Big changes to vote-by-mail in Georgia clear state House
The tri-state region is part of a broad initiative to protect regional forests to capture carbon and protect wildlife in Southern Appalachia.
ATLANTA — Republican state lawmakers took a major step Monday, March 1, toward overhauling voting by mail and other election procedures in Georgia with passage of an omnibus bill by the state House of Representatives along party lines.
Sponsored by Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, the 66-page bill contains more than two dozen provisions including proposals to impose stricter identification requirements on absentee voters, a change the state Senate approved last week (week of Feb. 21).
Fleming’s bill would scrap Georgia’s current signatureverification process for absentee ballots and force voters seeking mail-in ballots to provide the number on their driver’s license or state identification card, or photocopies of other valid ID forms.
Democratic lawmakers and voting-rights groups have condemned the tightened absentee voter ID rule, likening it to an attempt at voter suppression seeking to blunt Democrats’ momentum after the party flipped the presidency and both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats in the 2020 elections.
Republicans have argued the change is needed to shore up confidence in the state’s election system, which drew claims of fraud from former President Donald Trump after his loss to now-President Joe Biden by 11,779 votes in Georgia. Election officials and federal courts rejected all claims of widespread fraud.
Beyond absentee voting, Fleming’s bill would tweak rules for early voting on Sunday, instead requiring counties to pick either one Saturday or one Sunday ahead of Election Day for their precincts to be open.
It would also require absentee-ballot drop boxes to be located inside polling places or local elections officials during early voting, and scrap Georgia’s freefor-all “jungle primary” format for special elections that places all candidates on the same ballot.
Fleming chairs the House Special Committee on Election Integrity, where his bill passed last week (week of Feb. 21). He said the measure aims to both boost voter confidence in Georgia’s elections and ease burdens on local elections officials who were taxed with tallying millions of mail-in ballots during the recent elections.
“The way we begin to restore confidence in our voting system is by passing this bill,” Fleming said from the House floor. “There are many common-sense measures here to begin that process.”
Democrats scoffed at that notion Monday, March 1, calling it a smokescreen for Republican moves in Georgia to upend the elections playing field after last year’s historic statewide wins by Democrats.
“This is a step in the wrong direction,” said Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, the General Assembly’s longestserving member. “I strongly believe it’s time that we encourage every citizen to participate in the purest sense of citizenship, and that’s voting.”
Democrats also warned passing Fleming’s bill could prompt costly lawsuits and cost counties millions of dollars to put in place changes like new security paper for ballots. They also argued the bill would limit opportunities for counties to secure grant funding for elections.
“Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly are trying to change the rules of the election here in Georgia — rules that you wrote — because you were handed defeat (in recent elections),” said Rep. Kimberly Alexander, D-Hiram.
“And you know your only chance at winning future elections is to prevent eligible Georgians from casting their ballots and having their voices heard.”
Republicans doubled down in touting Fleming’s
bill Monday, March 1, framing it as a way to clean up confusion among voters and election workers and bolster faith in the integrity of voting by mail by tossing Georgia’s controversial signaturematch process.
“Everybody’s got a right to vote and that subjective signature match is a tough one,” said state Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell. “This is an objective way of verifying who someone is.”
Republicans also highlighted less-testy aspects of the bill such as revising precinct boundaries to curb long lines, blocking outside groups from sending absentee- ballot applications to cut down confusing mailers sent to voters and boosting training for poll watchers.
“Our goals in regulating elections should be to assure voting is fair, accessible, understandable, convenient and trustworthy,” said House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton.
The bill passed by a 9772 vote along party lines and now heads to the state Senate, where it will join a host of other elections-focused measures now winding through the General Assembly.
While Fleming’s bill is the most wide
ranging measure on election changes, it is similar to a separate omnibus bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton.
Senators advanced other contentious measures last week that have split Republicans, including a bill sponsored by Senate Rules Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, that would end Georgians’ ability to vote by mail for any reason and limit absentee voting to elderly, disabled and overseas voters.
That measure, which Democrats have blasted as an attack on voter access, has drawn opposition from key state Republican leaders including Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, House Speaker David Ralston, RBlue Ridge, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. However, those top Republican leaders have also supported proposals such as Fleming’s bill to tighten absentee voter ID laws, all but guaranteeing passage later this month in the Republican-controlled state legislature.
Other Republican-brought bills on election changes currently in play include measures to end automatic voter registration when Georgians obtain or renew their driver’s licenses, empower state elections officials to assume temporary control over local poor-performing elections boards and let county officials start processing absentee ballots a week before Election Day.
Seeking to accelerate land conservation along the Appalachian Mountains to counter climate change and its impacts, the Open Space Institute (OSI) Feb. 22 announced the launch of its $18 million Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund (ALPF), which will focus, in part, on protecting key sections of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.
The ALPF, initially capitalized with $5.25 million in the tristate area, will provide grants to the local region for the acquisition of land and conservation easements to protect wildlife habitat and store carbon. Funded projects are also expected to improve recreational access and safeguard clean air and water.
Harnessing the critical role of forests to combat climate change, the ALPF aims to conserve at least 30,000 acres in the tristate area known locally as the Cradle of Southern Appalachia, a 7-millionacre region that has long been a priority for conservation. The ALPF will be guided by a conservation blueprint developed by Thrive Regional Partnership’s Natural Treasures Alliance, a regional collaboration of conservation groups, private businesses and citizens.
