um, and that was, uh, just I know we've had some subs. LC474096.

12. 0:24:04

    Yes, sir. Sure is.

13. 0:24:05

    Okay. Thank you. Uh, number six. Senator Jackson.

14. 0:24:09

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, thank you for bringing this. Uh, Mr. Chairman, can you talk to me a bit... Sorry, S- Senator Setzler, can you talk to me a bit about why just these specific counties? W- when you opened your remarks, you mentioned Macon-Bibb, Augusta, Muscogee County as also being really large counties that have thought a lot about, um, consolidated government. So, why are you targeting just these five specific counties?

15. 0:24:30

    Well, you think about those, um, you know, I'm using it as an example of, there, there's been this sense of, um, city, county coming together. Um, those, those c- those governing boards are nonpartisan. I think when you look at the five-core metro counties, not only has that happened, uh, you've got the police powers that are now under the governing bodies. The, the, the, the sheriff, although they, they have the courtroom, the c- the courthouse, and the jail, they're not providing patrol services. They, they've got...

16. 0:25:00

    Of course, Fulton is fully municipalized. Um, and DeKalb is prohibited from becoming nonpartisan by local constitutional amendment, so it would not affect DeKalb, the CEO, and the governing body. But the other three, you've got the, um, policing, uh, power under the commission, not under the sheriff, and you've got the medical examiner, um, function, that we've eliminated a coroner. And medical examinations are s- there, there's a, um, not just a volume, but a complexity to it that, that a, a MD medical examiner was, was seen as being more appropriate for that.

17. 0:25:35

    Those counties sort of mirror this sense of size, complexity, and, you know, being the seat of government. A, a lot, a lot of these, these issues emerge, and I think because of that, um, you look at examples that have happened around our, our area. You think about where, where the center has held. Where the center's been beneficial to us. You remember a couple y- within the last two years, the kind of the frenetic debate around this, this cop city thing, the, the police training facility for City of Atlanta.

18. 0:26:06

    Um, lot of very strong emotion about that. What I was proud to see was I was proud to see the, the, the mayor and the Atlanta City Council, a nonpartisan entity, was able to say recog- you know, th- this is a, in, in spite of some passions, um, in spite of some, maybe some, perhaps some political unease for some members of the council. As a nonpartisan body, they were all able to say, "You know what? It's important to have, have trained police." You know, many of the concerns we've had about policing across the nation has been ha- have our police been trained?

19. 0:26:38

    I think police training is something that thoughtful people recognize is important, and the frenetic nature of that debate was able to be solved and resolved in a nonpartisan environment. So it's, I think mirroring that for our metro counties is, is, is, is, is, is born wisdom.

20. 0:26:52

    Uh, respectfully, I, you've offered me a lot of words, but my question is very specific to why is this good for five metro counties, but you would not include Macon-Bibb, Augusta, Columbus, other metropolitan areas? Why are you targeting specifically the Metro Atlanta areas and not including counties that have large makeups as well and complex, um, pieces as well?

21. 0:27:15

    Yeah.

22. 0:27:15

    Um, this feels extraordinarily targeted towards, uh, some really incredible DAs, one of whom, um, happens to represent my great county. I happen to believe she's one of the best DAs in the entire nation. And so I, I'm just concerned about this very specific targeting, while you have not been able to make a compelling argument of how that, they are different than, say, a Macon-Bibb.

23. 0:27:33

    Yeah. Um, I, I do think the metro area is different. Um, I think w- we're a metro of 5.5 million people. Um, we're divided across five counties. It's, it's not, uh, it, it's not one city. New York's got five boroughs, but one city. Um, we're divided across five counties. I think the, I think the nature of the metro, um, there's so many areas that are akin to a city of Atlanta that have infrastructure that's, that's consistent with a, with a major m- metro area, but there's the, they're unincorporated counties.

24. 0:28:08

    Um, I mean, you could, you, you could pick through across Gwinnett. You could look at, at, at, at the Braves stadium. You could look across, you know, Hartsfield Airport. You could look across these, the, these, the metro. And I think the nature of it is such that the benefits we've seen of nonpartisan government in major urban areas being applied to, to, to the, the five metro counties, um, I think gives us the potential to eliminate some of the, the, the, the, the kind of extremes of our p- of our politics.

25. 0:28:41

    Um, 'cause I think at the end of the day, our number one job is to, is, is to uphold human rights of, of citizens. And I think, you know, as, as we have this balanced system. You know, I've worked very hard in my entire legislative career to make sure that the balance doesn't swing too far in the direction of the prosecution. And, and the, the prosecution defense, uh, that, that, that adversarial system, um, is important. We'd have to have DAs that're, that are looking to enforce the law. They're not gonna browse through the laws and then only enforce those that they, that they support. And we have a defense system that we fund and support, and that counterbalance, we think, provides the best, is the best defense on liberty.

26. 0:29:18

    When you look across the country, thankfully, we've not seen this in, in, in your, in your community, but when you look across the country, the politicization of prosecution has become an issue, and I'd like to solve this be- before it becomes a problem in our community.

27. 0:29:29

    One final question, if I may, sir.

28. 0:29:30

    Yeah.

29. 0:29:31

    So if I'm understanding your argument correctly, it has something to do with the large, complex nature of how these counties operate and the importance of balancing the goods. So would you... Your argument, the logic that goes with your argument would be for the AG to therefore be a nonpartisan office. And so is that your next step here? Are you gonna suggest that we should have nonpartisan AGs as well, given the complexity and the nature of their job?

30. 0:29:53

    Well, Senator, uh, assuming, um, if, if, if the c- citizens of your district and not my district, uh, bring us back and, and this, this wor- we put this into place and it works, in the future years, that's something we, we, we see fit to do. You know, we certainly, we have nonpartisan judges. I think that's appropriate. Um, I wouldn't wanna prohibit the wisdom of the general assembly in future years, but I do think this is an important first step.

31. 0:30:17

    All right. Um, sorry. Number seven. Senator.

32. 0:30:22

    Yes. Um, uh, to the, uh, senator from Cobb. I, my question, uh, is you, you referenced, uh, these five counties as Metro Atlanta. In fact, there are about 18 counties that constitute Metro Atlanta. So, uh, I, I, I, I, I, the argument kind of fails for me at that these are the ones that you're designating for this purpose to be metro when, when the metro area has 500,000 people in it, half the voters in the state, and encompasses at least 18 counties.

33. 0:30:58

    So drawing the lines the way you did and then calling these five counties Metro Atlanta, uh, falls a little bit short of the, the descriptions, uh, that are com- in common usage.

34. 0:31:11

    Well, to the la- and, and I know the lady knows, you know, when you, you look at different planning numbers, there are some, um, recognitions of the metro area that would extend that to 28 counties. I mean, it's just-

35. 0:31:19

    That's right

36. 0:31:20

    ... you, you could say, where does it stop?

37. 0:31:21

    That's right.

38. 0:31:22

    I, I talk about these as the five co- as the five core counties. And I think when you look at the powers here, that these are not counties where the sheriff has retained the police, the, the, the policing patrol power. It's been consolidated. Um, and then the, the medical examiner, the, the, the investigative function of the medical examiner has been consolidated again under the, under the, the commission. I think those functions, although themselves aren't the only factor, um, indicate the nature of these five counties is different than others.

39. 0:31:56

    Um, and the complexity and the authority we're consolidating under one entity. As you know, you know, county commissions, governing bodies, they have both executive and legislative power vested in them. You put policing power under them. You put investigative power under them. That's a lot of power in one place, and I think, um- As we, we've talked about, I've, I've talked to folks about, you know, should this be broader? I've talked to a lot of people about that. I think the, the consensus I got in my thinking was let's, um, these five counties, this core metro is very different because the consolidation of those powers, and that, that's really why I drew the line there.

40. 0:32:38

    Thank you.

41. 0:32:39

    Any further questions?

42. 0:32:40

    Let's- let me get some other lights here. So let's, uh, Chairman Burns on the other side.

43. 0:32:44

    Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, thank you all for bringing legislation. Uh, just a point of clarification. So can you, uh, enumerate the offices that would be nonpartisan?

44. 0:32:54

    Yes.

45. 0:32:54

    Would you do that for me, please?

46. 0:32:55

    For these five core metro counties, the offices would be the county commission.

47. 0:32:58

    So county commission.

48. 0:32:59

    The DA and solicitor.

49. 0:33:00

    DA solicitor.

50. 0:33:02

    Uh, clerk of superior court-

51. 0:33:03

    Clerk

52. 0:33:03

    ... and, uh, clerk state court. In some cases, state court clerks are appointed, but m- most are elected in the, in the c- core counties. Tax commissioner, um, tax assessor, and the, the, i- if it's, if it's elected, and then the surveyor. We have the survey- elected surveyor in Cobb County.

53. 0:33:17

    And again, all these would be nonpartisan, is that correct?

54. 0:33:19

    All would be nonpartisan, yes.

55. 0:33:20

    And if I understand it correctly, is it not true that, uh, um, board of education members are already nonpartisan?

56. 0:33:25

    The board of education members are allowed by general law on a case-by-case basis to be nonpartisan. Um-

57. 0:33:31

    But you're not including that in this.

58. 0:33:32

    I'm not including them here. And although there was some discussion of sheriffs, sheriffs also were not included in this. Sheriffs are not partisan in the, um, talked about in the, in the consolidated governments. Also, in these counties, the sheriffs by and large don't retain the patrol power that you have in, in other counties, so that power's gone from the sheriff to these commissions. That's one of the reasons we're doing this, is the sheriff doesn't retain that cont- that, that patrol power. So we're, we're kind of leaving those counties alone.

59. 0:33:58

    Thank you for the clarification.

60. 0:33:59

    All right. Uh, Senator Mallow.

61. 0:34:02

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Senator Setzler, you mentioned, uh, that the sheriffs in these counties don't retain, uh, patrol power. Can you tell me in statute where that is? Because, uh, according to what I found in OCGA, uh, 15-16-10, it is a mandatory duty.

62. 0:34:23

    Yeah.

63. 0:34:24

    Uh, they, you can't take away the powers of a constitutional officer like the sheriff and just say, "Well, the county commission took that away." That's not how it works. Now, if a sheriff does not have a budget to add patrol, uh, they focus on those other functions. How, how have you come to that conclusion?

64. 0:34:41

    Yeah. I, I appreciate the gentleman's question. And I, and I will, I will, uh, will correct the word I chose. It's not as if the sheriffs don't have patrol power. But when you, when you establish a police force, um, that's funded through the county commission and, and administered that way, it is d- the sheriff's, the sheriff's duty is different in those counties. Um, and when you've got a, for example, Cobb, we have a l- we have, uh, a force of more than 600 sworn officers that, that provide the policing function for Cobb County. Our sheriff doesn't lose any of his ability to do traffic enforcement.

65. 0:35:12

    It's just not their primary function. Their primary function centers on other things. That's, that's, that's the point I'm making, is when you've created a separate police force, it is a different kind of power that the county commission retains when that happens. So th- thanks for the correction.

66. 0:35:25

    Uh, just further follow-up. And Mr. Chairman, when you mentioned, for example, Clayton County, I'm very familiar with the sheriff in, in Clayton County, and he does traffic enforcement, DUI enforcement. Uh, I mean, uh, uh, you talk about the m- most, uh, he's got a fugitive task force. So how would that be different in what you're explaining that they don't do?

67. 0:35:47

    Because-

68. 0:35:47

    They, they actually do that

69. 0:35:48

    ... because you've also created a police force. Um, it's a, th- that, that function, I mean, in, in many counties, as you know, um, the sheriff patrols the county, the, patrols the unincorporated areas. Largely in these core, in these core metro counties, the police departments provide the bulk of that function. That's all. I'm not, again, so to, to your point earlier, I'm not suggesting the sheriff's lost that power. I'm just saying the primary policing power is in, uh, is under the commission.

70. 0:36:15

    All right. Um, Minority Leader Jones.

71. 0:36:18

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just curious, so where the sheriffs do have that policing power, where they still have that kind of total control, what would be the argument not to also just include them being nonpartisan?

72. 0:36:28

    Well, I appreciate the gentleman's question. And we've talked about that. I've, I've talked to sheriffs. You know, is that something they would, uh, be open to moving forward? Um, I don't sense there's consensus in this building to do that. Um, I'm open to the conversation. I mean, again, as I s- as I said to the lady, um, from DeKalb, I mean, we, um, if we should be fortunate enough to, to come back, um, I'm open to have a conversation with folks about these issues. I feel like this step is important to us. When you were looking at national trends, I think there's a real ... I have concerns about the politicization of, of prosecutions and justice.

73. 0:37:04

    Thankfully, we have nonpartisan judges. Um, but I think when we look at national trends, I think there's, there's cause to try to get ahead of this. Um, so I'm not, I'm not suggesting there's not arguments for that. Um-

74. 0:37:15

    So for the counties that are i- impacted here, are you saying that there has been a consensus within those counties to make this change?

75. 0:37:23

    It's my belief, as I talk to citizens, as I talk to people in ... Now, again, I, I won't, I won't, I won't, um, predict the, the votes of this panel. But I will tell you, I've been approached by elected officials from both parties that nonpartisan elections in key positions such as these would serve their county better.

76. 0:37:46

    So once again, would there be a consensus within those five counties that are impacted you believe that they want this change?

77. 0:37:52

    As I've talked to-

78. 0:37:53

    Uh-huh

79. 0:37:53

    ... to citizens, I've talked to business leaders, and I've talked to elected officials, some of which would rather talk off the record-

80. 0:37:59

    Yeah, for sure

81. 0:38:00

    ... um, I, I think they, people see wisdom to this.

82. 0:38:03

    All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

83. 0:38:05

    All right. One more question here. Senator Orrock.

84. 0:38:08

    Well, thank you very much. I'd just like to point out, I think the district attorney's, uh, big flashing lights here about-

85. 0:38:16

    Uh, changing, uh, a- about, about what your bill would purport to do in making those nonpartisan. And I cannot help but, uh, ask you, are you aware that the DAs in all of these counties are females?

86. 0:38:35

    What's that, Madam?

87. 0:38:37

    I am, I'm aware of that. Is that ... Uh, uh, I don't, I don't think that has anything to do with this bill, but I'm, I'm aware of that, Madam.

88. 0:38:43

    Well-

89. 0:38:44

    M-

90. 0:38:44

    ... inquiring minds want to know, I guess, is what I would pose.

91. 0:38:48

    Well, we got, got some more questions here. Uh, number nine.

92. 0:38:51

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

93. 0:38:53

    Last year.

94. 0:38:53

    Um, in, in talking to a lot of my sheriffs, they all agree that they don't want to be tied to a party. And, you know, as we look at the symbol of justice, the lady with the scales, justice is blind, and I think a lot of these people realize that they, they would do th- ... They'd feel better about doing their job not having to answer to a party or, uh, commit to a party. And at the proper time, I'll make a motion to pass, Mr. Chair.

