Get Out and Vote…Again

On November 6th, the election came and brought with it both victory and defeat. Many of us celebrated as numerous state legislature seats—that were once reliably Republican—flipped to the Democrats. We also had to deal with the loss of Stacey Abrams, Sarah Riggs Amico, Charlie Bailey, and almost all the other statewide Democrats who came so close to winning, but fell just short. However, two statewide races still remain undecided until December 4th and they could not be more important. John Barrow forced a runoff in his bid to become Secretary of State and Lindy Miller did the same in her race for Public Service Commission.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) is a position that doesn’t get nearly the level of attention that it deserves. Of all the races that affect the day-to-day lives of hardworking Georgians, this one may be the biggest. The PSC sets the energy rates for Georgia Power, which is the largest electricity provider in the state, serving over 2.4 million Georgians. They also play a regulatory role over some aspects of gas and telecommunications. Every single time you turn on your light or you turn on a gas-powered stove, you are feeling the effect of the PSC. One of the hot issues during the race was the construction of Plant Vogtle, a nuclear power plant located near Augusta. The plant rose in prominence as a result of its proclivity to expand its budget—wasting our taxpayer dollars—and miss its deadlines. Because of this, Lindy Miller wants the investors of this plant, not the taxpayers, to pay for the project if it continues. Her opponent, Chuck Eaton, continues to rubber stamp Plant Vogtle and refuses to take any real action to hold them accountable. He, like many of the current commissioners, act as a rubber stamp for groups that have high-dollar donations waiting for his vote. Lindy Miller is a qualified, hardworking candidate who supports green energy and lower power bills and correctly believes that our best interests are not currently being served.

The other ongoing race is for the Secretary of State, an office which has grown considerably in infamy over the last few months. John Barrow, a former U.S. Congressman, is in a runoff with Brad Raffensperger for the position. The importance of this race cannot be overstated. The reason that many of the statewide Democrats lost was because the Secretary of State worked as hard as he could to ensure that minorities and likely-Democrats could not vote. Since 2012, Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged over 1 million voters from the rolls. He also worked to make it difficult to register to vote by designing a confusing process and enforced an “exact match” system. This system was designed to prevent minorities from voting because if a name had any kind of discrepancy between the ballot and when the individual registered, it would be thrown out. This disproportionately affected minorities and young people—the former use accents in their name at a higher rate; the latter often have hyphenated last names. Leaving off or adding either of these, a hyphen or an accent, would ensure that you could not vote. As Secretary of State, John Barrow would reject this archaic and anti-democratic system. He is also in favor of automatic voter registration at the age of 18 and ensuring that the voting machines are up to date and enough of them to adequately serve the community.

Democrats traditionally have abstained from voting in runoffs, essentially abdicating those races to the Republicans. However, this runoff is simply to important to not vote in. We need to ensure that Lindy Miller becomes a Public Service Commissioner because many Georgians literally cannot afford it if she loses—rates will go up and Plant Vogtle will continue to miss their deadlines, increasing the burden on the taxpayer. John Barrow must be elected to the office of Secretary of State in order for us to regain our faith in our electoral system. November 6th was decided because of Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s malignancy and incompetency. We have to elect John Barrow to prevent future elections from being compromised and stolen.

Please get out and vote on December 4th, it may be the most important race of the cycle.