About The Eatonton messenger. (Eatonton, Ga.) 18??-current | View Entire Issue (July 24, 2025)
A2 | THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025 The Eatonton Aessenger www.msgrnews.com More changes may be coming for Georgia’s voting system Ty Tagami Capitol Beat News Service Republican lawmakers have pushed through numerous changes to Georgia’s voting system in recent years, reacting to a concern, mostly among conservatives, that lax security produced stolen elections. Now, House Speaker Jon Burns has empaneled a study committee to consider more changes, with the Republican from Newington selecting a likely candidate for secre tary of state to lead it. The Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures led by Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, met for the first time this week, tapping discontent with the digital voting system Georgia used when Donald Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden in 2020. It will provide a plat form for Fleming, who filed this month to raise campaign funds to run for secretary of state, which oversees elections. Burns’ office noted that Fleming used to work as chief of staff there, making him “exception ally qualified” to oversee this committee. Secretary of State Brad Customer Service Representative $30,000-$60,000 Positions open in Milledgeville, Athens, Eatonton, Gray and Lake Oconee working with established accounts. Experience beneficial, but not necessary. Position includes training, base salary, commissions, bonus, travel and insurance benefits. Applicants should apply to: A. Mark Smith Smith Communications Inc. amsmith@msgrnews.com 706-749-7205 SMITH COMMUNICATIONS2 PO Box 4027 • Eatonton GA 31024 » 706.485.3501 Newspapers • Magazines • Printing 9 REAL ESTATE COMPANY COLDWELL BANKER LAKE OCONEE REALTY VOTED 13 YEARS IN A ROW! •.9• • • fish •2 IML Raffensperger has been a magnet for election critics due to his assurances about the Dominion Voting System’s security. Neither his statements nor Trump’s victory last year have quelled the concerns. Nor, it seems, has onetime Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s loss in a defa mation lawsuit brought by two Fulton County election workers after he falsely accused them of election fraud. Phoebe Eckhart of Roswell expressed a concern shared by several others who spoke at Tues day’s hearing, the first of a half dozen that will occur around the state. She said she had repeat edly watched a video of a ballot count inside a building in Fulton. What she saw made her deeply suspicious: workers repeatedly tabu lating the paper ballots printed by the Dominion voting terminals. They were “taking the ballots and putting them in the machine, just over and over and over again,” she said. “It was fraud.” Eckhart then expressed the frustration that is driving Republican lawmakers to revisit elec tion law. She attended a GOP breakfast five years ago where a speaker outlined the party’s top issues. “And the very first one was election integ rity,” Eckhart said. Yet there is still “no election integrity,” she told the lawmakers. “Please, please, please, can you do something about this?” Others, including Brad Carver, a state GOP leader, criticized the various options for casting a ballot in Georgia, including early voting. It costs too much and should be reduced to two weeks, he told the committee. “Three weeks of early voting is a very long period of time, it’s very costly to a lot of our local governments,” said Carver, who chairs the GOP’s 6th Congressional District, which includes parts of Cobb and Fulton counties. The lone Democrat on the seven-member committee, Atlanta Rep. Saira Draper, countered with other methods of cutting costs that do not reduce voter access, such as ranked-choice voting. That would have eliminated the need for the state Public Service Commission runoff election that was occur ring the same day as the hearing, she noted. Only 2.4% of Geor gia’s 8.4 million voters cast a ballot in the PSC primary last month, and the turnout for the runoff, when fewer than 114,000 cast a ballot, was even smaller. Carver had already expressed criticism of ranked-choice voting and of absentee voting, which he claimed was not secure. Draper challenged him to produce evidence of that. “I don’t believe in fearmongering as a basis for policy changes,” she said. Others from the public echoed that sentiment. Brian Nunez, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, cautioned against passing new election laws based upon rumors about rigged elections. “A widespread false narrative about fraud in our elections persists,” he said. “The allegations have been proven time and time again to be unfounded.” Karen Davenport of Decatur criticized an election law passed last year that enables mass voter challenges, saying it empowers “conspiracy theorists” and amounts to voter intimidation. She implored lawmakers not to erect barriers to voting. “Elected state officials should strive to make voting easier and not more difficult for Geor gians,” she said. In addition to costs, Republican lawmakers on the panel