95. 0:39:23

    All right. Um, we'll just hold on that motion just for a few seconds. Uh, we do have, uh, some of the DAs here that signed up to speak. Um, Joe, could you maybe come up? I think there was only four of y'all. Um, if y'all will. Uh, I'm assuming y'all are all gonna probably tell us the same thing, so maybe you can-

96. 0:39:44

    I'm gonna be very brief-

97. 0:39:45

    Okay

98. 0:39:45

    ... Mr. Chairman. I've gotta go over to House Judy, so, uh, I'll, I'll let the other DAs kind of expand a little bit. Appreciate you getting to me, though. Um, I'd ... As the president, one of my duties is that I need to take the votes, um, as far as the association. Well, this bill obviously came up this weekend, and I asked them to, uh, whether they opposed it or they were in support of it. And it was ... There was 40 of ... There's 51 DAs across the state. 40 of the 51 voted, and every single one of them was opposed to it. I say that with the caveat of this. I think that vote would probably change pretty dramatically if it, if it applied to all DAs versus just the five DAs that have an ME.

99. 0:40:22

    Mm-hmm.

100. 0:40:22

     So I just wanted to make the, the committee aware of that. Um, again, I'll let the other DAs speak, but I did want to make that particular m- uh, mention on the vote just for the record.

101. 0:40:34

     Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Chairman.

102. 0:40:36

     Just for the record, if you would please, uh, s- state your name and affiliation so we would have it in the record. That's all. Mr. Chairman.

103. 0:40:41

     Yes, sir. It's, uh, Joe Mulholland, and I'm the president of the DA's Association.

104. 0:40:44

     Thank you.

105. 0:40:45

     Yes, sir. And again, I think the vote would change pretty substantially if it included all DAs across state versus just the five with, uh, have MEs.

106. 0:40:52

     What, what was the vote again?

107. 0:40:53

     There was 40 of the 51, and they were all opposed to it based on the language that it would just apply to those five.

108. 0:40:59

     Far off from telling her.

109. 0:41:01

     Y-

110. 0:41:01

     Follow-up, Mr. Chairman.

111. 0:41:02

     Yes, sir.

112. 0:41:03

     Uh, r- recognizing that changing the 51 is a challenge-

113. 0:41:08

     Yeah

114. 0:41:08

     ... uh, would it not be prudent to begin with a smaller number?

115. 0:41:14

     Um, y- y- I mean, th- that's certainly an argument that certainly could be made. I can tell you this. I've been the DA for six terms. Um, so I started in '04. I started as a Democrat, because in south Georgia, where I'm from, in Bainbridge, that's pretty much what we had back then. Um, that switched. In '08 I was approached by the, uh, the Republican Party of some of my counties, and I was told that if I didn't switch, then, then, uh, I would have opposition, which I ended up having opposition, um, 'cause my circuit is probably around 60/40 Republican. Um, I ended up running as a Democrat for one more term simply because it irked me so bad that party affiliation for DAs was an issue.

116. 0:41:51

     Um, so I personally am in, in favor of it being nonpartisan, because I don't have any prosecution where I've ever said, "Well, this person's a Democrat or Republican, so I'm gonna prosecute them," or vice versa, that I'm not. Um, so personally, like I said, I think the vote would change quite a bit if it applied to all DAs versus just, just the five, including myself, my vote.

117. 0:42:11

     All right. Number three.

118. 0:42:13

     Thank you.

119. 0:42:13

     Senator Jackson.

120. 0:42:14

     Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, just a, a quick question. And this is for you personally but also to ... A- and I want to acknowledge that my DA is in the room. I, I've already acknowledged that she's the nation's best DA. Um, but- Just from your perspective, do you, as a DA who does have a party affiliation, do you feel beholden to your particular party and platform when it comes to you exercising your job as a DA? Or are you able to do that in the impartial manner currently?

121. 0:42:39

     I do it. I absolutely d- ... Like I said, I think that the law applies to everyone. I've never had a party, uh, and affiliation with any particular party come into my play as a prosecutor. Um, I will say that I wish my chairman had announced that I was one of the best DAs, um, at least- But, uh, but, uh-

122. 0:42:57

     We're, we're not through yet, Joe.

123. 0:42:58

     Yeah, that's all right. That's all right.

124. 0:43:03

     Oh. All right. Well, Joe, thank you.

125. 0:43:05

     Thank you.

126. 0:43:05

     You are one of the, one of the best DAs in the State of Georgia. Thank you for driving four hours to be here, 'cause I know how hard that is, and thank you for what you do.

127. 0:43:14

     Appreciate you, sir. Good to see everybody. Thank you.

128. 0:43:15

     All right. Do, do any of our other DAs have anything else to offer? We're really tight on time here, and, and, um, we need to keep, keep moving.

129. 0:43:25

     Somebody from the county.

130. 0:43:28

     If, if ... You just hold up right there. Or ...

131. 0:43:32

     Go ahead, Tonya.

132. 0:43:32

     You start with a B.

133. 0:43:33

     Okay. So thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity. For the record, um, I'm apparently the nation's best DA. I'm Sherry Boston. I am sh- ... I do. Sherry Boston, I'm the district attorney for DeKalb County. Um, and, uh, you know, uh, DA Mulholland expressed that overwhelmingly we had over 40 DAs this weekend that raised concerns. I wanna say one thing that hasn't been raised, is that, um, changing, uh, elections for DAs, um, requires, um, a constitutional amendment.

134. 0:44:09

     Um, and it was brought to our, um, our information from our general counsel that it would be unconstitutional to change the elections for these five metro DAs, all of which are women and all of which are Black women.

135. 0:44:26

     So having said that, I just want to acknowledge that, um, and I'm happy to answer any questions about DeKalb. I, in fact, have never made a decision that was political. Um, I heard the mention of Cop City, which happened in my jurisdiction, where I also happen to be a citizen of Atlanta. Um, so I was charged with making some decisions around that very case, and I can tell you I worked very closely with all of the stakeholders, both state, federal, local, and the city, with no issues.

136. 0:44:57

     And again, our, uh, the one thing I would say about our delegation is there are some DAs that wanted to stay partisan, there are some DAs that wanted to remain or wanted to be nonpartisan. But what we all agreed is it should be the same for everyone. And if everyone is going to be nonpartisan, we will accept that. If everyone's gonna be partisan, we'll accept that. But there should no- be no dividing line-

137. 0:45:22

     That's right

138. 0:45:22

     ... based on a medical examiner's office.

139. 0:45:26

     All right, I'm gonna let... Do go ahead and speak and then we'll see if there's some questions we gotta-

140. 0:45:29

     Hi. I'm T- Tasha Moseley, district attorney of the Clayton Judicial Circuit. Um, I'm one of the five that he was speaking of and, and I laughed when I saw the bill because it said medical examiner. We really don't have a medical examiner. We've got a coroner that's practicing as a medical examiner who can't... We send our autopsies to the GBI. So where would I fall? My people don't want us to be nonpartisan, so I'm quite interested to find out who he was speaking to. Um, because I know my solicitor general, my, my clerk of court, my tax commissioner, Clayton County is fine the way it is.

141. 0:46:05

     If Clayton County wants to change, Clayton County will change. They will ask their local deg- delegation to put in something so that we can become nonpartisan, but that has not happened. And as far as my sheriff is concerned, he's abs- you're absolutely right, sir. My sheriff police. I get cases from my sheriff all the time.

142. 0:46:23

     Mm-hmm.

143. 0:46:23

     You know? So this whole... It's a carve-out because we're metro Atlanta. It's a carve-out because we're Democrats. It's a carve-out because we're Black women, and this is unconstitutional. Can get mad, I don't care. But we're gonna-

144. 0:46:38

     All right

145. 0:46:39

     ... call a spade a spade.

146. 0:46:40

     We got-

147. 0:46:40

     Thank you

148. 0:46:41

     ... Jason next to you. Think he wants to speak, too. He's a DA as well.

149. 0:46:45

     Jason-

150. 0:46:45

     And he's a white

151. 0:46:46

     ... Ja-

152. 0:46:46

     Male

153. 0:46:46

     ... Jason Smith, Tallapoosa Circuit. And I am not like the other two here. I represent one of the smallest judicial circuits in the state. I also represent, um, the reddest judicial circuit in the state. I have Marjorie Taylor Greene's reddest county and I have Brian Jack's reddest county. I'm not like them. However, I will say, um, I do sincerely believe we're all created the same, uh, under the state consti- uh, uh, under the state constitution.

154. 0:47:16

     We're elected the same under the state constitution. I was the one who first brought up the issue of the constitutionality of it. The state constitution puts us in, uh, we're, we're in the same article as superior court judges and state court judges and everybody else. Um, however, they are specifically laid out in the constitution as nonpartisan, uh, uh, elected officials. We are not. At the bottom of that paragraph, it, there is not a, "as provided by other law" provision like our compensation paragraph or, uh, I believe our discipline paragraph has the same provision.

155. 0:47:58

     So as it relates to the dates that we are elected and the specific general election that we are to be elected under, um, it's my opinion that that can only be changed by constitutional amendment, which this body, um, is... Well, the, the Senate judiciary will be voting on the, uh, probate judges matter that passed the House last week. Um, and that, that is a resolution that will ultimately be put on a ballot as constitutional amendment, putting them in that list with superior state supremes and appellate courts.

156. 0:48:42

     Um, so i- if this were to, if this is the intention, I believe the way this should go would be by way of, um-

157. 0:48:52

     Mm-hmm

158. 0:48:52

     ... resolution, and that would have to be put on a ballot, uh, for the state to vote on.

159. 0:48:58

     All right, we got, uh, Whit Robertson, do you have a question?

160. 0:49:01

     Yes, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being tardy. I was busy taking care of some, uh, business inside the Capitol. Um, just really quick, and I, and I know Ms. Boston real well, and it's good to see you. Um, and I heard all three of you mention it's unconstitutional. Is there any case law on this, or is that just the opinion of reading and, I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're all attorneys and, you know, uh, judges are attorneys also at some point in their life. So just curious, do you know any ca- existing case law?

161. 0:49:30

     No.

162. 0:49:30

     No.

163. 0:49:30

     It's, it's laid out in pretty-

164. 0:49:32

     No, no

165. 0:49:32

     ... black and white.

166. 0:49:33

     Uh, yeah, I, well, I understand it's always laid out in black and white until a judge says it's different.

167. 0:49:37

     Right.

168. 0:49:37

     Um, and I respect that, but I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't any case law you were referencing to. Basically, your, your legal counsel, who, who would've been the person you take it to, and your interpretation is that it would be.

169. 0:49:50

     Yes.

170. 0:49:51

     Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that.

171. 0:49:53

     Um, Chairman, uh, Senator Jackson, Dora.

172. 0:49:58

     It's okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, just a- and any of the lawyers, um, here in the room in, in front of us with mics, any of the DAs, all of you who do your job well, I'm sure. Um, can you all speak to what the results or impact on your elections might be if we were to shift the timing such that a much smaller electorate would be responsible for electing the DA? Does that raise concerns for you about just access to the ballot, making sure that you're democrat- democratically elected, small D, um, as one would hope a DA would be.

173. 0:50:28

     Does it give you any consternation that it would be such a smaller population of people who would be electing you as opposed to a bigger ballot if you were, if we were to stay in the current posture that we're in?

174. 0:50:37

     100%. I mean, speaking about DeKalb County alone, we have over 800,000, um, residents in DeKalb County. These races being switched to the primary election where judicial races are decided, we all know has significantly fewer people than vote in the general election. Um, so of course, any time you're switching to an election that you know has fewer people that traditionally vote, that is reducing the voice at the ballot box.

175. 0:51:08

     And these races are critical and important. Knowing who your DA is and making sure you are voting for the person that's gonna uphold public safety in your community is extremely important, and we wanna make sure that as many people as possible weigh in.

176. 0:51:22

     Thank you.

177. 0:51:23

     All right, I don't see any other questions, and, uh, I wanna go back to, we got a motion on the table for due pass. Uh, do we have a second?

178. 0:51:34

     Second.

179. 0:51:34

     Uh, okay. You wanna come back down here and close? I'm sorry. Trying to be efficient here, getting ahead of myself.

180. 0:51:42

     I wanna be s-

181. 0:51:42

     Uh, you gotta keep rolling.

182. 0:51:51

     Okay, Mr. Chairman, members of committee, um, appreciate the opportunity to kinda close and address some of the things that were raised, if I could, before, um-

183. 0:51:57

     Yes

184. 0:51:57

     ... I will tell you it is the offic- it is the opinion of our Office of Legislative Counsel this is not a constitutional question, that we're, we're well within our, within our powers to do this. I, I, I, I am not going on my own legal opinion on this. This is not Setzler's opinion. This is, this is the opinion of our of- Office of Legislative Counsel, that, um, the way we've crafted this as an open class, co- counties could, could move in or move out of this if they wanted to, um, this is not set in the Constitution. That's s- wanna be very clear, if there's any questions about that, we're not going on my expert legal opinion that this is a thing that's within the General Assembly's power to do by statute.

185. 0:52:34

     Um, would also say I, I'm disheartened to hear

186. 0:52:42

     identity politics thrown into this. This is a matter of good government and representing people well, and I'm, I'm not gonna point fingers. I'm just disappointed to hear that. I thought we were bigger than that here in the metro, and, um, I'm just gonna s- I, I, I, I'm not gonna address that head-on 'cause I don't think it's, it's d- it really is worth addressing.

187. 0:53:02

     All right.

188. 0:53:02

     I'll take questions.

189. 0:53:03

     Thank you. Do you have a question?

190. 0:53:07

     Senator Setzler, I wanna say something really quick, um, about this and, and I know there are times that race comes into some of this stuff, but these are obviously people that do not know you, do not know your heart, and do not understand you, and as your friend, and as somebody up here that's worked alongside you, agreed with you, and disagreed with you, uh, more often than not, I wanna tell you myself, I apologize that, that somebody did bring that up, uh, in reference to you.

191. 0:53:35

     Thank you. Um, all right. Um, hold on. Number six, Senator Jackson, did you have a-

192. 0:53:41

     Yes, motion to table.

193. 0:53:43

     All right.

194. 0:53:44

     Second.

195. 0:53:45

     We got a motion to table and a second. Uh, all those-

196. 0:53:50

     Motion to pass.

197. 0:53:52

     Uh, table

198. 0:53:52

     ...

199. 0:53:52

     or resolve to proceed.

200. 0:53:53

     Yep. Yep. Uh, all those in favor, favor of, uh, tabling, uh, Senate Bill 573, please raise your hand.

201. 0:54:04

     Four. Uh, all those opposed of tabling. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Uh, your motion fails, and we'll go back to our, uh, original motion of, uh, due pass, um, and I need a second on that, I believe.

202. 0:54:22

     Second.

203. 0:54:22

     Got a second. Uh, any fur- further discussion on that?

204. 0:54:25

     M- m- m- Mr. Chairman, I just wanna say this, just for, for the, for the good of the order. Um, this is, I, I, I chafe at the suggestion that this is some identity politics play. I chafe at that. This is an issue of public safety. This is an issue of governance. What this bill does is this bill takes partisan politics, the party divide we have in our country, out of some of the most important roles i- in the governance of a major metro area.

205. 0:55:00

     This is a nonpartisan bill. It's not a bill to make it partisan. This is a bill to make things nonpartisan. This looks at trends around the nation and says, "How do we protect our citizens in a core metro area of nearly five million people, and do it with excellence, and do it with integrity?" I, I chafe at the suggestions to the contrary. I know there's an opportunity to be on camera. Maybe people take those opportunities. I'm, I'm not gonna go beyond that. But this is a, this is a bill to de-partisanize the governance of, of an important part of metro Atlanta.

206. 0:55:30

     That's what this bill's about, and I would just caution members not to be dissuaded by distractions.

