Accident Sparks Elections Vigilance

Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2024

Good morning! This week we look at a frightening — but hopefully not portentous — incident at a Coastal Georgia election board office and run down a list of developments that are shaping our political landscape. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com.

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Frayed nerves

Earlier this month, a car crashed through the Chatham County Election Board headquarters, shattering plate glass windows and destroying office chairs and desks.

Since the 2020 elections, the board’s offices on Eisenhower Drive have been targeted by protesters, and the once drowsy monthly meetings of the county’s election board have frequently become fraught with anger and frustration, as residents line up to voice their opposition to the state’s voting system.

As it turned out, the damage to the election offices was not the outcome of rage spilling over into violence. It was caused instead by an unlicensed teenager who was practicing with a parent how to drive in the election board parking lot and lost control of the vehicle. 

But Billy Wooten, Chatham County’s supervisor of elections, said the fact it was a mishap doesn’t mean his worries have gone away, The Current’s Craig Nelson reports.

“It was an accident and luckily, no one was hurt,” said Wooten. “But it also was a reminder to me and my staff that we have to be vigilant.” 

As campaigns for this November’s elections heat up, so are challenges in the court and the state legislature to the accuracy and reliability of Georgia’s voting system, as well as to those who, like Wooten and his staff, are determined to conduct free and fair elections. 

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6 things for your radar

1. Foreign aid: Georgia’s U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, joined 65 other members of the upper house on Sunday in approving $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other countries. In defiance of former President Donald Trump, 18 Republican senators voted in favor of package, which includes $14 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas, $8 billion for Taiwan, and $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance for the Gaza Strip.

2. Savannah Port: Ossoff and Warnock, along with 1^st District U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter of St. Simons, have asked the heads of four congressional committees to authorize a study examining “the benefit of both widening and deepening the harbor at the Port of Savannah.”

3. Harris addresses abortion rights in Savannah: “There is nothing about this moment that is hypothetical: Today in America, more than 1 in 3 women of reproductive age live in a state with an abortion ban,” Vice President Kamala Harris told an invited audience of 150 people at the Savannah Civic Center last week. The stop in Savannah was part of her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour.

4. State GOP coffers: In the second half of 2023, the Georgia GOP spent $850,000 in legal fees for the 16 electors who met in mid-December 2020 to cast votes as if Donald Trump had won Georgia during his failed reelection bid. That brought to $1.37 million the amount spent on the legal fees last year.

5. Trump and the military: Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally tomorrow in Nikki Haley’s backyard, Charleston, in advance of South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary. Over the weekend, Haley scolded Trump for questioning the absence of her husband from the campaign trail. Michael Haley, a major in the South Carolina National Guard, is currently posted to Djibouti.

“Military families go through a lot,” she said. “And the fact that Donald Trump’s never even got near a military uniform, he’s never had that experience, never known what it’s like, goes to show why he continues to call them suckers and losers.”

6. Will she be forced off the case? In a blow to Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, the superior court judge overseeing The State of Georgia v. Donald T. Trump, et. al. said yesterday he would go ahead with a hearing Thursday over allegations she engaged in an improper personal relationship with the lead prosecutor on the case.

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ICYMI

• Savannah Mayor Van Johnson attended a meeting in Los Angeles of the African American Mayors Association earlier this month, one of 19 Black mayors to do so. If photos circulating on social media are accurate, he attended the Grammy Awards, too.
• University of Georgia football coach Kirby Smart received a salary of $13.25 million in FY 2023, while Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority was the highest paid state government employee, coming in at $1.715 million.
• In a suggestion that isn’t likely to help recruit Latinos to the Republican Party in Georgia, 10^th District U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Jackson) recommended a harsh — and illegal — response for a undocumented migrant arrested in New York.

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