Legislative Activity on Existing Bills—Week Three
SB 74 was passed by the Senate in 2025 and has come up again before the House this year. After two lengthy hearings, an amendment, and strong opposition by Democrat members of the Committee, it passed the Committee favorably. An attempt was made to amend language to take the term ‘homosexuality’ out of the statute that defines harmful material. That amendment was not accepted. The committee observed that libraries have governing boards and procedures for resolving disputed materials, and the amendment allows for librarians to continue to have immunity so long as they follow these procedures and comply with the board’s decision. This, of course, means that local library boards become the arbiters. To be clear, the bill does not require the removal of ‘harmful to minors’ material, just that it be removed from the library section for minors and placed in adult sections of the library. In the end, the bill chills speech, intimidates librarians and pushes them to be conservative out of fear of prosecution, allows local boards to dictate library material and is another step closer to book banning and anti-LGTBQ efforts. Although this is titled as a senate bill, it will be presented for a vote in the house, so please call your representatives and demand they vote NO.
PS: The Dems on the committee did a great job voicing their objections and attempting amendments–covered all the bases. The vote came out a tie, so the chairman had to break the tie and he voted to pass the bill.
SB 214 in its original form allows people to vote by absentee ballot if they chose to, upon demand without going through the application for absentee ballot requirements. That would be chaotic enough, but it appears the Rs are adding amendments, potentially going to hand-marked paper ballots and hand counting.
Some background to give you context: In 2024, the legislature passed SB 189 that outlawed use of QR codes on voting machines, but they failed to include necessary funding to make this happen (revamping the dominion machines). The House appointed the ‘Blue Ribbon Commission’ to study the matter, hold hearings, gather evidence and research, and make recommendations on how GA election should be conducted. There are 7 members of the Commission, all but one are Republicans. The Blue Ribbon Commission dropped its report this week. It has recommended that:
–all voters should have the option to utilize pre-printed, hand-marked paper ballots on Election Day, beginning with the 2026 General Election
–ballots that contain a QR code of any kind must be hand counted for the purposes of official tabulation. Scanner tabulation of QR code ballots is for unofficial results only.
–legislation should be adopted during the 2026 session to provide for the procurement of GA’s next statewide voting system, and should provide funds in the Fy 2027 budget to allow for purchasing the new system.
It’s likely that the 2026 session will pursue these recommendations and tack this on to SB 214. Basically, they entered a law that QR codes cannot be used, but they did not fund it and they don’t have their act together to revamp the dominion machines, so this is a stop-gap measure to give them another year to replace the QR code dominion machine.
This is all based on the current administration’s false claims of voter fraud. MAGA influence of our state legislature is strong. We will do our best to keep you updated as this mess continues to unravel.
Summary of new bills and resolutions of note introduced in Week Three:
HB 1151—Dem Provides for the expansion of Medicaid. Referred to the Committee on PUBLIC AND COMMUNITY HEALTH
HB 1154—Rep Imposition of death penalty generally for the offense of trafficking of persons for labor or sexual servitude. Referred to the Committee on JUDICIARY NON-CIVIL
HR 1200—Dem A RESOLUTION urging the Georgia Secretary of State to continue to protect private and protected information contained in Georgia's voter registration list from an unwarranted request from the United States Department of Justice to produce unredacted copies of such voter registration list. Referred to the Committee on GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
HR 1203–Dem A Resolution providing for a trust fund for the purpose of providing no-cost access to certain vaccines for children 18 years of age or younger and seniors 60 years of age or older. Referred to the Committee on JUDICIARY
SB 463—Rep Prohibits business enterprises or business enterprises controlled by natural born persons from owning an interest in more than 500 single-family residential properties; prohibits foreign investment vehicles from owning any interest in a single-family residential property to be used as rental property; to provide a private cause of action against a business enterprise that owns an interest in more than 500 single-family residential properties and foreign investment vehicles; to provide for the disclosure of information by brokers. Referred to Economic Development and Tourism Committee.
SB 464–Dem Prohibits federal immigration authorities from utilizing certain technologies to identify individuals. Referred to Public Safety Committee