207. 0:55:37

     Um, yes, sir. As the whip said, I, I know your heart as well, and I know what you're trying to do here. Um-

208. 0:55:44

     Call to question.

209. 0:55:45

     Yeah. Q- a question has been called. Um-

210. 0:55:48

     Call the vote.

211. 0:55:50

     We've, he's calling the question on it. We need to vote on this. We've got a lot to, to do.

212. 0:55:57

     I have a motion to amend.

213. 0:55:58

     Call the vote.

214. 0:55:59

     Point of order. I'd like to make a, a motion to amend.

215. 0:56:02

     All right. Make that motion.

216. 0:56:04

     Um, I move that we amend this document, uh, to, um, include all 159 county DAs. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Um, I believe in that if we don't wanna target people, we shouldn't target them, so 159. I don't know how we do that, um, procedurally here, but that is my motion. I move that we amend this so that it includes all 159 DAs.

217. 0:56:26

     Second.

218. 0:56:27

     All right. There's a motion and a second. Any discussion on that?

219. 0:56:33

     Mr. Whip?

220. 0:56:34

     The state of Georgia does not have 159 DAs

221. 0:56:39

     Well, good.

222. 0:56:41

     I have a point of order if you want to-

223. 0:56:42

     Yes, sir. Chairman Strickland.

224. 0:56:44

     If we're going to hear an, a proposed amendment, we just need language that would be for this proposed amendment. If it's gonna fit in this bill, that's fine, but we need to see some language. So I'm not sure if the, an amendment actually is.

225. 0:56:56

     Well, we, we don't have any language to, to look at. Um, so we'll, uh, we'll just-

226. 0:57:03

     The-

227. 0:57:03

     The question's been called, so-

228. 0:57:04

     Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

229. 0:57:08

     Last one, and we're gonna vote on this bill.

230. 0:57:11

     Isn't it true that we heard from three district attorneys from different parts of the state all bringing information that this is unconstitutional? Uh, the one person that's testified that's not an attorney maintains that it is constitutional, and that is what's before the committee at this point. Are we going to, uh, weigh in on that question of constitutionality?

231. 0:57:36

     Well, I, I think the author spoke to that and, and answered that for us. Um-

232. 0:57:40

     I, I'd like-

233. 0:57:41

     So let's, let's vote on the bill. Uh, all those in favor for Senate Bill 573, uh, please say I.

234. 0:57:47

     I.

235. 0:57:47

     Raise your hand. Raise your hand, sorry. One, two.

236. 0:57:54

     Eight. Uh, all those opposed?

237. 0:57:57

     Party line vote, I guess.

238. 0:57:59

     All right. Senator, your bill passes. Thank you for, uh, being here. Appreciate what you do.

239. 0:58:05

     Good luck in Rules.

240. 0:58:06

     Good luck at Rules. Correct. All right. Moving on. Uh, Senator Chairman Bearden, please come down. I hope yours is, uh, much shorter.

241. 0:58:18

     Me too.

242. 0:58:19

     Senate Bill 423. And if you will, read, uh, your, uh, LC number

243. 0:58:29

     so we make sure we've got the correct...

244. 0:58:33

     Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we should be working off... Or not believe. We should be working off LC 474148S.

245. 0:58:48

     Is that what we're working off?

246. 0:58:48

     Yeah, go ahead.

247. 0:58:49

     All right.

248. 0:58:50

     Everybody got it?

249. 0:58:51

     474148S.

250. 0:58:54

     All right, 4148S.

251. 0:58:58

     Today I present to you Senate Bill 423, which I call the Georgia's Elected and Georgians Transparency Act. This legislation promotes greater transparency in campaign finance, curbs the influence of dark money, ensures that Georgia elections are driven primarily by Georgians and not outside forces. Uh, Section 1 of the bill, if you look to it, it should be lines 26 through 29. This language just cleans up some language from, I believe, Senate Bill 119 last year.

252. 0:59:29

     Uh, previously small PACs, those spending $25,000 or less annually, were exempt from reporting. I believe last year bill then said they had to report, so it's a little-

253. 0:59:38

     Mm-hmm

254. 0:59:38

     ... contradiction, contradiction in itself. So this bill eliminates conflicting language to make clear small PACs under the $25,000 threshold in a calendar year are not required to report. And if they do go over that 25,000 threshold, then they are required to report until the, uh, PAC is dissolved. Line 64 through 72, this is pretty much addressing the dark money and independent expenditures. States any independent committee making expenditures to elect or defeat a candidate via broadcast media, cable, radio, electronic communications, or the internet, must disclose all information required under practical federal statutes.

255. 1:00:22

     Non-compliant constitutes a violation for each improper expenditure, and violations are subject to civil penalties under OCGA 21-5-6, which falls under our ethics committee or ethics commission.

256. 1:00:37

     Section 2 of the bill, this is the core to the Georgia's Elected and Georgians. Provisions lines... Or I'm sorry, lines 76 through 133, lines 76 through 96 defines what non-Georgian persons of out-of-state business entities are. Also reference leadership committees defined in 21-5-34-2. So basically, candidates, campaign committees, independence committees, political action committees, and leadership committees may not receive more than 50% of their total contributions from non-Georgian persons or entities in a given period.

257. 1:01:18

     If the threshold is exceeded, ex- excess funds must be returned to the contributor within 45 days or at the end of the reporting period. If they can't ret- return them, they don't return them, the money is then, uh, goes back to the state. It cheats back to the state. This is modest, proportional limit, more conservative than other states' approaches like Hawaii at the 30% cap, designed to preserve the integrity of Georgia elections while respecting constitutional bounds.

258. 1:01:50

     There are a couple carve out excep- except- uh, exceptions, sorry. National party committees, DNC, RNC, may transfer funds to state, district, or local committees of the same party, and contributions from family members are exempt. Then we go on enforcement. Lines 113 through 120, complaints may be filed by the attorney, attorney general on their own motion or at the request of the ethics commission or any Georgia resident by then a petition filed in the Superior Court of the county where relevant committee or candidate is domiciled.

259. 1:02:30

     And finally, lines 121 through 133 of the bill

260. 1:02:40

     This gets the straw man donations, makes it illegal or prohibits arrangements for out-of-state individuals or entities funnel model- funnel money through Georgia residents or vice versa to circumvent the law. If they're caught in violation of this, it's punishable with a felony up to one to 10 years imprisonment, a fine of $10,000, or both. This bill offers common sense, balanced approach to protect Georgia elections from outside inter- interference while promoting transparency and accountability. And I ask for your favorable, uh, consideration on the bill.

261. 1:03:13

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, very good bill. I'm, I'm all about some transparency and doing what we're supposed to be doing and telling people about what we're doing, and I think we've had a lot of that going on in our state that we're not aware of. So got a few questions here. Uh, Mr. Wilt?

262. 1:03:29

     Lanny Thomas represents him.

263. 1:03:31

     Okay. Got the question over here. Senator Jackson.

264. 1:03:35

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, so Senator Bearden, I, I just wanna focus our attention on lines 131 through 133 where it has the criminal penalties that would be imposed. Um, can you just talk to me about why you made the choice for criminal penalties when all of our other financial disclosure are civil penalties? And if you look in the section, earlier section where you talked about and you clarified some things, it's all the Ethics Committee has the opportunity to impose civil fines. Um, why are suddenly we're threatening locking people up in prison?

265. 1:04:06

     Because people are trying to basically do money laundering into the state, kinda like what we did on the Second Amendment to make sure straw purchases were illegal. We're doing the same, same thing. So I think if you're trying to money launder into the state of Georgia to influence the election, yeah, I think you should go to jail.

266. 1:04:21

     A- another question if you don't mind.

267. 1:04:22

     Sure.

268. 1:04:22

     Yeah. Um, and then can you just talk to me about, uh, logistically, uh, how this works? It, it seems to me we report every quarter, um, to the Ethics Committee. So if I were to receive $1,000 in a non-election year in the middle of the year when I'm not raising funds, if I were to receive $1,000 from an out-of-state entity, would it be my responsibility therefore to raise another $1,000 of Georgian gifts in order to comply, or would I just have to send that money back?

269. 1:04:49

     No, we're not saying it's dollar for dollar. We're just saying that if, uh, if you raise $100,000, 50,000 of it should be from the state of Georgia. And if it goes over $50,000, then you need to return that money to the non-Georgian entity.

270. 1:05:02

     Right. But i- in the... It's, it's every quarter that we're reporting-

271. 1:05:05

     Yep

272. 1:05:06

     ... correct? So if, if in the... It's not over the course of the year. I just wanna make sure.

273. 1:05:09

     Yeah.

274. 1:05:09

     So in the course of that one quarter in between reporting, if I receive $1,000 of out-of-state Georgia donations off year, not really raising money, I just get $1,000, is it your contention or y- your intention would be for me to have to send that money back?

275. 1:05:26

     If your aggre- aggregate amount of money is coming in-

276. 1:05:30

     But-

277. 1:05:30

     ... exceeds the 50%, then yes, at the end of the reporting period within 45 days, you need to return that money back to the non- non-Georgian entity that gave you the money.

278. 1:05:40

     And I just wanna make sure you're clear that you want-

279. 1:05:41

     Yeah

280. 1:05:41

     ... that aggregate to be within that just one reporting period, not over the course-

281. 1:05:45

     That's correct

282. 1:05:45

     ... of the entire campaign.

283. 1:05:46

     Well, it gives this way the chance for the, uh, Ethics Committee to take a look at it and see what's going on, or Ethics Commission. Sorry about saying Ethics Committee. I don't think you wanna get involved in that.

284. 1:05:57

     All right. Number 5, Senator Mallow.

285. 1:06:01

     Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. To, uh, my colleague senator, just a quick question for you. Uh, would this affect, for example, corporations that donate to us that are lobbyists? Those would be out-of-state corporations, uh, that would donate. And if you're not in the more metro areas, you may fall into this. I, I'm always concerned about bills that affect, uh, the people down I-16, which I happen to be one of them. Uh, and so if my base of contributions comes from lobbyists, other corporations, I fall into this, 'cause we don't raise the money that metro folks raise.

286. 1:06:42

     Uh, so do I fall and get hit by this?

287. 1:06:45

     I'm with you. I'm right there next to Alabama, so, uh, I know what you're talking about. But if you look at lines 90 through 92, I think that really gives you a good sense on it. Uh, filed a corporate income tax return with Georgia Department of Rev- of Revenue in the preceding calendar year or maintains sufficient economic presence, property, or payroll within the state to establish a nexus under the state law. So let's take, just gonna throw it out there 'cause I own a Ford truck. Let's say, uh, Ford wants to donate money. They're probably, uh, a Delaware company, or they may be in Michigan, but they have employees here.

288. 1:07:16

     They contribute to the state of Georgia, so they would be able to donate to the campaign.

289. 1:07:21

     A, a follow-up question. Uh, S- senator, I, and, and I believe this is with, uh, the best intent. However, if you're accepting... I mean, i- it, for me, just being transparent, hard as hell to keep up with, make sure all the reports get filed. So now I got to make sure I know who filed taxes and do all this stuff. I, I don't... Maybe y'all got more staff than I do and, and I'm missing something, but I just think, uh, uh, this is even more cumbersome. This is a full-time, part-time job, and now I gotta worry about figuring out who paid taxes, whether they're d- I, I...

290. 1:07:56

     And I got three degrees, but this is making it too complex for me 'cause I got to take every ch- I, I... Senator, I, I just... That, that's not the answer for me.

291. 1:08:06

     All right.

292. 1:08:06

     I'm sure it's the answer for you.

293. 1:08:07

     We got, uh, one more question. Number 7, Senator Or- Zane.

294. 1:08:12

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, to my colleague, um, I've, I've been looking through the bill to see when this kicks in, um, and I'm, I'm gonna have to ask you that because I've, I've, I've not, uh, come across that yet. And, and the, then I wanna ask you a, yeah, a follow-up question to that if I could.

295. 1:08:40

     Line 97, after June 1st, 2026

296. 1:08:44

     97, ah, line, on page five.

297. 1:08:48

     27.

298. 1:08:48

     Yeah, line 97 after June 1st, 2026.

299. 1:08:50

     Uh-huh.

300. 1:08:51

     27.

301. 1:08:52

     27.

302. 1:08:52

     27.

303. 1:08:53

     Uh, w- w- well, let me, let me pose this question to you because, I mean, this is, it, it seems to be quite a, quite a departure from, uh, the way that, uh, we've operated before. And, and of course it impacts everybody that's seeking office or already in office, uh, as, as the bill describes. But, um, I'm, I'm very, uh, familiar with, um, situations where, you know, they tell you, "Build your list.

304. 1:09:24

     Here's how to raise money." You raise it from your family.

305. 1:09:27

     Mm.

306. 1:09:27

     You write, you know, you go to your, or who you went to school with. Y- you, you know-

307. 1:09:32

     Yeah

308. 1:09:32

     ... you cast this net and start building your, your, your campaign, uh, uh, of funds. And, uh, i- i- if you went to the University of Virginia, you, you, a- and you went to the law school there, you're gonna, you're, you're gonna reach out to each and every person, a warm body-

309. 1:09:51

     Mm

310. 1:09:51

     ... you know, that's connected with that, that would know you and want to give. And, and, and so why would we... What is the thinking behind restricting people and, and whether they can, uh, accept campaign funds from, you know, people they went to college with, people they went to grade school with-

311. 1:10:12

     Mm

312. 1:10:12

     ... people, uh, uh, uh, in, in the industry where they work. Uh, y- you know, pick, pick any one of the professions. Uh, um, I, I, I, I, it's just hard for me to get my arms around what is this wall we're building around Georgia that I can't ask my family who all lives in Virginia.

313. 1:10:36

     Yeah.

314. 1:10:36

     I'm using Virginia twice.

315. 1:10:38

     Yeah.

316. 1:10:38

     Uh, uh, it's just, it's just... I think I made my point.

317. 1:10:41

     Yeah. Yeah.

318. 1:10:41

     You get my q-

319. 1:10:42

     Yeah

320. 1:10:42

     ... you get my question.

321. 1:10:42

     Let's let him, let him answer.

322. 1:10:43

     Thank you.

323. 1:10:43

     And we're not, and we're not saying that you can't accept donations. We're just saying 50% of your donations can't come from outside the state, and that we are making a big, uh, move from in the State of Georgia with this bill. We're actually bringing transparency into our elections, and I think that's very important for the Georgians to know who are pushing these elections and making sure that Georgians are electing Georgians. So you're right. We are making a big, big move. It's a move towards transparency.

324. 1:11:07

     All right. Chairman Burns.

325. 1:11:10

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, uh, Senator for bringing the bill. Just a quick clarification. Uh, have other states not taken a similar approach? And could you enlighten the committee on, on those options?

326. 1:11:20

     We have a bunch of case law, and I will not go into it because you're stressed on time, but we do have it. Uh, other states done it. Usually, where they get struck down is they try to do a numerical amount, like 3,000 or 5,000. Uh, courts have even said 25% could be a little bit too narrow. Uh, 30% has made its way through to Hawaii. So we're being even a little bit more conservative in saying 50%. We think that's very safe. I think from what the courts have said, from the Supreme Court to circuit court, that we are in a very good area, and this will be a good law.

327. 1:11:50

     Thank you. Appreciate the bill.

328. 1:11:53

     Chairman Harbin.

329. 1:11:54

     Thank you, Senator. Uh, lines 26 through 29, from what I'm reading here, political action committees making aggregate expenditures on behalf of a candidate of 25,000 or less are exempt.

