VoterGA GA Legislative Update - DRE ban bill, ballot access bills introduced!!!

BALLOT ACCESS UPDATE

The same House Governmental Affairs Committee members are also considering the HB1141 ballot access bill introduced by Bobby Reese. HB 1141 reduces the statewide petitioning limit for an independent candidate from 1% of registered voters (about 40,000+ signatures) to 5,000 total signatures. You can weigh in on this bill too when you contact the House Government Affairs chairman and committee members previously mentioned.

Another ballot access bill has been introduced in the Senate by David Shafer. This bill allows any political body whose candidate gets one percent of the vote in a previous election to have ballot access in all races. Currently access is only given for statewide races. The bill also allows an independent political body (Green Party, Constitution Party, Libertarians) to nominate the candidate of a major political party (Republicans, Democrats) as their candidate. If they choose to nominate such a candidate, the independent political bodies do not get credit for the votes received by the "Fusion candidate" towards their own ballot access requirements.

The Senate bill was assigned to the Ethics Committee rather than the State and Local Governmental Operations Committee. The chairman of that committee is Dan Moody. His contact information is 404 463-8055, dan.moody@senate.ga.gov The committee member's contact information can be found at:

http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/senate/ethics.php

If both of these bills were to pass it would be a significant improvement for independent candidates. A more comprehensive ballot access bill will also be introduced in the coming weeks and I will keep you posted on that.

Garland Favorito
404 664-4044 CL
www.voterga.org