How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
It could be a nail-biter come election night for incumbent Gov. Nathan Deal and Democratic challenger Jason Carter.
Some pundits and pollsters have predicted Libertarian Andrew Hunt could get enough votes to force Deal and Carter into a monthlong runoff. To win outright in Georgia, a candidate must get more than 50 percent of the total vote.
Education, ethics and the economy have been major issues in the hard-fought campaign.
Here are summaries of some of the fact checks PolitiFact Georgia has published during the gubernatorial battle.
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Jason Carter
Jason Carter in a press statement Feb. 18: "Since 2009, Georgia's public schools have lost nearly 9,000 classroom teachers while the number of students has gone up."
Education has arguably been the single most contentious issue in the governor’s race. One statistic that Democratic nominee Jason Carter came armed with: Georgia’s 180 school districts have 9,000 fewer teachers than they did in 2009.
Carter said he based the claim on results of a summer 2013 survey taken by the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. It showed a loss of 8,982 teachers between 2009 and 2013.
We compared the GBPI information against data that districts are required to submit annually to the state. The results were very similar.
In fiscal 2009, which covers the 2008-2009 school year, Georgia had 120,660 teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade — 115,277 full-time and 5,383 part-time — according to the annual state report card on education.
That compares with 111,401 public school teachers — 107,729 full-time and 3,672 part-time — working in fiscal 2013, or the 2012-2013 school year. And the difference is 9,259 fewer teachers statewide.
We rated Carter’s statement as True.
Matt McGrath, Jason Carter’s campaign manager, in a press release and fundraising email on June 18: “Gov. Deal has the worst record on education in the history of this state.”
Matt McGrath, the campaign manager for Democrat Jason Carter, issued a statement June 18 saying Gov. Nathan Deal “has the worst record on education in the history of this state.”
PolitiFact determined he was covering a lot of territory with that comment with a state that began as a prison colony. The governors who followed presided over a state that made almost no attempt to educate poor whites, banned education for enslaved blacks, and aided and abetted the removal of Native American children and their parents to reservations in the West.
Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia and a longtime Capitol observer, said the statement by McGrath is “the kind of campaign rhetoric that is false on its face.”
“Obviously, someone like Gene Talmadge who did three terms as governor did less for education than Nathan Deal,” Bullock said. “It used to be that the state’s budget went disproportionately for transportation; now most of it goes for education.”
Deal took office in early 2011 and, with his budget proposal for fiscal 2015, will have increased k-12 spending by $868.6 million in four years, we reported in a recent fact check
The overall budget for education is up $930 million in Deal’s tenure, when increases for pre-kindergarten and higher education are counted, according to the state Budget Office.
We ruled that the Carter camp can’t prove that among Georgia’s 82 governors Deal’s record is the worst on education in general or on education funding in specific.
The Carter campaign’s charge was incendiary — that the sitting governor has the worst education record in Georgia’s history. And we smelled smoke.
We awarded it our lowest rating, Pants On Fire.
Jason Carter in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on June 9: “There’s $30 billion in expansion funds that we’ve paid – it’s our money and Nathan Deal wants Washington to keep it.”
Throughout the long campaign season, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and his Democratic challenger, Jason Carter, have been at odds over the federal health insurance program for the poor.
At issue: Deal’s refusal to expand the Medicaid health insurance program under the Affordable Care Act.
Deal says the price is too steep. Expansion, he says, would cost the state $2.5 billion over the next decade.
Carter talks up a different set of numbers and supports extending Medicaid coverage to about 650,000 low-income Georgians now without health insurance.
“There’s $30 billion in expansion funds that we’ve paid — it’s our money, and Nathan Deal wants Washington to keep it,” Carter said.
The numbers they both cite to bolster their positions come from a 2012 study released by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The study focused specifically on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion plan, which calls for the federal government to pay 100 percent of the costs for newly eligible enrollees in 2015 and 2016 and no less than 90 percent thereafter.
Expansion would bring nearly $34 billion in new federal spending to Georgia over a decade, according to the study. Georgia’s share of the expansion during that time would be $2.5 billion.
But that is not the same amount that Georgians would have “paid” to the federal government, as Carter claims.
Data from the Internal Revenue Service show people and firms in Georgia pay about 3 percent of the total federal revenue. Using the Kaiser study, that means Georgians would be projected to pay about 3 percent of the Medicaid expansion — or $24 billion over a decade.
That means Carter is right to suggest the state is missing out on $34 billion of federal money by not expanding the insurance program. But it’s not a dollar-for-dollar trade when it comes to taxes vs. services.
We rated Carter’s statement Half True.
Nathan Deal
Nathan Deal in a speech Feb. 26: Georgia has saved $20 million through changes in criminal sentencing.
The Great Recession forced state officials to look at several cost-cutting measures, including changes in criminal sentencing. Gov. Nathan Deal reported the result was a $20 million savings to the state’s bottom line that, he said, amazed him both in how big it was and how quickly it was realized.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said the savings came from a reduction in the amount the state paid to counties to house state inmates.
State lawmakers crafted legislation to establish alternatives to incarceration for low-level, nonviolent drug and property offenders.
The changes included reduced sentences for relatively minor crimes such as writing bad checks and burglary.
The state is diverting addicts to community supervision and treatment through so-called accountability courts instead of sending them through the normal criminal system and on to prison.
We rated Deal’s statement True.
Nathan Deal in a radio interview July 17: Says Jason Carter has “gotten David Axelrod to come down and be his campaign adviser.”
Gov. Nathan Deal was on the radio to address allegations that two of his aides pressured the director of the state ethics commission to settle cases against his campaign.
He was asked what he thought of his Democratic opponent, Jason Carter, calling for an independent investigation.
Deal said it wasn’t surprising “now that Carter has gotten David Axelrod to come down and be his campaign adviser.”
Axelrod, a longtime political strategist, is closely tied to President Barack Obama. He was the campaign manager when Obama won the presidency in 2008 and followed Obama to Washington to serve as a White House senior adviser.
Deal got it wrong.
Axelrod isn’t working on Carter’s campaign. He’s running the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.
But AKPD Message and Media, a political consulting firm that Axelrod founded and sold in 2009, is working for Carter.
Jen Talaber, a spokeswoman for Deal’s re-election bid, said the campaign wasn’t aware Axelrod had sold the firm five years ago. It was an “honest mistake,” she said in an email.
But Talaber said the governor’s underlying point still stands.
“Carter’s campaign team and consultants are Obama insiders, and his national fundraising list shows the Obama brain trust is in full force,” she said.
We rated Deal’s statement as False.
Former Democratic Gov. Zell Miller: Gov. Nathan Deal saved the HOPE scholarship program.
The lottery-funded HOPE scholarship program was in financial trouble when Deal became governor.
Deal, with bipartisan help from state lawmakers, made changes that eased the financial pressures, but also changed the program significantly.
HOPE still makes higher education more affordable for many students. But now, only about 10 percent of HOPE recipients receive scholarships that cover 100 percent of their tuition costs.
Miller makes a valid point here: Deal — with a little help — saved the HOPE scholarship.
But Miller’s declaration needs a bit of context to be fully understood.
We rated his statement Mostly True.
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