330. 1:12:06

     Mm-hmm.

331. 1:12:07

     So we're, we, we really... That's a pretty large number from that standpoint that are exempt in that respect, unless that makes up more than 50%, would be the other part, correct?

332. 1:12:16

     Well, well, what we're saying on, on the 25,000 or less, that's the way it used to be. Then Senate Bill 119 had conflicting language that said that they had to report.

333. 1:12:25

     Okay.

334. 1:12:25

     What we're saying is once they cross that threshold, this is just cleanup langu- language here, not into the 50% area, but just a cleanup for 119, going back to the way it should've been, been written in the law. That was just, uh, oversight, so it's just cleanup language here-

335. 1:12:38

     Okay

336. 1:12:38

     ... on that bill.

337. 1:12:39

     Excellent bill. Thank you.

338. 1:12:40

     Thank you.

339. 1:12:41

     All right. Mr. Wipf, I think you had a motion.

340. 1:12:43

     Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator, for, uh, an ethical bill brought to Ethics. Um, motion do pass.

341. 1:12:51

     Got a motion and a second. Uh, all those in favor, please raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five-

342. 1:13:00

     Six

343. 1:13:00

     ... six, seven.

344. 1:13:04

     One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Uh, all those opposed, please raise your hand. Four opposed. All right. You got a bill, Senator.

345. 1:13:13

     Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

346. 1:13:13

     Good luck in, uh, Rules. Thank you. Um, Chairman Dolezal, let's, uh, start with, uh, SR 838.

347. 1:13:28

     Come on down. Thank goodness, uh, nobody's signed up to, to speak to this, uh, resolution, Mr. Chairman. Um, but it looks-

348. 1:13:36

     That's a shame. It's-

349. 1:13:37

     ... pretty straightforward to me, so, uh, I'm, I'm glad. I would be worried if, uh, somebody did. So the floor is yours.

350. 1:13:44

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm working off of, uh, LC474076. This is Senate Resolution 838. This is a constitutional amendment, uh, the State Assurance of Voter Eligibility/SAVE Amendment, and this would add two provisions to the Georgia Constitution. First, that only United States citizens are allowed to vote in elections, and secondly, that said citizens must provide voter, photo identification before casting a ballot.

351. 1:14:14

     All righty. Uh, Chairman Burns.

352. 1:14:17

     Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just as a, uh, point of clarification, this is already Georgia law. Is that not true?

353. 1:14:22

     This is in Georgia law. This-

354. 1:14:23

     This is Georgia law. This codifies it in the Constitution. Is that not true?

355. 1:14:26

     That is true.

356. 1:14:27

     So we have supported this concept in the past, and I look forward to continuing to support it. Thank you.

357. 1:14:33

     All right. Uh, number 15.

358. 1:14:37

     At the appropriate time, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion.

359. 1:14:39

     Uh, that would be the, uh, appropriate time now. We got to make a mo-

360. 1:14:43

     Make a motion to pass.

361. 1:14:45

     Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

362. 1:14:49

     Mr. Chairman, are there not folks signed up to speak to this bill, this resolution?

363. 1:14:53

     Not to 8:38.

364. 1:14:55

     Oh, s- sorry. I was waiting for that testimony.

365. 1:14:58

     This is 8:00. Yep. Yep. No, no, nobody's signed up to speak on this. So re- it's the Senate resolution, so.

366. 1:15:04

     Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make clear.

367. 1:15:06

     All right. Um, all those in favor, please raise your hand. There's people that signed up right here. Uh, we don't, we don't have it. There's two sheets. I've got two sheets. I do not see anybody signed up. It's the constitutional amendment. This is the constitutional amendment, the resolution. I do not have anybody signed up to speak, and we're, we're closed here, so. All right. Um, let's, uh, vote on this bill. All those in favor, please raise your hand.

368. 1:15:38

     One, two, three, four, five, six. Uh, any opposed? Two opposed. All right. They signed it. Yeah, I don't, I don't have it. All right. Now, Senate Bill 568, um, that we have a lot of people signed up for. Um, and we are at 12:03, and I'm not even sure how long we have, uh, this room.

369. 1:16:11

     Um, so before I turn it over to, uh, the chairman to begin his, uh, presentation, uh, it's 12:03, and I'm gonna say we're gonna do, uh, maybe 15 minutes for the author, if that. Uh, 15, uh, for the bill, 15 against the bill, um, and then we'll have 15 for the committee, and questions just kinda, kinda built into that, uh, 'cause we've gotta, gotta be outta here, uh, pretty quick, and there are already other meetings going, and I'm losing, uh, members, um, already.

370. 1:16:41

     So, uh, that's gonna be our, uh, process going forward, so I hope that everybody in the committee room will, uh, be conscious of that. And, uh, as you speak, when you speak, um, we may try to, uh... If you take up more time, then, uh, you're taking up somebody else's time. So I would hope that maybe, um, people can consolidate, because we actually have, uh, 18 in against and, uh, we have 11 signed up for the bill. So, uh, with that being said, uh, Mr. Chairman, I'll turn it over to you.

371. 1:17:11

     Thank you, Chairman and members of the committee. Uh, I bring before you Senate Bill 568. I am working off of a committee substitute, which is LC 474134S. Uh, for those people here in the audience, I will highlight what we have added to the committee substitute. We have only touched, uh, a portion of Section 12 and some of Section 14 of the bill, so the bulk of the bill remains the same as it's been available online since it was dropped. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. I would like to remind the members of the committee of where we stand right now.

372. 1:17:42

     We are on a collision course as it relates to how we vote in Georgia elections with a bill that passed out a couple of years ago, Senate Bill 189, which states that QR codes are no longer to be used in Georgia elections, beginning with the Georgia general election this November. And part of the reason for that, uh, the, at least part of the reason why I voted in favor of that bill, comes back to the June 3rd, 2022, so the three-and-a-half-year-old n- uh, now report from the Cybersecurity Infras- Infrastructure Security Agency, which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security, which outlined nine known vulnerabilities in software version 5.5a that we are still currently using.

373. 1:18:28

     This software version was certified in 2018, and it was, it's been used in Georgia statewide ever since we implemented these Dominion voting machines. We are the only state in the union that uses Dominion voting machines statewide. We're the only state in the union using this compromised version, 5.5a, statewide. This has a number of vulnerabilities listed here, every- everything from improper verification of cryptographic signature, hidden vulnera- uh, hidden functionality in CDE-192, incorrect privilege assignment, or, or, uh, origin validation errors.

374. 1:19:06

     And the very first recommendation from the Department of Homeland Security via CISA here is to, quote, "Contact Dominion Voting Systems to determine which software and/or firmware updates need to be applied." And the state of Georgia has not applied any software or firmware updates. The state of Georgia does not have a plan to provide any software or firmware updates. And the state of Georgia, as we heard in the appropriations hearings just a couple of weeks ago, has no plan as to how we're going to comply with Senate Bill 189.

375. 1:19:41

     This bill will move us in the direction of complying with Senate Bill 189, and it provides a path forward to do it. In short, it will move Georgians to voting in a system and tabulating votes the same way that Florida does. We will vote on a hand-marked paper ballot. Those hand-marked paper ballot votes will be tabulated, and hopefully, we will be able to accurately and correctly post our results just as quickly as Florida does, which is often before, um, anybody goes to bed.

376. 1:20:12

     I will walk you through the 14 sections of this bill and provide a little bit of c- commentary, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to, um, do that quickly so that we can get to the committee discussion. First and foremost, Section 1 just makes a completed eligible voter list available. Uh, Section 2 puts some teeth in place for the voter eligibility registration ch- uh, voter registration eligibility chal- challenges. We do the same thing for the voter list challenges in Section 3.

377. 1:20:43

     As we know, b- we know a couple of things from the state election board. First and foremost, uh, we know that illegal citizens... Sorry, illegal aliens. There's no such thing as an illegal citizen. Illegal aliens have successfully registered to vote in the state of Georgia in violation of Georgia law. We know from the Fair Fight case in which Fair Fight sued Derek Somerville, um- And Mark Davis and a couple other individuals, that there were tens of thousands of people who were sent an absentee ballot request form in 2020 that were living out of state and had filed a cert- a national COA form.

378. 1:21:22

     We know from current monitoring of voter registration lists that there are thousands of people currently illegally registered to vote, vote in Fulton County, and I'm sure that that's the case in other counties. But I've looked most closely at Fulton County, and we know that there are thousands of people illu- illegally registered to vote using UPS stores, abandoned buildings, parking lots, uh, homeless shelters that have not been open for almost a decade. And we have to have teeth in our voter roll maintenance and, and, uh, cleanup so that we clean up our voting rolls, and that's what section two and three do.

379. 1:21:59

     Section four moves us to paper ballots. I will state that one thing I've, uh, and would put forward for a change to the committee, um, is on lines 55 through 57 with the infrared detection, and we probably need to change language there to make it so that it's only turned on on those scanners that have it. In this very room a couple of years ago, the secretary's staff testified that despite being capable, the scanners being capable of detecting counterfeit ballots, we in Georgia have never turned on that feature.

380. 1:22:34

     We have kept it turned off because of some sort of esoteric concern about humidity that has never been tested or validated, but that somebody says is a potential concern, and we are not currently testing that. So that language was put in to essentially turn that feature on. Um, but some scanners may not have that feature, so we probably wanna clarify that there. Section five just moves us to away from the option of clear or colored paper material being used and moves us towards a white, uh, colored ballot. Uh, section six draws a straight-- a, a unique line on the ballot to the voter selection, and it also serializes ballots.

381. 1:23:11

     I think we probably need to add batch to serialization to the language there just to clarify that. Uh, section seven provides timing marks to essentially ensure that we have scanners, that the scanners are able to use timing marks, uh, for their scanning. Section eight, uh, essentially moves to equipment uniformity for absentee ballots. Section nine moves us to assigned voting ear- advanced voting locations. There's been some heartburn expressed about this. I wanna explain the reason why we're doing this.

382. 1:23:43

     Uh, it reduces the permutations of pre-printed ballots. So if you can-- In my county, for example, we have four advanced vot- voting locations, and I vote at the same one every time. I can-- I have the option under current law to drive 30 minutes across town and vote at a different early voting location. Once we move to pre-printed paper ballots, unless we have assigned early voting locations, that location that is 30 minutes away from me will be required to have ballots available for me, even though in all likelihood, I'm probably not going to vote there.

383. 1:24:17

     Um, so that was the intention of section nine. Uh, section ten, uh, requires a list of people who voted as publicly available. I would suggest-- Section ten, I actually was part of the original authoring of this, and this was done with an eye towards establishing a denominator of voter types by midnight, uh, 'cause nobody likes going to bed at midnight and seeing a, an election, uh, outcome that appears to be something different than you woke up in the morning. And what we did in Senate Bill 202, and what is now section ten, is we essentially established the denominator.

384. 1:24:51

     Here's how many people voted absentee in person, absentee by mail, and election day in person. But the problem with the language as it was written in Senate Bill 202 is it re- it just has the counties posting that on their-- on a, quote, "prominent public place." I think that actually should be the secretary of state's website, so that when Georgians go to bed at ten o'clock at night, well, it would be, actually be midnight under the bill. But when Georgians go to bed at midnight, they can look and see how many votes are outstanding and have yet to be counted.

385. 1:25:22

     We can then see that number change. As the votes come in, you would know essentially how many votes are still outstanding. Uh, section 11 is just some cleanup language put in there by leg council. Section 12, uh, security validation and logs, uh, made available to the public, and we did make a change here, um, making th- the digital ballot images available for free since that's just an electronic file. That was the change in the, uh, in the substitute, as well as making that available within 30 days.

386. 1:25:53

     Um, and then section 13 moves our current recount threshold from half a percent to two percent. And then section 14 moves the RLA to a manual audit and moves the audit out of the state election board. Uh, the changes that we made here in the committee sub, that those of you that have not seen it, uh, have not had the chance to see yet, we struck lines 359 to 367, which essentially has this, uh, language that currently allows the picking of two contests. We struck that, and we made this section-- Uh, we prescribed that it applies to all federal races and all statewide constitutional offices for the state of Georgia.

387. 1:26:32

     The last thing that we did, uh, in the committee sub on line 383 is we allowed poll watcher access to, uh, the process there, um, when the audit is happening. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to answer questions or get out of the way and just come back and respond to any of the, uh, commentary and answer questions to close.

388. 1:26:53

     All right. Good job. Mr. Chairman, any questions for the author of the bill?

389. 1:26:59

     Senator Sims isn't coming back?

390. 1:27:00

     Yeah, he'll be back shortly. Hold on. Do you have a question? I saw one light blink. Okay. All right.

391. 1:27:08

     Thank you.

392. 1:27:09

     Sure.

393. 1:27:09

     Um, I just had a question about the, um, improper registrations that you were describing. How many claint- complaints have been filed with the State Election Board regarding improper registrations and those persons actually voting, and what was the result of those complaints?

394. 1:27:24

     Well, I would remind you that those complaints actually get referred by the secretary of state. Um, and the process is to go to the secretary, I believe, and then for referrals to go to the State Election Board. Um, in the, in the... I can refer to the lawsuit, uh, 'cause that's the one that I know the data, uh, better on, where there were 39,000, um, and 84% of those 39,000, so whatever the math is on that, 32,000 or so, either have verified themselves that they indeed had moved, or they have registered to vote somewhere else.

395. 1:27:55

     Um, on the illegal voters who have registered, this was actually the first case I've personally heard of. I believe in one county it was 11, and I believe in one county it was three. Um, and I, like you I'm sure, want to figure out exactly how that happened. I don't yet have clarity on exactly how those illegal aliens were able to, to register to vote in Georgia.

396. 1:28:14

     So, so nothing has been filed with the State Election Board as far as, like, a formal complaint? 'Cause they do that. They, they actually hear the formal complaints about these particular issues, and they make a decision, and they send, either refer it to the attorney general, they refer it to the secretary of state. They do different things with it, so I'm just trying to get a, a number on, on that.

397. 1:28:32

     I think you just said they, they're not, um, have not been filed with the State Election Board. The ones I referenced to you were just not only filed with the State Election Board, but in last month's meeting were adjudicated by the State Election Board.

398. 1:28:43

     And so what was the result of that?

399. 1:28:45

     I- I'm sorry?

400. 1:28:45

     What was the result of that adjudication?

401. 1:28:47

     Uh, the result of that was the county confirmed that 11 individuals had registered to vote that are, uh, currently illegal aliens living within those counties

402. 1:28:55

     And what was that number again?

403. 1:28:56

     11 was one county and three was the other county.

404. 1:28:59

     Okay. 11 individuals.

405. 1:29:00

     On the, on the... Excuse me, ma'am, I'm talking to the senator.

406. 1:29:03

     Yeah.

407. 1:29:03

     On the, um, the Fairfight Somerville Davis case, that was 39,000. Now, that's not illegal aliens registering to vote. That is people moving and having a long tail of when they were essentially not removed from the voter roll. So those are two separate issues.

408. 1:29:22

     Right.

409. 1:29:22

     Um, but what we're getting to here is more a case of the voter challenges, and the voter challenges would fall more into the case of the 39,000 because that's exactly what the Somerville and Davis case was. That were, those were voter challenges that were filed after the 2020 election in Fulton County. And that's the, the, what we want to ensure, that there's some sort of teeth that once someone is, is identified as no longer being eligible to vote, either in the state of Georgia or in that county, that there is some impetus to get them off of the voter rolls.

