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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Handel warns against shortening early voting period
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Secretary of State Karen Handel is quietly letting state lawmakers know that she would have serious concerns about any attempt to shorten the state’s 45-day early voting period.
Before and after the Nov. 4 election, some Republican legislators watching the Barack Obama-driven flood of African-American voters talked of curtailing — even eliminating it.
But Handel, who is expected to join the GOP race for governor later this year, is warning against any such move, for both political and legal reasons, we’re told.
First of all, early voting is clearly popular. Picking a fight with 2 million people — who cast 53 percent of the general election vote — may not be the height of wisdom.
Secondly, a U.S. Justice Department under Obama is unlikely to treat the measure kindly. (Georgia is a state covered by the Voting Rights Act, and any changes to election law are subject to federal review.)
Very probably — racial and gender breakdowns aren’t out yet — a record number of African-American voters cast ballots in the 2008 general election. Many, many of them chose to engage in early voting.
One of the key tests facing any change in election law is whether it results in a dilution of minority voting strength. Opponents will merely have to point to black turnout in 2008 to make their case.
Additionally, Republicans could very well hurt their own cause in trying to stem a tool that Democrats adapted as their own. According to state law, early voting is nothing but absentee voting — except that the ballot is delivered in person.
Trimming in-person voting would also affect absentee ballots delivered by mail, a traditional Republican strength. And it would be hard to shorten the period for one without touching the other.
Photo credit: Kimberly Smith/AJC
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Ann Coulter on NBC’s “Today Show”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When NBC’s “Today Show” dropped the conservative that liberals most like to hate from its line-up on Wednesday, the Drudge Report marked the event as an attempted boycott of the fiery Ann Coulter and her new book.
“Today” rescheduled Coulter for this morning, and below is the resulting interview with Matt Lauer.
“I am like Roland Burris. I have been turned away, but I’m back,” Coulter said. Topics include her use of B. Hussein Obama to describe the president-elect, and single motherhood as the source of “almost any” societal ill outside of Alaska.
The clip is nine minutes long, so settle in:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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Senate Democrats agree to seat Roland Burris
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
USA Today’s political blog has just filed an item saying that Democrats have agreed to accept Roland Burris for President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant seat in the U.S. Senate.
The Associated Press is cited as the source.
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Robb Pitts: Fill vacant houses with cops — for free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts just put out a press release suggesting that the nation’s glut of abandoned and vacant houses be whittled down by offering the residences as free homes for police officers.
Salary subsidies, in other words.
Says Pitts:
“Since most jurisdictions cannot pay police officers what they deserve, providing free homes to them would be a substantial supplement to their salaries and a good tool for recruitment and retention.”
More details:
Under the program, police officers would have to pay a down payment of $2,500 and commit to 15 years of service with the department in order to receive a free home, and it would have to be their primary residence. At the end of 15 years they would be given the deed to the home.
Pitts says the program could be enacted by “cities and counties across the country.”
Photo credit: Jonathan Newton/AJC
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Price: GOP failure to address health care ‘perhaps the greatest missed opportunity’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In today’s Wall Street Journal, U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Roswell says the GOP failure to address a broken health care system is “perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of the past eight years.”
Writes Price:
Access to quality health care has long been a professed priority, yet Republicans have been reluctant to tackle the issue.
As a physician, this is deeply disappointing to me because patient-centered health care is, at its core, conservative. Health care is fundamentally a personal relationship between patients and doctors. To honor this relationship — consistent with Republican ideals — our goal should be to provide a system that allows access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans, in a way that ensures medical decisions are made in doctors’ offices, not Washington.
Republican unwillingness to address the issue, however, has left us facing an emboldened Democratic Party well equipped to push a government-centered health-care agenda. While Democrats are still dangerously misguided in their policies, this time they are prepared to avoid the political mistakes of the Clinton administration.
But Price says the Democratic approach would wipe out private insurers.
The WSJ piece is significant as one of Price’s first policy statements as the new chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a kind of mini-think tank for the House minority party.
Photo credit: Rick McKay, Cox Washington Bureau
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Cynthia McKinney on her shortened Mediterranean cruise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a first-person article in a Cyprus newspaper, former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney offers an account of her thwarted attempt to deliver medical supplies to the Gaza Strip last week.
Read the article in the Famagusta Gazette here.
McKinney, apparently in Lebanon now, publicly thanks the four reporters who were with her on the ship for drawing attention to its encounter with the Israeli navy. Three were from Al Jazeera, and one was from CNN.
Associated Press photo: Former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, center, is helped out of the vessel SS Dignity, from the group Free Gaza, as it arrives in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon. The boat, carrying international peace activists and medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip, arrived after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, according to the organizers of the trip.
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Why Georgia State University needs a football team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My AJC colleague James Salzer took a look at disclosure reports for the final five months of 2008, and one thing is clear: lobbyists at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech didn’t have much trouble giving away free football tickets to state lawmakers last fall.
That could come in handy for the two institutions down the road.
Chris Cummiskey, who left House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s employ last year to become top Capitol lobbyist for UGA, reported spending about $20,000 on lawmakers during the final five months of 2008, mostly on football tickets and other football-related events.
Almost $12,000 of that was for a Legislative Appreciation Day that included more than $3,000 in football tickets.
Dene Sheheane, Cummisky’s counterpart at Tech, reported spending about $16,000 on lawmakers, mostly on football tickets. That’s double what he spent the year before.
Part of the reason: Tech’s Chick-fil-A Bowl appearance against LSU was very popular with the state powers that be.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, House Speaker Glenn Richardson, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and other lawmakers received tickets and a dinner. The cost for entertaining Perdue alone was put at more than $1,000.
All of this pigskin schmoozing could become useful during the 2009 legislative session that starts Monday, when UGA and Tech face the prospect of major budget cuts because of the national recession.
Legislators must cut about $2.2 billion this year. Lawmakers have already put K-12 schools and health care largely out-of-bounds for major cuts, Salzer notes. The next big budget on the chopping block: the University System of Georgia.