had questions about Georgia’s partici pation in the Electronic Registration Informa tion Center, or ERIC, a multistate data-sharing Trinity Health’s Pierce named to GHA board Trinity Health Georgia (THGA) President and Chief Executive Officer Stonish Pierce has been added to the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) Board of Trustees. The appointment was announced July 11 at the association’s annual meeting of the assembly. Pierce will serve as an at-large trustee, working with the board compact designed to root out voters who cast ballots in more than one state. Among their concerns was the security of the encrypted personal information shared between states. But the computerized Dominion system was at the center of complaints. A common critique at Tuesday’s hearing was the way the system uses a Quick Response (QR) code to transfer voter intent into each polling place’s database. After a voter casts a ballot, the terminal prints a piece of paper with the code — a matrix of black and white squares — in addition to recording the voter’s intent on a data card. The voter then places the paper into a QR reader, producing another record of the vote. One man’s T-shirt summed up the concern about this technology, which renders ballots inscrutable to the human eye: The words “I voted” were followed by an image of a QR code. Then, came the punch line: “Can you read this?” Such concerns have helped drive doubts about election results. When Draper pressed Carver about whether he believed Biden had legitimately won the 2020 election, he said he did not believe it. The room at the Capitol then erupted in cheers. Last year, Georgia lawmakers banned using QR codes to tabulate ballots starting with the 2026 elections, so the state must modify its system. to develop strategies for GHA hospital members, advocating for the highest quality care for patients, and supporting adequate reimbursement for hospitals. “Stonish Pierce is an influential healthcare leader who is dedicated to improving healthcare access for all,” GHA Pres ident and CEO Caylee Noggle said. “He has a wide range of health- care experience that will serve our board well, and we look forward to his • » service. Pierce is CEO of St. Mary’s Health Care System and president of its flagship facility, St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens. Under his lead ership, the health system has expanded care access with the introduction of three new outpatient sites and expanded hospital-based services such as bronchoscopy, cardiac catheterization lab, medical detox, and wound care services. Also under Pierce’s tenure, St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital in Greensboro received CMS 5-Star and Small Hospital of the Year recognition. Pierce also serves on the boards of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, The Georgia : Many want paper ballots, counted by hand. Field Searcy, co-founder of Georgians for Truth, tried and failed to get Republican party leaders to use paper ballots for their own officer selection process when he attended the state GOP convention in May. Party leaders instead used electronic “clickers,” saying they lacked the resources to do a hand-count, even though Searcy said he had brought 3,000 printed ballots and 120 people trained to count them. The convention crowd had jeered when party leaders announced they would be using elec tronic voting instead of paper. Rank-and-file Republicans were still upset about it Tuesday, with one complaining to lawmakers about the clickers. That controversy illus trates the political risk for Republican lawmakers on this issue. Searcy, who testified on Tuesday about his elec tion suspicions, said in an interview that his interest is non-partisan. Trump’s victory in the last elec tion did not assuage his concerns. He said his clicker failed twice at the convention and noted that there was no way to validate that it accurately recorded his intentions. He had the same concern about the voting terminals Georgia uses on Election Day. “If we don’t have trust in our elections, we don’t have a country,” he said. “If our elections are not secure and trustworthy, it’s all a farce.” Stonish Pierce Alliance of Commu nity Hospitals, USC Price Health Policy and Management, and the Central Michigan Univer sity MHA Program. Pierce is a recipient of the American College of Healthcare Execu tives’ (ACHE) regional Early Career Healthcare Executive and Exem plary Service Awards, the USC Price School’s 90 Pioneers of 90 Years award, and Modern Healthcare previously named him one of its Top 25 Emerging Leaders. Pierce holds a Bachelor of Science in kinesiology and a Master of Health Administration with a graduate certificate in management, all from the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. — Contributed American Standard *1,500 OFF -PLIJS- NO INTEREST and NO PAYMENTS (or 12 MONTHS* Transform your bathroom with a new bath or shower SCHEDULE A FREE IN-HOME CONSULTATION 877-659-8389 ‘Subject to 3rd party credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required. Offers valid thru 7/31/25
