By Ross Williams | Deputy Editor
Georgia lawmakers are back in their districts after adjourning a rare summertime special session this week. The big result was an election bill that allows Georgia’s election tabulators to keep using QR codes to count votes through 2028, avoiding a July deadline that would have left officials unable to legally conduct elections.
Some things that didn’t happen during the session were also pretty newsworthy. First, the adjournment came without drawing new legislative boundaries after House Republicans rejected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s call for mid-cycle redistricting following the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Also in the “it-might-have-been” file, dozens of local referendums that would have let voters decide whether to raise local sales taxes and reduce property taxes. Democrats called the measures a rush job intended to bring out conservative voters in the fall.
And House Republicans deflected a Democratic attempt to override a veto from Kemp of a bill at question aimed to regulate spending from two state departments, which passed both chambers unanimously earlier this year.
It can be easy to see the things that happen in the state Capitol through the lens of political gamesmanship, but what goes on there can matter for real people in a big way. Georgia Recorder intern Ellie Fivas delivers a reminder of that point with a look at how state funding cuts could make the work of domestic violence and sexual assault victim advocates even harder.
Sen. Max Burns discusses his election bill in a House Committee on June 23, 2026. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
By Maya Homan
Georgia lawmakers dialed back a controversial change that would have mandated hand recounts of the two top-ticket races in every election before local officials could certify the results.
The hand-count provision was added by Senate Republicans over the weekend to a measure extending the state’s self-imposed deadline to stop using ballot QR codes to tally votes, prompting outcry from Democrats, local election officials and other advocacy groups.
House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley questioned the rush to pass dozens of local tax measures during the ongoing special session, arguing the proposals could wait for the regular session next January. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder
By Jill Nolin
House Republicans are attempting to pass a wave of local property tax measures during an ongoing special session that would allow communities to vote on whether to raise their sales taxes to give homeowners a tax break.
But Democrats have so far successfully blocked the effort, stymying GOP lawmakers from putting the question before voters this November. They argue the change represents a new tax that shifts the burden of paying for local services from homeowners to lower income Georgians – and they question the rush to put it before voters this year.
Rick Jackson, who is the Republican nominee for governor, has made his difficult childhood the centerpiece of his campaign. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
COMMENTARY
By Jay Bookman
By now, anybody who owns a TV set in Georgia knows that Rick Jackson came up the hard way.
He’s proud of his rise out of poverty, and he has every right to be. His story of personal triumph – and the hundreds of millions of dollars that came with that triumph – have been central to his climb out of political obscurity and his victory in the Republican primary for governor.
Gov. Brian Kemp cut about $13 million in new funding for domestic violence, sexual assault and child advocacy programs as part of sweeping budget reductions made after lawmakers passed an income tax package this year. Getty Images
By Ellie Fivas
The two dozen beds at the Haven, a domestic violence shelter in Valdosta, are almost never enough, according to Executive Director Michelle Girtman.
Rising demand for services and years of declining government support have left the south Georgia shelter — along with more than 50 domestic violence and sexual assault programs across the state — stretched thin.
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