Bookman: Kicking the Medicaid expansion can down the road

By Jill Nolin | Editor

By Jay Bookman

Georgians strongly support Medicaid expansion to provide health insurance to their lower-income neighbors, and they have done so for years. 

Yet somehow, their clear policy preference has not yet been translated into action. The state remains one of only 10 that have not accepted the federal government’s offer to expand coverage.

How do we know that public support for expansion is real?

Well, repeated polls have shown that between 70-75% of voters support extending coverage to hundreds of thousands of Georgians – most of them working people – who are currently uninsured.

By Maya Homan

Georgia seems poised to switch to a hand-marked paper ballot system for the 2028 election, but researchers and cybersecurity experts say there is a lot more to consider to ensure that voting stays secure and free from undue influence.

Election security concerns have long been at the forefront of the conversation around election equipment. Georgia’s current voting machines, which use a QR code to tally votes, have repeatedly faced criticism from advocates of hand-marked paper ballots, who say that ballots should be counted based on text that can be deciphered by humans. 

State lawmakers have passed legislation to phase out the use of QR codes on ballots, but are still developing the guidelines that state lawmakers will use when selecting their next statewide voting system.

By Grant Blankenship, GPB News

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back rules restricting climate warming emissions at electrical power plants, including those in Georgia.

The rules the EPA ended this week date from the Biden administration and would have required coal and natural gas-fired power plants to restrict carbon emissions starting in 2030.

That was about the same time Georgia Power had planned to shutter its two largest coal plants — Plant Bowen, which is north of Atlanta, and Plant Scherer, just north of Macon. But now with the data center boom, Georgia Power is keeping the plants running. With the help of a third coal plant over the border in Alabama, Georgia Power hopes to meet fully 70% of the data center demand.

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