410. 1:29:57

     Chairman Harman.

411. 1:29:59

     Thank you. Excellent present- presentation, thank you. Am I correct that the software on the Dominion machines have not been updated since 2018?

412. 1:30:09

     So Dominion version 5.5a was certified in 2018, which means that I'm guessing it was probably written in 2017. Subsequent to that, 5.5d has been certified by the Federal Election Commission, 5.17 has been certified by the Federal Election Commission and deployed in other states, and most recently version 5.20 has been certified and deployed for use in other states. And I would remind you, there is no other state that is using Dominion machines statewide. There are municipalities in these other states that are using what is now Liberty, but the, what, we'll just use it, we'll just call it Dominion for the, for simplicity here, that is using that, um, statewide.

413. 1:30:48

     Uh, uh, again, we c- it, it's, we've had a number of conversations since-

414. 1:30:53

     Mm-hmm

415. 1:30:53

     ... June of 2022. The current path is for us to vote on machines both in May and November. That at that point in time, not only have the... The vulnerabilities have always been there, but now they've been enumerated.

416. 1:31:11

     Yep.

417. 1:31:12

     So everyone in the world knows what these vulnerabilities are. Bad actors know what these vulnerabilities are. And we have done nothing to get off of 5.5a and move towards at least a system that does not have vulnerabilities that are sitting on the internet, and of which, by the way, the source code is not sitting on the internet, because due to the Coffee County leak-

418. 1:31:37

     Yep

419. 1:31:37

     ... not only are these vulnerabilities available, but the entire source code is available.

420. 1:31:42

     In a, in a business situation, this is recklessness, and no one would even allow, uh, insurance or anybody to be insured that did not keep up their security as far as software. And this is something, in my opinion, needs to be addressed. And I do not understand why the secretary of state has not moved forward in that area. I'm sorry. Thank you.

421. 1:32:02

     Chairman, uh, Burns.

422. 1:32:04

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the author for the bill. Um, is it not true that this is a discussion that we began in February of '23 with Senate Bill 189?

423. 1:32:16

     That is correct.

424. 1:32:17

     And wasn't that bill to eliminate QR codes so that each elector could see their, their vote at, in a plain and simple way?

425. 1:32:26

     That is correct.

426. 1:32:27

     And, uh, you, you pointed out that the state has not offered any, um, any resolution to Georgia Law, Georgia Law 697 that the governor signed in May of '24. Is that not true?

427. 1:32:42

     Uh, uh, by the state, I would say those who are in charge of our elections. I would say the governor and the general assembly have effect- have attempted to lay a, a solution to these problems, uh, but the implementation has been lacking.

428. 1:32:54

     Correct. And, and I think that the challenge is that the current secretary of state has made no attempt to comply with Georgia law, even after he negotiated the May 1st, 2026, um, uh, actually July 1st, 2026 deadline for implementation. Is that not true?

429. 1:33:10

     I believe that's an accurate statement, yes.

430. 1:33:11

     And I, I don't recall the secretary of state ever coming to an appropriations meeting and requesting funding to comply with Georgia law, even though I'm on appropriations, as you are the vice chairman. Is that not true?

431. 1:33:22

     I believe there actually was a, an appropriation discussion last year. Um, the solution was to spend 60 million more dollars on new printers Um, you know, part of the frustration for me has not only been with the cost to update the software, which I believe was another appropriation request last year. And I'm going off of memory here, but I believe that was a $15 or $16 million request, uh, to update software.

432. 1:33:48

     So no, no viable, uh, um, proposal from the Secretary of State to address Georgia law that I've seen. Can you, can you enlighten me?

433. 1:33:57

     I ha- I have, I would say apart from that appropriations request, and I do, I do not believe there is one in the governor's budget, I'm not privy to the secretary's conversation with the governor's team during the appropriations process. For this session, all that I can tell you is that in the appropriations process this year, uh, there was nothing in, in the budget that was put before us that had anything to comply with 189.

434. 1:34:16

     Um, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your input, and I look forward to supporting 568.

435. 1:34:22

     All right. Senator Orrock.

436. 1:34:26

     Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, to the author, uh, I had, uh, um, two or three questions. Uh, focusing on this changing the recount threshold and, uh, hand recounts, is there any other state in the union other than Nebraska that, uh, has that 2% threshold?

437. 1:34:48

     No, I know that 1% is a very common number, um, um, certainly a more common number than 2%. And if the wisdom of the committee is to move to 1%, um, that's an area that I think that certainly, um, reasonable minds can have different opinions on that, on that number.

438. 1:35:05

     Well, what type of analysis was done to, to come, to arrive at this number? Because, uh, how many, how many races, uh, with a 2% difference would be overturned in a typical recount?

439. 1:35:18

     Uh, well, if there's a, if there's a race that's overturned in a recount, then it's-

440. 1:35:22

     Yeah

441. 1:35:22

     ... then it certainly shows that we hit the right number. Um-

442. 1:35:25

     Uh, well-

443. 1:35:25

     But-

444. 1:35:26

     That doesn't, that, that's not happening now.

445. 1:35:29

     I'm not sure what you mean by that statement.

446. 1:35:30

     We're, uh, we're not at a 2% recount rate.

447. 1:35:33

     Yes, ma'am. But if we were to discover in a recount that a race needed to be overturned, then I would say whatever threshold we use was the appropriate threshold.

448. 1:35:40

     All right.

449. 1:35:41

     Are you aware that, uh, the data is, is, uh, widely known and widespread that error rates for hand recounts of ballots are higher than when relying on tabulation machines?

450. 1:35:58

     Um, I, I, what, can you, can you state the question again, ma'am?

451. 1:36:02

     I was just talking about the error ra- asking you about the error rate, comparing error rates for hand recounts of ballots as error rates on tabulation machines.

452. 1:36:13

     Senator, I'm not familiar with the stated error rate. If you have a study you would like me to look up, I can. What I can tell you is that in the re- the only statewide recount that I know of, um, that we, where we really went through this process, that there were 3,930 double-scanned ballots in Fulton County alone. I know that there were thousands of missing ballot images, um, in the November 2020 election in Fulton County, and that the recount that was done in Fulton County was a sham.

453. 1:36:39

     All right.

454. 1:36:40

     Uh-

455. 1:36:40

     Let's, we need to keep, we need to keep moving. Uh, Senator Jackson.

456. 1:36:43

     I just want-

457. 1:36:43

     Let's get to everybody else.

458. 1:36:45

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, just a, a few questions. One I want to talk about, you explained, um, the rationale for, uh, um, why you were cutting back on the number of early advanced voting sites, stating that it would be too many pre-printed ballots, um, to... But are you-- So in your county, I believe you have four early voting locations.

459. 1:37:04

     That's correct. Yes, ma'am.

460. 1:37:05

     Are you aware that in Fulton County we have 43 early voting locations?

461. 1:37:09

     I knew it was around 40. Yes, ma'am.

462. 1:37:11

     Right. And so what you would do if we were to enact this bill as it's written, you would eliminate those sites, 43 locations, forcing Fulton County residents to have to go miles, because Fulton is super long. Um-

463. 1:37:26

     Senator, what we would do is we would k- we would allow a local mu- municipality to have as many early voting locations as they would like to have. We would have an assignment to an early voting location just like you are currently assigned to your election day voting precinct. And what that would allow for Fulton County, if they decide to keep the 43 advanced voting locations, is it would allow those 43 locations to only stock the ballots for the ba- for the voters who are assigned to vote there early, as opposed to if we were to implement hand-marked paper ballots, which I know is a, something that has bipartisan support, um, that you would, under current law, we would be required to vo- to stock every permutation of every ballot.

464. 1:38:07

     And in the conversation I had with Gavrio on Friday, um, one, one individual, I forget what county this individual f- was from, was stating something, uh, hundreds of, of possible permutations. So this is an, this is an attempt to get us to a viable s- uh, solution where we're using hand-marked paper ballots, but we're also not having to print millions and millions and millions of ballots, um, that would never get used.

465. 1:38:31

     Right. I, I understand your, your goal here, but my concern is that this is going to grossly limit the locations in which people can vote early, given that we have over 70 per- like, most early, most people are now early voting. Over 71% of people voted early, um, in this last previous election. And so I'm gravely concerned about that. We've had other bills that have talked about on-demand, uh, ballot printers as opposed to having to pre-print all of these. I, I have grave concerns about limiting the number of early vo- voting locations. Um, but I'll go to my next question.

466. 1:39:02

     I would like to talk about the fines that you have, um, in Section 2 and 3 of your bill.

467. 1:39:07

     Mm-hmm.

468. 1:39:08

     Um, so it seems to me that you're imposing $10,000 fine per registration for one that's not properly removed. That's my understanding. Um, th- those fines would be levied against a county, which would be levied upon the taxpayers. Is that not correct?

469. 1:39:27

     Oh, that is correct, yes.

470. 1:39:28

     So the burden that you would be placing i- if one registration is, is missed, that's $10,000. But it's per registration, so let's say a county, I'll take my own beloved county of DeKalb County, um, if we inadvertently did not remove within the timeline that you have 100 registrations, because people move a lot in DeKalb County, you're imposing on the taxpayers Hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Is that not correct?

471. 1:39:55

     This would be if, if ... Yes, that is correct, but I would like to clarif- clarify what we're actually doing here. This would be after the adjudication process. This would not just be if there's somebody that is a voter who has moved, um, that has not been removed from the voter rolls. That does not trigger the fine. What triggers the fine is a voter challenge, a hearing, and then there's ultimately a p- an appeal option before a superior court as well. If there's failure to comply with the provisions of that code section at the end of all of that, that's when the fines would be envisioned under this code section.

472. 1:40:27

     Right. But under this code section, these fines are levied against the county taxpayers. It's you, it's you and I. It's just regular people who have to pay these really high fines, and so I have grave concern about that. And then on the flip side, there are no fines if you unlawfully remove an eligible voter from the roll. So are you not, in some ways, incentivizing counties to over-purge their lists, lest they be fined $10,000? Um, because there's no, there's no fine for getting rid of a perfectly eligible voter, but if you keep them on a little too long after the adjudication process, you're talking about tens and tens of thousands of dollars on our counties, which pay for our schools and our jails.

473. 1:41:06

     So I'm just gravely concerned about this. I think this is an unnecessary burden on our counties that, um, ultimately, it's really on us as taxpayers.

474. 1:41:17

     Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to my good friend, the gentleman from Forsyth County. Uh, my question is, uh, relates to, uh, general appropriations, uh, regarding the implementation of all of this. Uh, as, um, you know my posture, we've got folks that wanna end property taxes and folks that want to end income taxes. Uh, when we talk about how this will be funded, uh, who will shoulder the burden of implementation of all these things? Will, uh, the state, uh, appropriate monies for counties to have, or will counties have to, um, uh, get it out of the mud, as we say in the southern part of the state?

475. 1:41:59

     Thank you for the question, Senator. I would point you to line 62 in the bill. The state shall furnish a uniform voting system. And so very similar to the way that we spent over $100 million purchasing our current equipment, in, in a similar way that we, uh, have, were asked to, to furnish millions of dollars to update that equipment previously, which I was m- answered, uh, Senator Burns. Uh, that's what we would envision doing here as well.

476. 1:42:22

     And, uh, further questions. So when we define a uniform system, is, are there any definitions to what a uniform system would be? Does that include all of the technology, all of the training? What defines uniform system? 'Cause you can buy a, a software system and every county will have to use said software system, but does that come with everything else it takes to, to implement that?

477. 1:42:45

     So a- as you can see there, Senator, the, the language, uh, uniform voting system is, is an existing code. And I know that for the procurement process for our existing equipment, there was, part of that budget was for training. Um, so I would envision the same thing happening in the procurement of the w- the new system. Whether it's this new system, uh, if this bill passes or the, whatever the next new system would be, I w- I would assume it'd be the same process there.

478. 1:43:12

     Minority Leader.

479. 1:43:14

     One more, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I was piggyback on what a senator asked about the, um, mon- money or appropriations made. As far as the advanced voting is concerned, once you decide that you're gonna have more than one advanced voting location, you would, you'd have to open up every precinct. Is that correct? Because you have to have, because you said the person can only go to the precinct where they can vote at.

480. 1:43:36

     Uh, Senator, I, i- if I understand your s- your question correctly, if a county currently has one early voting location and they wanted to open a second, the only thing that would be qu- re- be required under this bill, and it would not change anything for day-of voting, it would only be for advanced voting, would be to assign then the voters to one of those two locations. That would be the only change that we require under this bill. Is that, uh, if I'm answering your question correct, I, I hope I am.

481. 1:44:01

     So the voters would have to be assigned now to an advanced voting location?

482. 1:44:06

     That's, that's section nine of the bill, senator.

483. 1:44:07

     But it would have to be within their voting precinct, correct? Or no?

484. 1:44:10

     Uh, no, sir. It would ... I'm, I'm not sure there's ... So, uh, again, to use my county as an example, um, my early voting location is not in the voting precinct-

485. 1:44:21

     That's right. Yeah

486. 1:44:21

     ... of everyone that votes at, at, what would be assigned to my early voting location, because we only have four. And we have well, well over four actual voting precincts.

487. 1:44:31

     So the voter could still go to any ... So what the senator asked about the 43, those 43 would still be viable in Fulton County?

488. 1:44:37

     Those 43 would still be viable, but what would change under this bill, Senator, would be that instead of being able to go vote at any of the 43 under current law, you would be assigned an early voting location in the same way that you're assigned a precinct. So again, if you imagine a world in which, and we haven't done this in Georgia, but if you imagine a world in which we are pre-printing ballots, and there is technology available, as Senator Jackson mentioned, that is, uh, available for ballot, what's called ballot on-demand printing. There's some procurement concerns as to whether or not we could get that equipment in time. I would think that'd be a viable solution for future elections, um, and, and technology I do think that we should look at.

489. 1:45:13

     But r- as it is right now, we are going to have to pre-print ballots. And if you think about who you vote for, county commission, school board, uh, water, you know, the, the water conservation specialist or whatever that title is, there are people that you vote for that somebody that lives in the next neighborhood from you may not vote for because there's a line right there. If you can go vote at any of the 43 Fulton County locations, even though it might take you an hour and 20 minutes to get to one of them, under the current law where we implement pre, uh, printed, uh, ballots, you will have to have, uh, in the f- the, the southernmost tip of Fulton County, you will have to have pre-printed ballots that cover a city council election in Alpharetta, Georgia.

490. 1:45:57

     And we are trying to ensure that in the furthest southern area of, of South Fulton, they're not having to count election, uh, they're not having to, to stock ballots for Alpharetta and vice versa.

491. 1:46:07

     And how would the determination be made where you're gonna be assigned to? That was, how would, how would you envision that? How would those assignments be made?

492. 1:46:13

     I would assume it would be geographic by whichever early voting location is closest to someone's residence.

493. 1:46:19

     Okay. All right.

494. 1:46:21

     All right. Let's, uh, let's hear from the public. Um, maybe that'll help answer some more of these questions. Thank you, Chairman. If you'll sit to the side. All right, as I said earlier, we're gonna do, uh, 15 for and, uh, 15 against. Um, but I wanna first maybe hear from some of the folks that, that, uh, have to deal with, with some of the regulations on this. So I want... And we got two chairs up here. Um, I wanna go ahead and ask, uh, uh, State Elections Board to come up. Uh, Janice, uh, Johnson or James, I don't know which one of you want, but if one of you can come.