The Cradle of Southern Appalachia is one of three focus areas of the ALPF, which aims to conserve 50,000 acres along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains — home of the world’s largest broadleaf forest, which stores over half of U.S. forest carbon and serves as an essential climate refuge for plants and animals.
The other identified target areas of the ALPF are located in the Middle-Atlantic and Northern Appalachians. Altogether the ALPF seeks to distribute $18 million across the three focus areas, of which $12.5 million has been raised to date.
“The forests of the Southern Appalachians are not only critical for their natural and local heritage, they also protect the land that matters most as we take on the largest environmental challenge of our time — a changing climate,” said Kim Elliman, OSI president and CEO.
“On behalf of Thrive Regional Partnership, we would like to thank the thousands of citizens who took the time over the past several years to convey the importance of protecting natural treasures as a key priority for this region,” said Daniel Carter, chair of Thrive Regional Partnership’s Natural Treasures Alliance. “This funding announcement is a direct result of what happens when citizens and local leaders come together to thoughtfully plan for our future.”
The ALPF, aimed specifically at protecting some of the nation’s most biologically rich and climateresilient landscapes, aligns with the federal government’s recently announced plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. land and waters by the year 2030 to leverage natural climate solutions, protect biodiversity and slow extinction rates.
The Fund builds on more than a decade of successful conservation in the region. Since 2008, OSI has assisted in the protection of almost 40,000 acres of land in the Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama tristate area.
In order to achieve critical, climate-related conservation goals, OSI is providing grants and loans for the acquisition of land and conservation easements that will leverage an additional $66 million in matching public and private funds. The ALPF also advances efforts by states, local communities, Native American tribes and land trusts to align their conservation goals around climate priorities. The ALPF will ease funding requirements for organizations that identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color-led that are at heightened risk of being negatively impacted by the climate crisis.
Fighting climate change
In addition to providing critical watershed protection, recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat, forests are a critical front-line defense against climate change. (Learn more by reading OSI’s Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change guide here.) In 2019, forests in the United States stored 59 billion metric tons of carbon — the equivalent of more than 33 years of U.S. economywide emissions. Every year, forests remove 15% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, equal to removing more than 673 million cars from the road.
The Appalachian Mountain region, stretching 2,000 miles from Alabama to Canada, contains vast swaths of healthy, older, larger and contiguous forests that are critical in combating climate change. These forests and rivers also provide tremendous benefits to society, including clean water, wood products, recreation and personal rejuvenation for millions of people.
Despite their critical importance to the nation, the forests of the Appalachian Mountains face significant threats, including development, poor management, and energy extraction. Nationally, U.S. forests are permanently lost at a rate of just under a million acres per year.
Partners in the effort
OSI’s conservation support within the Cradle of Southern Appalachia focus area will bolster the work of
the Thrive Regional Partnership’s Natural Treasures Alliance. With the region’s population expected to double by mid-century and recognizing that economic health is inextricably linked to preserving intact natural systems, the Alliance calls for protection of a million additional acres of the area’s forestland over the next several decades. The resulting lands will be protected for climate, recreation, clean water and quality of life.
To expand the impact of the Fund, OSI is also turning to organizations such as American Forests, The Nature Conservancy and the Land Trust Alliance, to share expertise, amplify efforts and coordinate the Fund’s investments. OSI is also collaborating with eastern Climate Alliance states, a growing coalition of 25 states committed to achieving emissions reductions set by the Paris climate accord.
“The Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund will apply cuttingedge science to safeguard some of the most resilient, carbon-rich, and biologically diverse forests in North America,” said Sacha Spector, program director for the environment at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “Over the past two decades, OSI has been leading the way with innovative, sciencebased efforts to protect the most biodiverse and climate-resilient places across the Eastern U.S.”
“To address climate change, we need to make sure we keep carbon in our forests and improve how we manage lands to sequester more carbon in order reduce harmful emissions,” said Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests. “The Fund is an invaluable tool in demonstrating and documenting the value of land conservation as a critical and necessary response to climate change.”
Fund criteria
In considering lands for conservation, the ALPF is harnessing cutting-edge climate science developed by The Nature Conservancy to identify and protect places that are “climate
resilient” — in that they will continue to protect habitat for sensitive plants and animals, even as the climate changes. A property’s climate resilience will be the major selection criteria, and within these areas OSI aims to protect places with the highest carbon storage potential by 2050, to help meet Paris climate accord climate goals for carbon neutrality.
The ALPF is the second largescale, climate-resilient land protection effort championed by OSI. From 2012-2020, OSI’s Resilient Landscapes Initiative (RLI), also supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, provided a total of $5.5 million to conserve 55,000 acres across the Eastern U.S. Through the RLI “Catalyst Program,” OSI also integrated climate science into more than 41 conservation plans by land trusts and publicprivate partnerships and disseminated training materials and case studies to more than 1,300 practitioners.
Open Space Institute
The Open Space Institute protects scenic, natural and historic landscapes to provide public enjoyment, conserve habitat and working lands, and sustain communities. Founded in 1974 to protect significant landscapes in New York State, OSI has partnered in the protection of nearly 2.3 million acres in North America. Visit online at openspaceinstitute.org.
Thrive Regional Partnership
Thrive Regional Partnership inspires responsible growth through conversation, connection, and collaboration in the tri-state greater Chattanooga region of northeast Alabama, northwest Georgia and southeast Tennessee. To learn more, visit ThriveRegionalPartnership.org.