. And quickly.
Just a few weeks after DeKalb County became the first to allow Sunday voting, local election officials in the Democratic strongholds of Clayton and Fulton counties followed suit.
Lawmakers in Macon are considering a similar move this morning. From the Telegraph of Macon's story:
"Bibb County has had a bad percentage of turnout in recent elections, and I am glad to see the Board of Elections push this because it will increase opportunities for people to vote," Lucas said.
Georgia's election laws mandate that at least one Saturday be made available for early voting in general elections, but not Sunday voting. The current date for Saturday voting in Bibb this election cycle is Oct. 25.
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Democrat Jason Carter got an earful from teacher groups about his hope to invest money from teacher pensions into local startup companies.
The group TRAGIC, which popped up to protest sweeping changes to statewide insurance policies, sent out a dispatch saying it was "100 percent opposed to any changes" in the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia.
The state senator's campaign told the group, as he told reporters, that he would seek input from teachers groups before advocating for any changes to the lucrative fund. He also told TRAGIC that he would form an Education Advisory Council made up of educators and advocates to provide input on the pension changes.
"I am not opposed to allowing TRS to be invested in a variety of investments, so long as we have appropriate controls to ensure that the state can manage the risk," said the campaign statement provided to TRAGIC. "However, I will not support changes to TRS unless they have the support of the teaching community."
We also pinged the Georgia Association of Educators, which endorsed Carter last month, for thoughts on the plan. We haven't heard back yet.
Gov. Nathan Deal said in an interview this morning it was this type of teacher pushback that led him to oppose the changes.
Said Deal:
"We heard from a lot of them during that debate in 2012 and we took their advice and said it was off-limits. And I've had meetings with a lot of venture capitalists themselves, and remarkably some of them said we would not advise you to use your pension plans from this kind of investment. Their reason was it is too risky and it's not the kind of thing government can take a chance on."
He added: "I think that the education community should let Jason Carter hear what we heard back in 2012. Apparently he didn't get that message."
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Sen. Saxby Chambliss said in a statement he's supportive of the White House's overnight expansion of airstrikes in to Syria to combat the Islamic State.
Said Chambliss:
I'm hopeful these strikes directed at hard targets will result in measurable progress towards degrading ISIL's capabilities and possibly even taking out ISIL fighters and leadership. As the United States moves forward with military action to defeat ISIL, we must continue to engage our allies in these efforts and work together to eliminate this dangerous cancer."
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The political writer over at Salon got a good laugh out of Gov. Nathan Deal's theory for Georgia's nationwide-high unemployment rate. He called it "hilarious."
The governor last week suggested that politicking was behind the surprising unemployment hike that boosted Georgia's rate to 8.1 percent.
Governors' races are one of the few bright spots for the Democratic Party this year, with a number of incumbent Republicans, like Deal, looking vulnerable. And part of the reason why they're vulnerable is because their jobs records ain't great. Deal may have been the first of these governors to fall into the conspiratorial unemployment truther trap, but it wouldn't be surprising if more followed suit.
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The Jason Carter campaign is pushing a last-ditch outreach to Hispanics called Carter Contigo in hopes of registering thousands of Latino voters before next month's deadline.
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