495. 1:46:53

     And then I wanna ask, uh, Brad Carver with the Georgia GOP to come sit beside her, and, and y'all be, uh, as brief as possible. And I just wanna remind everybody, the longer you talk, you're taking up other people's time, uh, that are for this bill or against this bill. Um, so, um, please, uh, come on down and be as quick as possible. If you agree with your seatmate up there, just, uh, if you will, just say, uh, "I second what they said, and, uh, we support the bill." Um, so thank y'all.

496. 1:47:24

     Well, thank you. Thanks for the invitation. Um, um, I was glad to hear this presentation, and, um, thank, uh, thank the good senator for a well- uh, crafted bill. Um, and, um, just let me speak to each of the sections, uh, quickly. Section one is a-

497. 1:47:45

     Yeah, tell everybody who you are.

498. 1:47:46

     Oh, I'm sorry. I'm, um, uh, Janice Johnson on the State Election Board. Thank you. Um, section one, uh, for electors list, that's just common sense, and I fully support that. Um, section three, uh, I would say that since 1993 and passage of NBRA, voter roll accuracy and currency has declined. Identification and use of ro- low propensity, ineligible, non-voting names are simply an invitation for election fraud. It has, um, become apparent that voter credit, vote history is not reliable, accurate, or trustworthy, so I would fully support, um, the improvements that are made with, um, accurate and current voter rolls as proposed.

499. 1:48:30

     Hand-marked paper ballots, um, will once again, if this is passed and implemented, will finally provide a legitimate, auditable paper ballot, uh, given that there are provisions for meaningful audits and prevention of ballot fraud by basic ballot accounting measures. Uh, as far as section nine, Fulton County is the outlier. It, uh, claims to have 44 early voting locations, while Gwinnett County has almost the same population, but has only 20 early voting locations.

500. 1:49:04

     Uh, uh, I think efficiencies could be implemented for Fulton County to decrease the number of early vo- voting locations and still be convenient for all the voters that live in Fulton County. The number of voters listed, of course, is also common sense. And, um, audits, um, change to, um, tabulation audits rather than risk limiting audits, which is simply a mathematical, um, uh, formula that is used, uh, for audits that are really used in a minority of states.

501. 1:49:35

     Uh, uh, um, traditional audits are the, the routine for most states. And thank you very much.

502. 1:49:44

     Mr. Chairman, Brad Carver on behalf of the Georgia Republican Party, the chairman of the, uh, Election Confidence Task Force, and I am here on behalf of Chairman Josh McKoon and our first vice chairman, Sally Grubbs. We fully support Senate Bill 568. We commend this, uh, this committee for the hard work they did last year in moving legislation over to the House, and we know there's lots of discussions between the House we, uh, and the Senate right now on how to implement, uh, uh, Senate Bill 189. We think this is the, the, pragmatically speaking, the best way to do this.

503. 1:50:17

     Uh, we think that, uh, the assignment of early vote locations to, uh, by precinct is exactly the, the thing to do. I just came back from a national conference and talked to many of, uh, fellow folks from across the country, and the, the, the truth of the matter with early voting is 90, over 90%, over 95% of people vote on the way to work or on the way home from work. Uh, there's a very, very small amount of people who would vote on a lunch break.

504. 1:50:48

     And at the end of the day, because of the practicality of trying to accomplish on-demand printing in all of those early vote locations, and I think Fulton County's a great example to use for this, the assignment by precinct to the early vote location is, pragmatically speaking, the best way to do this. And if you take into account the fact that we have 19 days of early voting, Saturday voting, and Sunday voting, uh, it is, it is possible during that early vote location or early vote period of time that you could go to the early vote location that is closest to your home.

505. 1:51:24

     If you're not working, then the most logical place for you to vote in an early vote location would be the one that is closest to your home. And so we commend the committee for coming up, or we commend the author, uh, for coming up with this solution as a best way, best way to do it. We also commend the author to help give some teeth to the issue of voter challenges- That are not, uh, uh, uh, uh, taking care of at the county level. We think that's extremely important.

506. 1:51:54

     You heard a lot of discussion last year in House Bill 397 in this committee with the, the members of this, and we had lots of questions about how to handle this. We believe the best way to do that would be to have an appellate authority in the state election board so that we have uniform application of how this works across our state. The truth is that there is currently a lot of people that are illegal voters that are on the voter rolls across these counties, and that needs to be addressed. The other thing that I learned from this national conference was that we're in the bottom 10 in the nation for our voter rolls.

507. 1:52:30

     That is an irre- That is a invulnerability to our system that needs to be addressed. Uh, we, we think failing that, going to the appellate system of having the state election board handling, at least putting some teeth into this as the author has done here, is a good way to do. And the final thing I'll say is, again, we are in favor of transparency. So the fact that you have a numbered list of eligible voters on the first day of early voting is something that we see across the state as a pr- uh, across the country as a best, uh, practice, and so we commend the author for requiring it in this legislation.

508. 1:53:06

     Uh, at the end of the day, if we have transparent elections that everyone can trust, that is exactly what the Georgia Republican Party supports. We appreciate the time here, Mr. Chairman. Without ... I know there's a lot of other people who wanna speak, uh, but we urge you to move this bill forward, get it to the floor, and pass it out of the Senate. Thank you very much.

509. 1:53:25

     One quick question. Mr. Mallow.

510. 1:53:27

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a quick question. Uh, you all have detailed notes. Um, when did you all receive a copy of this bill?

511. 1:53:36

     Uh, it was introduced last week.

512. 1:53:39

     That's all.

513. 1:53:39

     So I got, I, I, I got the copy when it was introduced.

514. 1:53:42

     Got the copy when it was introduced, okay. All right. Well-

515. 1:53:45

     All right. Let's, let's get, we got some more speakers lined up, if y'all would. All right, the next two on our list, uh, as everybody signed up, would be, uh, David Cross and Carl Ferguson. Uh, again, to have a, have a seat, and, uh, if you agree with your seatmate, just, uh, say so 'cause we have, uh, eight minutes, uh, left to hear from people f- in support. So please be brief.

516. 1:54:09

     Yes, sir. Thank you. My name's David Cross. I'm from Suwannee, Georgia, and I'm one of the many people who've h- who, here who've been pointing out the glaring flaws in our election system for the last five years. I rise today in support of the Senate Bill 568. I'm here today to remind everyone on the panel that experts throughout the world agree that machines cannot be trusted to tabulate votes. The question of on-hand count accuracy, uh, cannot overlook the fact that civilized nations use hand-marked, human-counted paper ballots.

517. 1:54:43

     For instance, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, Ghana, Aust- Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, the UK, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the list goes on. Not one civilized nation on Earth uses tabulators to count votes. Not one. Only banana republics use machines, and the machines that we use in Georgia trace their software roots back to the corrupt banana republic of Venezuela. The insecure machines we use today don't even have the secure ballot detector activated, meaning you can s- photocopy a ballot, and the system will not catch it.

518. 1:55:22

     This bill will help secure your vote also from malware that has been demonstrated to flip a vote before the image is tabulated and stored. It can happen in 20 milliseconds. Georgia is better than a banana republic with rigged elections that undermine democracy and freedom. Georgians deserve secure, fair, trusted elections. Thank you.

519. 1:55:43

     All right. Tell us who you are and be brief.

520. 1:55:45

     Hi, I'm Earl Ferguson. And in the last several years, I have challenged about 4,000, uh, in- eligible voters in Fulton County. None of those have been approved by the board. I'd like to talk a little bit about why, and before I say that, I'd just like, please pass, uh, this bill as it is, and we've, we've got a couple of things we'd like to get done later. Uh, but, uh, here's what Fulton County has done. They have usurped, uh, the, uh, Georgia law by taking, uh, an inappropriate section which says you can't take somebody off of, uh, can't take, removing an, uh, inactive voter for two s- w- two, uh, federal election cycles, and that, so they don't allow us to challenge inactive voters.

521. 1:56:32

     The second one is really a lot more important. The secretary of state has a, a bulletin out which says that, uh, voters cannot be removed by t- the state for two federal election cycles. That's, it's supposedly based on the NVRA, and it is a misinterpretation. The NVRA has two procedures for removing in- out- inadequate or ineligible voters, and they only picked on the one that does not deal with what we do.

522. 1:57:12

     For the record, we need to be able to use NVRA Section 8, uh, Subparagraph C, and the NV- and the state has, uh, uh, eliminated the use of that, uh, NVRA Section 8, Paragraph D.

523. 1:57:30

     All right. We appreciate that. We're, we're, we're gonna keep moving here. Um, uh, Gail Lee, David Hancock, thank y'all for being here. Uh, again, please be as brief as possible. You're taking up other people's time, and, um, we're all hungry up here as well, so, um, just to add that in.

524. 1:57:52

     Um, Gail Lee, member of the DeKalb County, uh, Board of Registrations and Elections. Um, first of all, I want to thank the senators for bringing forth SB 568. It's a great start toward secure elections without causing, uh, major disruptions. Um, the, and as a board member, I appreciate your adding a monetary incentive for election boards to give more attention to removing ineligible electors from our voter rolls.

525. 1:58:24

     Uh, although I, I must say, as a board member, $10,000 per registration takes my breath away, but, um, I'll leave that up to you to decide. Um, it, normally these challenges come in batches of, say, 100 and, and often a decision is made in a batch, and so that, that could really make a, a lot of, um, uh, it's a lot of teeth.

526. 1:58:56

     All right. Try to, try to hurry up, please, ma'am.

527. 1:58:58

     Okay.

528. 1:58:58

     You're taking up other people's time.

529. 1:58:59

     All right. Basically, I say Do Pass.

530. 1:59:02

     All right, thank you. Next. That's what we needed. Okay.

531. 1:59:05

     Uh, David Hancock, chairman of Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections, former assistant poll manager, and also a member of Gavrio. Today, however, I'm just speaking on my own behalf. From an operational standpoint, the requirements of Senate Bill 568 would not be difficult to implement. The provisions that do require changes in our voting systems, it would require only minor adjustments to poll worker training. Um, I say it with confidence because last year, Gwinnett County, uh, created a committee to evaluate potential election changes that might be coming this year. We looked at everything, uh, even hand counting of, of ballots and this right here.

532. 1:59:37

     Some of the ideas we considered were, uh, uh, significant, uh, challenges, but the promp- the promp- provisions of this bill do not provide, uh, significant challenges. Uh, we've got about 10% of the voters in, uh, the state in Gwinnett County, and I think that, um, the, the, uh, us time saved with poll workers having to set up and maintain and manage, distribute, and take down, uh, election equipment would be saved, and we also may end up, uh, saving time, uh, with, uh, we get multiple voter sta- more voter stations than we can normally. So, um, from Gwinnett County's standpoint, just speaking, like, uh, from my knowledge but not of, on behalf of Gwinnett County, I think that this is a very workable bill, and I appreciate the work on, uh, Senator Zo- Dolezal and Gooch on getting this done, and I encourage you to pass it.

533. 2:00:20

     All right, thank you. Next. Who are you with? Uh-

534. 2:00:24

     I'm here on my own.

535. 2:00:25

     Okay.

536. 2:00:25

     Just I'm here on my own. I'm the chairman of Gwinnett County Board of Registration and Elections.

537. 2:00:30

     Are you a member of GAVRIO?

538. 2:00:31

     I am a member of Gavrio.

539. 2:00:33

     All right.

540. 2:00:34

     I'm not speaking for Gavrio, though they have... We disagree on a few points.

541. 2:00:37

     All right.

542. 2:00:37

     But, uh-

543. 2:00:38

     Next-

544. 2:00:38

     ... not all Gavrio members support that.

545. 2:00:40

     Next up, um, can we have a representative from the Frasiers and the Favoritos? We n- we don't have time to let everybody speak, so whoever, y'all can deal with that when you get home tonight, if you want to. Um, but come on down. We're, we're running out of time. Y'all may be our last two.

546. 2:00:57

     I'll, I'll go first while s- uh, Jason's getting set up. I just want to address Senator Orrock's question regarding the 2% of the vote. Uh, in DeKalb in 2022, uh, the electronic voting system declared the wrong winners, and that was only discovered because a, the candidate got no votes in her own precinct where she, uh, lived, and Senator Jackson's very familiar with this. Um, the only way we ever found out what the truth was was we did a hand count of the results.

547. 2:01:29

     In fact, we had people in the room that were here buy, for, and did the hand count of that race. The machine shorted the candidate 75% of her votes, and I just want to explain that there's never been a hand count in American history that had a 75% error, and that is why you need to hand count the results to ensure this unverifiable voting machine is actually counting correctly.

548. 2:01:58

     Jason.

549. 2:01:59

     All right, my name is Jason Frazier. I was nominated to be on the Fulton County Board of Elections, but as many of you know, Rob Pitts and the rest of the Board of Commissioners, uh, the Democrats on that board will not allow me to be seated. So first off, consider, you know, working on that so that way dually nominated individuals can be seated on the Board of Elections because without that, it doesn't matter what you put into law. If you don't have equal representation on these boards, it, it's irrelevant. But as far as this, uh, this particular bill, as it is written, I, I definitely agree. Absolutely pass it.

550. 2:02:29

     We'll work through the kinks. As far as the $10,000 penalty, that is absolutely necessary because I have challenged a multitude of bad registrations. A lot of them you've seen in these videos. I, I, uh, I gave those addresses out because nobody can fit in a UPS Store. However, there are thousands of people registered to vote in UPS Stores. I challenged those. Fulton County accepted the challenges. And yes, I submitted State Board of Elections complaints because they are still on there today after the challenge and still voting at those locations.

551. 2:03:00

     Thus, 229 and 230 challenges are a waste of life if there are no teeth to force the counties to actually follow through. So a $10,000 penalty I think is the least we can do, is force these counties to actually do their jobs and, and have clean voter rolls. I think you should even go one step further and say, "If there is a bad registration found, that should be a penalty," because nobody should be doing challenges if the county actually does the job in the beginning.

552. 2:03:27

     Right.

553. 2:03:27

     So thank you.

554. 2:03:28

     All right. Thank y'all. Appreciate you being here.

555. 2:03:30

     Well, thank you. Our wives out to dinner tonight.

556. 2:03:31

     Uh, yeah, yeah. Y'all probably both need to take your spouses to dinner tonight after that. I would.

557. 2:03:36

     Just check before you go.

558. 2:03:38

     Yeah. All right, just in time. All right, now we've got, uh, 15 minutes, uh, for against. And, uh, again, I wanna start with some of the folks to begin with that are deeply involved in this. Uh, so, uh, whoever's representing, uh, Gavrio, um, if y'all can't come down, Joseph and Tate, if y'all will, um, and we'll get started with y'all, and then we'll, we'll roll into our, our list. So

559. 2:04:06

     please tell everybody who you are and who you're with.

560. 2:04:09

     Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman. My name is Tate Fall. I'm a former election official here in Georgia. I also previously worked as an election official in the state of Virginia, and I also worked for the United States Election Assistance Commission. So I'm here to speak specifically to the hand-marked portion of this bill and kind of my experience working in a state that did do hand-marked paper ballots. So as the senator mentioned Florida, Florida is the same as Virginia, where they do do hand-marked paper ballots. An important thing to note when we look at the system there is that they do utilize ballot-on-demand printing in counties that need that type of number when they have that volume, and then they also have early voting or vote centers where you can vote anywhere within the county.

561. 2:04:49

     And so I completely understand the reasoning behind changing the early voting locations to where it'd be more geographically closer to your polling place. That way they can reduce the amount of ballots, paper ballots, that are at that site. However, when I spoke with my colleagues in other states, I'm not aware of any state that currently practices that, so that's-- it-- I think it would cause a lot of questions with our voters and cause a lot of confusion. Um, so that's something to consider. But when we look at the, the, the real reason of being able to utilize ballot-on-demand printing, it is because it would have a large volume of pre-printed ballots at these locations.

562. 2:05:24

     So in a county like Cobb, where I was the former director, even at Election Day precinct, I had a precinct with nine different ballot styles. Where in a primary when you have partisan, non-partisan, that's times three, which I don't typically do math in public, but you can do nine times three and figure out how many ballots is just in that one precinct. So when you multiply that across a county, it's astronomical. So even if we were-- u-understanding the restrictions with procurement with ballot-on-demand printing in this timeframe, if we were to look at having pre-printed ballots, either countywide or even in a geographical area, we're still talking thousands, tens of thousands of ballots in our large p- in our large counties.

563. 2:06:04

     And think about the poll workers and administering that and having to manage that and having all of those ballots just available to those poll workers. That's why ballot-on-demand printing is such a valuable system because you can trace back why that ballot was printed, what voter that ballot was printed for. When you do your closing numbers every night, you can match your scanner to your ballot-on-demand printer to your poll pads. So you know that all your numbers tie out at the end of the night. But because that system wouldn't be available under procurement or under a wide cast procurement, because I believe there may be only one vendor currently that could provide ballot-on-demand printers across the state by the time of this November election.

564. 2:06:44

     We believe as Gavrio, as election officials, that as this current state of implementing the ball-- without ballot-on-demand printing, that it would cause significant consequences and chaos for our election officials, our poll workers, and our voters. And I'm happy to answer any questions on the specifics of the hand-marked paper ballots, but I'll defer to my colleague here on the other portions of the bill.

565. 2:07:07

     Thank you very much. My name is Joseph Kirk. I'm the election supervisor from Bartow County. I'm also the current president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration Election Officials. Um, first, I need to apologize to y'all for not getting you our comments sooner and for not having more members here today. Today is the first day of qualifying. Been very busy getting ready for that, so, so I do apologize. Um, so just stepping through the, the bill very quickly, um, in section one, I think our, our main concern there is the idea of a completed list. Because of the way our, our voter registration laws work now, voters who go into a pending status for missing information, there's, there's a time period for citizenship verification.

566. 2:07:45

     Um, if they're postmarked before the deadline, we still have to process those. So we're constantly doing our job and doing list maintenance and, and processing these applications sometimes up to election day. So, um, we, we believe that this, this should be available to the public, but the current list rather than the completed list, there's not an, an, an idea that there's a static list at a point in time that's the only folks that could possibly vote in that election. Um, as far as two and three goes, um, that, that fine. Our main concern is that it, it is-- does have an opportunity for education.

567. 2:08:17

     I appreciate the author mentioning that. Um, but I'd also mention that many of us do want to be proactive, do want to make sure we have the cleanest list possible. Um, unfortunately, there are parts in NGRA that, um, make that harder, and we want-- we can only use the tools y'all give us. If we have more tools to be proactive with, we will be more proactive. Um, section four, Tate already covered. Section six about ballot serialization. I'm not familiar with what ballot serialization would be. I look forward to seeing that, but our main concern there is making sure people have a private ballot.

568. 2:08:51

     Um, in section nine, as far as assigning precincts to advance voting sites goes, after talking to my committee, um, we were very concerned that it would do more harm than good. And I have data with me about who chose to vote, say, at my office in the twenty twenty-four general election, and it's every precinct in my county, um, spread pretty-- not necessarily evenly. Some wait for lo-location closer to where they live or, or where they work, but it's not as simple as just where they live is where they vote.

569. 2:09:26

     Um-

570. 2:09:28

     One other thing there, if we are assigned, then we need to consider what happens when they show up at the wrong location. Same as Election Day, we have an out-of-precinct for that. For provisional balloting, we would need some solution for that to make sure folks, um, have make their voice heard. The, and one la- sorry, one last thought there. I ramp up locations over time, so I have one open the entire period, one opens up in the second week, two in the third week, um, just to b- be as cost-effective as possible. Um, it's worked well for us, but that would make advertising this very difficult. Um, in section 10, um, yes, the numbers of voters should be available.

571. 2:10:02

     We agree that should be available through the secretary of state's website. But unlike the no- the nominator information on election night where we're talking about how many ballots are left to count, so no one's surprised by the results changing by a certain margin, um, the names of who participated take a little bit longer to generate. And, um, w- the first thing we do after the election is turn the poll pads back on, they'll try poll books, make sure they've synchronized into the state system. So we'd ask that be, th- that that in fact be moved to the next business day, the day after the election, so we have time to upload and make that available through the secretary of state's website.

572. 2:10:34

     Um, in section 12, certification procedure's different from ha- for hand-counted ballots than optical scan voting system. So just adding in, um, optical scan voting system does not create a certification procedure for that. Um, I agree we need to look at that and work on it more, but it probably needs its own, own paragraph to address those issu- th- those procedures. Um, in section 13, a recount is not an audit, and an audit is not a recount. The easiest way to think about this is audits confirm results, recounts change results.

573. 2:11:06

     And that's why it's important to audit, do a hand audit to confirm the results. And if there's a problem, a- as the county council mentioned before, then we can move to a recount, and our current recount procedure is to test the equipment with ballots from the current election for that race and make sure they're counted accurately by hand. And if the system test passed that test, then we use that to scan ballots because that's the most accurate method. And I have data from my hand audits from over the years. I do a full recount of one race every single election, and there's always a small margin of error.

574. 2:11:40

     Um, we need to put additional steps in place to verify the accuracy f- for ha- doing a hand recount, and I actually think that DeKalb County is the perfect example of that system working because when they tested those ballots, they, the scanners did not read them properly, so then they moved to a hand recount, and that's how we got the results. But the process worked. Um, last but not least, section 14, th- what you're describing, a full hand count is not a risk-limiting audit, so I do suggest changing that name. You know, we can't redefine the term.

575. 2:12:11

     It's already recognized nationally. Um, but again, we-- I've been doing full hand counts for a single race for years. And in a big election, big general election, it takes me 12, 10 to 12 hours to do one race. So if we're looking at doing that many more races, we need to extend the certification period so we have time to do it.

576. 2:12:31

     Right.

577. 2:12:32

     Um, and there are more efficient ways to do that, um, either through technology or through other audits that are out there. But, um, that's everything in a nutshell. You have our comments in writing, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

578. 2:12:47

     I've got one question. Chairman Burns.

579. 2:12:49

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, and I appreciate, uh, both of you and your work over the years on elections, and I appreciate Gabriel. Um, w- would you be more comfortable with the legislation if ballot-on-demand printing were available?

580. 2:13:03

     I think the answer from both of us is yes, but that raises questions about how long, how we can pr- procure it, how fast we can get it.

581. 2:13:10

     We, we acknowledge that procurement is a challenge.

582. 2:13:12

     But-

583. 2:13:13

     And we, we, we also acknowledge that this is a challenge because we're this late hour. Is that not true?

584. 2:13:17

     Oh, absolutely. You know, we're w- we really can't start getting ready for another method of voting till after the June runoffs.

585. 2:13:24

     Correct.

586. 2:13:25

     And then we have to have it, whatever we're doing, in place by September to start training poll workers, training the public. You know, and I, I talked to a friend that's done a lot of work with hand-marked ballots, um, asking about, for example, second-chance voting. Right now, the BMDs guide you through the process. If you've missed a race, it warns you. You can't over vote. This will be a new workflow, whereas folks scan their ballots, th- they'll alert them if there's an issue. Um, and I was assured that really after the first election, it's not a problem. But, a- and so the next question was, well, if that election was the, the 2026 gubernatorial general election in Georgia.

587. 2:14:00

     Right. I, I, I agree.

588. 2:14:02

     So-

589. 2:14:02

     Uh, w- one final question if I may, Mr. Chairman.

590. 2:14:03

     Mm-hmm.

591. 2:14:04

     As, as we transition to the future-

592. 2:14:06

     Mm-hmm

593. 2:14:06

     ... as we transition to the future, and we recognize that November 26 is a challenge.

594. 2:14:11

     Absolutely.

595. 2:14:11

     But as we transition to the future, is it not prudent for us to begin to address the issue of hand-marked paper ballots and elimination of QR codes, and recognize in the interim we may have to deal with some, some, um, uh, control of pre-printed paper ballots?

596. 2:14:27

     I think that we're in a really delicate place right now where we don't wanna cut our nose to spite our face, right? Where we've worked so hard to build voter trust, and I think that you won't find an election official that's opposed to moving to hand-marked paper ballots in the State of Georgia. They all agree that that's what the voters want, that's what we want to be able to give them. But we can do this really, really well. There's other states that do this really well, Virginia, Florida. And I think starting off in such a chaotic place will cause ill will and tamp, kind of tamper what that could look like, whereas I understand the timeline we're against.

597. 2:15:04

     But if we could push somehow to next year, starting next year with a smaller election and giving election officials the time, because transitioning our poll workers from our current system to hand-marked paper ballots, it is a huge difference, and it is going to take a lot of extra training and a lot of extra resources on these offices. And I think we can be great at this, but that's going to take more time than what we currently have.

598. 2:15:28

     I, I appreciate that, and I just point out the fact that this bill was enacted in 2024, and the secretary of state has made no attempt to address this issue until this time, and he's still leaving it to the legislature. And, uh, we hope to get to the right place. I appreciate your input.

599. 2:15:42

     Thank you, sir.

600. 2:15:42

     Thank you, sir.

601. 2:15:43

     Thank you. Um, that's all the questions I've got. Thank y'all for being here.

602. 2:15:47

     Thank you.

603. 2:15:47

     And thank you for what you do. Um, all right. Here we go down the list. Uh, Rob Pitts, Betsy Shackleford, come on down. Uh, please remember to be brief. Um, they sent Saint, and let us know how you feel about this.

604. 2:16:02

     I'm a nine-year poll worker. Um, I was gonna detail many of the logistical challenges of this bill. This bill's a very bad bill for a lot of reasons, but as, um, previous speaker mentioned, the logistics are impossible. And I think every legislator who votes on bills that affect that process should have to serve as a poll worker to understand- ... the extent of the logistics involved. This time crunch, as the gentleman mentioned, is not necessary.

605. 2:16:36

     I am not in the business of pointing fingers at the secretary of state or whomever, but it is a false, um, falsely imposed timeframe due to the legislature and whomever else's dumbfounding lack of attention to SB 189, and people are now trying to save face by applying a Band-Aid. I will give you just some highlights. This is probably a year-long project, and I think maybe people have noticed that we have major primaries and probable run-offs that have to be administered and dealt with th- uh, in May and June, and we have an unusually important midterm election in November this year.

606. 2:17:23

     This is not the time to do a massive change in systems. As the previous, uh, speaker mentioned, next year w- would be a much more appropriate time to make gigantic changes to the voting systems. And I'll, I'll leave it at there so you can speak.

607. 2:17:41

     Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I'm Rob Pitts. I chair the Board of Commissioners of Fulton County, the largest county in the state of Georgia. And of the 3,000-plus counties in the United States of America, your Fulton County, Georgia is recognized as number four. Your Fulton County, Georgia.

608. 2:18:00

     Number four. Yeah.

609. 2:18:01

     And I'm here today to express my opposition to Senate Bill 568. I've been involved in a lot of elections. There's no perfect election. There was always the possibility of human error. There's always a possibility of mechanical failure. But in Fulton County, Georgia, we've made tremendous strides. Now, this is supposed to be a statewide bill, but all I've heard today is Fulton County, Fulton County- ... Fulton County, Fulton County.

610. 2:18:33

     This bill will make voting, early voting difficult and confusing for voters. More than half, probably 60%-plus of voters in Fulton County, Democrats and Republicans alike, cast their votes ahead of Election Day. So why do we want to make it more difficult for people to vote in Fulton County, Georgia?

611. 2:18:59

     Mm-hmm.

612. 2:18:59

     Worse, this bill compromises ballot secrecy, gives more power to the highly partisan State Election Board. And we also know, in closing, that this is election year, election season, and many will say and do anything that they can to criticize Fulton County for 10 minutes of fame on the 6:00 news. The author of this legislation has repeatedly called for the state takeover of Fulton County elections.

613. 2:19:34

     Mm-hmm.

614. 2:19:34

     His intent is clear. He wants to make it more difficult to vote in Fulton County. And let me be crystal clear. We in Fulton County, we're gonna fight every effort to take over elections in Fulton County with every legal resource that we have. So in closing, I respectfully request that you protect Georgians' right to vote and oppose this legislation. Thank you.

615. 2:20:01

     All right. Hold on. We got a question here. Uh, Mr. Wilk.

616. 2:20:04

     Chairman Pitts, uh, you and I have always gotten along really well, and-

617. 2:20:07

     Yes, sir

618. 2:20:07

     ... and I, I have a lot of respect for you. You just said this is an election year. So you d- or, is your testimony that the secretary of state is not paying attention and is not taking care of this so far because he's distracted by the upcoming election?

619. 2:20:18

     That's not my testimony.

620. 2:20:20

     Okay. I just wanted to be clear.

621. 2:20:22

     All right. Mr. Leader.

622. 2:20:24

     We're still friends.

623. 2:20:26

     Hold on just a minute.

624. 2:20:27

     Hey.

625. 2:20:27

     Leader.

626. 2:20:28

     And just to follow up on that, Mr. Chairman, thanks for being here today. I mean, is it not true it's not a blanket partisanship issue, that you wanna, you don't wanna sit a Republican member of the, of your own elections board?

627. 2:20:40

     Repeat that.

628. 2:20:41

     Is it not true that it is a partisan move that your Board of Commissioners does not wanna sit a Republican on the, on your election board?

629. 2:20:49

     That's not correct.

630. 2:20:50

     Oh, it's not?

631. 2:20:51

     No, it's not correct.

632. 2:20:51

     Oh, okay.

633. 2:20:53

     No. Thank you.

634. 2:20:54

     All right. Thank y'all. Um, next up we have, uh, Cindy Battles and, uh, Sandra Menez.

635. 2:21:04

     She, she had to leave.

636. 2:21:05

     She had to leave. Okay. Cindy, come on down, and, uh, Janet, join her. And we've got, uh, two minutes.

637. 2:21:13

     Oh my gosh.

638. 2:21:13

     Two minutes.

639. 2:21:14

     Okay.

640. 2:21:14

     Yes, so please be brief.

641. 2:21:16

     Okay. Um, hi, everyone. My name is Cindy Battles. I am the policy director with the People's Agenda. Um, three thing, quick things. Number one, um, budget-wise, I don't see a fiscal note or anything in here saying subject to appropriations. Section 8, I think you wanna ma- double-check in that statute because I think you're talking about DREs instead of BMDs. Um, that's code section 21-2-383. And then last but not least, um, as much as I would like to call this pen pink, it is gray.

642. 2:21:47

     Um, a risk limiting audit has a definition, and you can't redefine what an RLE is, and having the State Election Board choose which race, especially in these- Partisan conditions that we're currently in would be a bad move because it, it kind of implicates the nonpartisan random way that an audit, especially a risk limiting audit, is supposed to work.

643. 2:22:12

     All right. Tell us who you are.

644. 2:22:13

     Hi, my name's Janet Grant, and I am from DeKalb County, where I'm an area poll manager, and I wanna just really, um, reiterate what you heard from the Gavrio folks. Uh, my ask is that you not pass this bill and look at doing something like this next year, which I realize is kicking the can, but, um, from a, from a poll worker perspective, this is, this is significant change. And for instance, in DeKalb County, we just rolled out a wonderful online training system for our poll workers, and that would have to be completely changed, um, for this to be implemented in November.

645. 2:22:54

     So I ask that you, um, not pass th- this at this time. Thank you.

646. 2:22:58

     All right. Thank you. All right, we're, uh, we're out of time on, uh, those. Um, Senator, uh, Dolezal, Chairman Dolezal, do you wanna come back and address, uh, the committee on, on what's been said? And you may have a few more questions.

647. 2:23:20

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman, uh, members of the committee. Um, it's interesting. It does seem like we have some sort of agreement, uh, between both sides that we should do something, which I'm glad to hear. Um, I wish the folks that are telling us that we should just do this in 2027, though we're here in 2025, urging this committee to do that. Last year, I know the Senate passed a bill, uh, Senator Burns, you were the author of that bill, that, that was, at least in structure, moving us to hand-marked paper ballots, the same as this bill. I don't know how those folks spoke in favor or against the bill at that time.

648. 2:23:53

     Um, however, this, this is something that does not need to wait, and we have a voting system that we know is vulnerable to attack. We have a voting system that we know has changed the outcome of elections but for the audit process. We have a state law that requires us to change the process that we vote, and we have no plan of how to comply with that state law. Uh, on the voter challenges, I think it's important to just maybe grab a couple examples so we can talk about what we're actually talking about here.

649. 2:24:26

     And to me, on the voter challenges, there is no better example than the case of Gabriel Sterling, who is the former chief operating officer for the Secretary of State's office, who in the January runoff election went to his mailbox one day and got a piece of mail from Fair Fight, reminding an, an individual who had not lived at that address for a couple of years, reminding that individual to turn in their absentee ballot. Mr. Sterling then begun- began his own little investigation because he was a COO at the Secretary of State's office, and he realized that an individual who was living out of state had requested a ballot to vote in the 2020 election runoff.

650. 2:25:06

     Mr. Sterling then confirmed that that individual had voted in the November 2020 general election illegally. That individual's vote was scanned, re-scanned, and hand-counted, but it counted because it doesn't matter how often you recount and scan votes that should not be in the box. If they're in the box, they're going to get counted. Mr. Sterling then went to Fulton County, and he challenged the eligibility of that voter. That voter was disqualif- was, went through the process of removal, but not before, despite all of that evidence, one individual on the Fulton County Board of Election voted against the challenge.

651. 2:25:45

     So here you had Mr. Sterling, who had purchased a home from someone, had said, "This person's no longer living here. I bought a home from her two years ago. She's now living out of state." But one individual on the Fulton County Board of Election voted against removal. Now, despite the video evidence of that vote for removal, the certified minutes for that Fulton County Board of Election meeting states that it was a 5-0 vote. It was not a 5-0 vote. It was a 4-1 vote. Now, that individual who voted against the removal recognized that things were so bad in Fulton County that she voted for the removal of the Fulton County election supervisor.

652. 2:26:23

     So if we want to focus on Fulton County, I'm happy to do that. I believe I brought it up in the example of the voter challenges. But to have my friend, the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, come before here and talk about a highly partisan state election board when that board refuses to comply with their own rule and seat the Republican nominee to the Fulton County Election Board. They've been ordered to do so three times by a judge. They've been fined $10,000 a day, and they refuse to do it.

653. 2:26:56

     So what do you have? You have an unbalanced board in Fulton County. You've got the one independent, you've got two Democrats, and you've got one Republican. So we can go down that path if we want to, but I don't think that's a path that we want to go down. This bill does what I think everyone, at least on the committee that I've talked to, would like to do, which is to get to a hand-marked paper ballot. There are some provisions in the bill that I think that we can tweak as it goes through the process. I'm not telling you this is a perfect product. It is not. But this is an attempt in the circumstances that we are under, which is with the person in charge of com- complying with Senate Bill 189 refusing to comply with Senate Bill 189.

654. 2:27:34

     This tells him how he has to do that, and it puts into Georgia code how we will do that. Uh, with that, Mr. Pres- or Mr. President, I'm getting ahead of myself.

655. 2:27:44

     Please, please.

656. 2:27:45

     Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to answer any questions.

657. 2:27:47

     Hey, all right, here we go. Uh, Senator Orrock.

658. 2:27:52

     Thank you very much. Uh, uh, uh, Senator, you have no fiscal note for this bill, is that right?

659. 2:27:59

     That's correct, ma'am.

660. 2:28:00

     And, uh, there's no, uh, reference to any appropriation being needed in order to, uh, implement this bill, is that right?

661. 2:28:10

     That's correct, yes.

662. 2:28:11

     A- a- and so how do we move forward in the face of th- of that reality, uh, and that, that election boards all across the state, um, county, county boards ha- have been called on to do Herculean things in this tiny little, uh, timeframe. We hear from them that it is nigh unto impossible and leads potentially, and I don't see how you avoid it, to chaos. And that's not whether I'm for the whole bill or against the whole bill, it's just, uh, how can we proceed without, uh, investing money, uh, in this and without, uh, uh, uh, m- meeting the needs of the cost to, to, to the counties, uh-

663. 2:28:56

     Thank you for the question, Senator.

664. 2:28:57

     Mm-hmm.

665. 2:28:57

     I think it's a valid question.

666. 2:28:58

     Mm-hmm.

667. 2:28:59

     Uh, we have not voted yet on our budget for this upcoming fiscal year. You and I are both members of the Appropriations Committee.

668. 2:29:06

     Mm-hmm.

669. 2:29:06

     And I do think that is something the Appropriations Committee and the Senate should take a look at.

670. 2:29:10

     But there's no fiscal note. You, you didn't ask for a fiscal note request?

671. 2:29:13

     Uh, in the same way there was not a fiscal note when the first procurement process happened for these machines. It was something that went through a procurement process, um, and that the, essentially the appropriations process at that time served as the funding mechanism. Yes, ma'am.

672. 2:29:28

     All right. Senator Mallow, last question.

673. 2:29:31

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, to my good friend from Forsyth, when did you have this, uh, substitute, um, that we've referenced here in committee today?

674. 2:29:41

     Stewart, I think that you got the substitute to me on Friday, if my memory serves correct. Um, or maybe it was even y- over the weekend. I don't recall. Uh, but the changes of, for Section 12 and 14 were the last, the only last-minute additions that were made, uh, for the substitute.

675. 2:29:57

     And-

676. 2:29:57

     And Mr. Chairman, I believe I sent this to your staff last evening actually when I received this. I think that, uh, Mr. Morelli sent it to me yesterday afternoon, to be accurate. I can get you an exact answer to that when I look at my computer.

677. 2:30:07

     Thank you so much. Uh, uh, lastly, I think when I got the, uh, agenda, it was at 11:03. Uh, I'm a Baptist preacher. We were having communion yesterday. Um, by the time I get out of church, Senator, would you not agree, uh, that me getting a copy of an agenda of everything we're gonna vote on and not having all the components to study that, 'cause it's a four-hour drive for me back to Atlanta, uh, would you say that we should have, I should have more time so that I can un- understand how it affects my county in particular? Not necessarily, I, I don't represent the metro areas.

678. 2:30:37

     I represent Chatham County in its entirety. Uh, and I'm concerned about Chatham County. I'm not concerned about, uh, Fulton, Forsyth, Gwinnett Co- I, I'm not concerned about that. Would you not agree that I should have ample time to digest all this so that my own county can weigh in? 'Cause we can't just jump in a car and come to Atlanta, uh, as quick as folks in the other more metro areas. Would you not agree?

679. 2:30:57

     Senator, I do think that obviously every senator would, would, um, i- i- is within their rights to ex- to expect to be able to deliberate on the legislation that we pass. And as this moves through the process, I'd be happy to get with you and answer any questions you have.

680. 2:31:10

     All right. Uh, Mr. Chairman, I don't see any more questions, uh, at this time. I'd, uh, like to entertain a motion to move on this bill. Judge, is this the appropriate time? And now is the appropriate time. Move to do pass, Mr. Chair. We got a motion to do pass. Do I hear a second?

681. 2:31:28

     Second.

682. 2:31:29

     Got a motion and a second. Uh, any further discussion?

683. 2:31:34

     Chairman?

684. 2:31:35

     Yes, sir.

685. 2:31:35

     I have an amendment.

686. 2:31:38

     Okay.

687. 2:31:39

     If you would please, I'd like to amend Senate Bill 568, LC474134S on line 95 and 96.

688. 2:31:54

     A unique serialized ballot batch identifier. Insert the word batch between ballot and identifier in, and then after number, insert the words in batches of 100. So we'll have a batch identifier in batches of 100 to protect anonymity.

689. 2:32:19

     Any questions?

690. 2:32:21

     Uh-

691. 2:32:21

     And then on line 191. L- l- line 191, after the word and, strike post in a prominent public place and insert the term the Secretary shall post on their website, and it continues the following information.

692. 2:32:48

     And then following on line 199, strike the words time stamped and change the word a to an, so it'd be an enumerated list of electors. And then finally, Mr. Chairman, on line 310,

693. 2:33:11

     change the number 2 to the number 1. That concludes my amended request.

694. 2:33:19

     Second that.

695. 2:33:20

     Have a second?

696. 2:33:21

     Yeah.

697. 2:33:22

     Thank you.

698. 2:33:22

     All right.

699. 2:33:23

     Probably ought to do the other Senate bill.

700. 2:33:23

     Legis- Legislative Council, hold on. You were going pretty fast there.

701. 2:33:26

     Yep.

702. 2:33:26

     I think that's supposed to be on 307.

703. 2:33:29

     That's right.

704. 2:33:30

     You're changing references.

705. 2:33:31

     All right, then we need to change both-

706. 2:33:33

     One moment,

707. 2:33:35

     Mr. Chairman

708. 2:33:36

     ... 307. So on lines 307, change the number 2 to 1, and on line three-

709. 2:33:41

     24

710. 2:33:42

     ... 24, change the number o- to one, and then on line 310, change the number. In all cases where 2% is referenced, we will change that to 1%. Is that correct? Thank you.

711. 2:33:55

     Point of order, Mr. Chairman. In the spirit of when the, when the minority, uh, whip proposed an amendment, we, uh, was the chairman of judiciary at the state that we should have that amendment in writing. Uh, and so my point of order is, uh, in keeping with the spirit of this committee, shouldn't these amendments be in writing so we can understand the magnitude of what's being amended? Is that not true?

712. 2:34:15

     Well, I would say that we did not, uh, I, I do not know how many DAs we had, and we, we didn't have the answer to that question at that point in time, and we would have to, uh, determine how many that we have, uh, to make sure of that. And I think these are already, um ... And I guess we just need to make sure legislative council has it, as the author has stated. So we got a, a motion. Does everybody understand we got a motion, um, and a second on the bill, and we've got an amendment offered. Uh, we've got a motion and second, uh, on the amendment.

713. 2:34:48

     So we need to, uh, vote on the amendment. All those in favor of, uh, Senator B- uh, Burns' amendment, please say, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five, six. Got nine. Two. All those opposed? Opposed. Oh, one opposed. Did we get the count right? Let's double check. All right. All right. Hold on.

714. 2:35:18

     Are we finished with that? We got that? Okay. Um, you're recognized.

715. 2:35:23

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to move that we amend, uh, LC4714134S by on line six, striking the six and changing that to a seven, so July 1st, 2027 on line six. And then again on line 53, we would strike the six, changing it to a seven, making the effective da- making the date July 1st, 2027.

716. 2:35:52

     I believe I have the correct language and line, uh, in honor of the chairman of the judiciary committee, who so beautifully reprimanded me earlier. So

717. 2:36:04

     Did I miss one?

718. 2:36:05

     Are you sure that's the correct date? 'Cause I see 26 in there.

719. 2:36:09

     27. And then in section seven-

720. 2:36:11

     Line 102

721. 2:36:12

     ... line 102, we would make the same change, changing the n- number six to seven, making the effective date July 1st-

722. 2:36:21

     Okay. Stewart-

723. 2:36:23

     ... 2027.

724. 2:36:23

     Legislative council's weighing in that that one does need to be changed.

725. 2:36:25

     See, I got it right in the first read.

726. 2:36:27

     Line 102 does not need to be changed.

727. 2:36:29

     See, I had that one correct. So I'll repeat my motion for, uh, for the record. I'm moving that we, um, ed- amend this to on line six, changing the date from July 1st, 2026 to July 20- Ju- July 1st, 2027. On line 53, the same, striking the six, changing it to a seven to read July 1st, 2027. That is my amendment.

728. 2:36:53

     Second. I can follow that.

729. 2:36:55

     We got a motion and a second on that. Have we got a question to-

730. 2:36:59

     I'd like to just speak to the amendment, and I, I appreciate the, uh, the senator's recommendation, and I understand the challenge of implementation. I remind the committee we had this discussion two years ago. I remind the committee that it is time for us to take a position to re- eliminate QR codes and implement a hand-marked paper ballot. So I'll have to speak against the gentlelady's amendment.

731. 2:37:23

     May I respond? May I respond?

732. 2:37:24

     Yes.

733. 2:37:25

     Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I, I would also like to remind the committee that there's actually pretty good consensus around hand-marked paper ballots, but this bill is much more expansive, um, than just hand-marked paper ballots. It's requiring us to do a significant number of things. Mr. Chairman, I believe we, we actually, Mr. Chairman down here, um, we did support on-demand ballot printing. Um, and so it's not that we are opposed to this, this specific bill and this specific process. We've heard from experts that this is too soon. And so I am asking for us to change that.

734. 2:37:55

     To the point about the QR codes, what we make, we can change. We are the ones who made the state law saying that Q- QR codes needed to be ch- changed and removed by a certain amount of time. That means we can bring a bill and extend that date out if we cannot meet that deadline. We made the law. We can change the law. And so that's why I'm asking for this a- amendment, and I inv- I encourage you all to vote in favor of it.

735. 2:38:18

     All right. So we need to- Comments ... vote on the, uh, we'll call it the, uh, Jackson amendment. Um, so, uh, all those in favor of the, uh, Jackson amendment, please raise your hand.

736. 2:38:33

     One, two, three, four in favor. Uh, all those opposed of the Jackson amendment, one, two, eight opposed. The Jackson amendment fails, and now we are on to the original bill as amended by, uh, the Burns amendment. Uh, and let's, uh, vote on that measure, uh, as amended. Uh, all of those in favor, please raise your hand.

737. 2:39:05

     Eight in favor. All those opposed, please raise your hand. Four against. All right, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your hard work. This is, uh-

738. 2:39:15

     Thank you, Chair

739. 2:39:15

     ... definitely, uh, an, an issue that we've been working on for a long time. Um, thank you, committee, for your patience, and thank, thank you, uh, for being here. And I apologize this meeting went so long. Um, and thank you, public, for being here. We're adjourned.