ATLANTA (AP) — A two-month sprint to the May 19 primary elections in Georgia’s governor and U.S. Senate races has begun as the final candidates qualified Friday for crucial posts in the closely contested swing state.

Republicans looking to oust incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff are touting their support for President Donald Trump and focusing more on slamming the Democratic incumbent than each other. Candidates to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp are jockeying for position in wide-open Republican and Democratic fields.

Qualifying in Georgia is a weeklong political festival at the state Capitol where candidates try out their best lines and try to project strength. Here is a look at what people had to say:

U.S. Senate

Ossoff is opposed by Republicans including U.S. Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter as well as former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley.

Ossoff rallied with supporters Monday, arguing voters should reelect him because “they recognize this president has gone too far, that the chaos and the corruption and the cruelty are wrong for Georgia and wrong for the country.”

Ossoff said voters see “a need for checks and balances” against Trump, warning: “My opponents will be his puppets.”

Collins called Ossoff “California’s third senator.” Collins touted endorsements including Wednesday’s nod by The Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group.

“We need to be spending every minute that we got making sure that this country is safe, making sure it’s productive, and making sure that it is affordable to people here,” Collins said.

Dooley said his years as a coach give him the ability to reach people who don’t normally cast GOP ballots.

“It’s important we have a candidate that can appeal to a lot of these crossover voters, people who don’t always vote in the midterms, who don’t always vote Republican,” he said.

Carter had one thing on his mind as he registered to qualify: “We’ve got to get rid of Jon Ossoff.”

“My plan is to win,” Carter said. “Let’s keep the main thing the main thing.”

Republicans for Governor

Republican Rick Jackson found himself shaking hands with schoolchildren Friday after he became the last major candidate for governor to qualify, with the health care baron saying that despite his heavy spending on ads that “there is no way to buy an election. You’ve got to earn it.”

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, endorsed by Trump, said he is unfazed by Jackson’s splashy entrance into a field of eight Republicans.

“The newness is going to wear off, and they’re going to look to the person who’s been most consistent throughout the years,” Jones said. “And I have that.”

Despite a resolution last year by the Georgia Republican Party calling on party officials to refuse to qualify Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, he signed papers Wednesday without a hitch. The resolution shows the deep hostility many Republican activists have toward Raffensperger following his refusal to help Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Raffensperger is sidestepping those questions in his run for governor, saying “the most important thing right now is how do you kind of deal with this affordability crisis and you create good paying jobs.”

Attorney General Chris Carr, the fourth major Republican candidate, touts his record on recruiting jobs and fighting crime, saying that people “care about jobs, safety, education, affordability.”

“They don’t really want to talk about social issues the way the right and the left traditionally have,” Carr said, even as Jackson and Jones have jousted over the treatment of transgender children and adults

Democrats for Governor

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, regarded by many as the front-runner among the eight Democrats running for governor, told reporters Monday that her issues, including affordability, free technical college, and cutting state income taxes for teachers, will appeal not just to Democrats, but to general election voters who haven’t elected Democrats for the last 24 years.

“I’m speaking my truth on what I feel a leader and a governor in this state needs to offer to people, so I don’t have to worry about changing my message for a general election audience,” Bottoms said.

Republican-turned Democrat Geoff Duncan again touted his possible crossover appeal, saying he is “focused on the affordability crisis, the health care crisis, and unfortunately still the Donald Trump crisis.”

Former state Sen. Jason Esteves touted his own platform, but also aimed some fire at Bottoms and Duncan. He noted that Bottoms chose not to run for a second term as mayor and that Duncan, after supporting Republican policies as lieutenant governor that he now disavows, also stepped out of the political arena.

“We can’t afford to have folks that will stay silent, nor can we have folks that are going to be absent or quit when the going gets tough,” Esteves said.

Former DeKalb County CEO Mike Thurmond teared up as he described his low-income upbringing as a Black man to his track record of political success today as evidence of the “American dream.”

“I’m here representing all of those Georgians who couldn’t afford to be here today, who are pulling two jobs, working overtime, can’t afford the pay their insurance,” he said.

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge in Georgia on Friday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit seeking voter information from the state, ruling the federal government had sued in the wrong city.

U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal found the government should have sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Atlanta, and not in a separate federal judicial district in Macon, where the secretary of state also has an office.

Royal dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning the Justice Department can refile it. The department declined to comment Friday.

The Justice Department has now filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia seeking voter information as part of its effort to collect detailed voting data, including dates of birth and driver’s license and Social Security numbers. A federal judge in California rejected the lawsuit against that state on privacy grounds, while a judge in Oregon has suggested he may dismiss the case there.

The Trump administration characterizes the lawsuits as an effort to ensure election security, and the Justice Department says the states are violating federal law by refusing to provide voter lists and information.

Raffensperger has been the rare Republican to decline the demand, saying Georgia law prohibits the release of voters’ confidential personal unless certain qualifications are met. Raffensperger argues the federal government hasn’t met those conditions. He says he shared the public part of the voter roll and information about how Georgia removes ineligible or outdated registrations in December.

“I will always follow the law and follow the Constitution,” Raffensperger said in a statement Friday. “I won’t violate the oath I took to stand up for the people of this state, regardless of who or what compels me to do otherwise.”

The refusal to hand over the records has become an issue in Raffensperger’s 2026 run for governor. Raffensperger in January 2021 famously refused a demand from President Donald Trump in a phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Many Trump-loving Republicans still hold a grudge against Raffensperger.

The issue flared just Thursday in a hearing by a state Senate committee where multiple Republican state senators slammed Raffensperger for failing to comply, saying he legally could do so. The committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution calling on Raffensperger to hand over the data and calling it the “latest example of a pattern of behavior by the secretary and his office to refuse oversight of his administration of Georgia’s elections.”

State Sen. Randy Robertson, a Republican from Cataula who filed the resolution, said the dismissal is “frustrating” because even if the Justice Department refiles the lawsuit, the problem will take longer to resolve.

“As public officials we all should participate in any investigation done by a law enforcement agency,” Robertson told The Associated Press Friday.

Robertson is one of many Republican lawmakers backing Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over Raffensperger for the GOP governor nomination. Jones, who already has Trump’s endorsement for governor, was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

ATLANTA (AP) — There may be no rank-and-file Democratic senator with more at stake from the federal government shutdown than Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.

He is the party’s only senator who is seeking reelection next year in a state that Republican Donald Trump won in 2024, and any chance that Democrats may have in regaining Senate control depends on Ossoff holding the seat. As the second-longest shutdown in history drags on and Democrats insist on extending expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies beyond year’s end, more people in Georgia than most other states are likely to lose health insurance if the tax credits go away.

Ossoff, like other Democrats, is betting that stand is sound policy and good politics, too.

“Georgians don’t want their health insurance premiums to skyrocket, and they want the federal government reopened,” the first-term senator told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It is in everyone’s interest to achieve those goals.”

Republicans see an opening if they can blame Ossoff and his party for the shutdown and the fallout on Americans.

Two Republican challengers, former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, held events outside Ossoff’s Atlanta office early in the shutdown, which began Oct. 1; Collins even delivered a symbolic pink slip to fire Ossoff. Meantime, Dooley and a third candidate, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, call it the “Schumer-Ossoff shutdown,” giving Ossoff equal billing with the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.

Ossoff’s strategy: Focus on people whose health coverage is at risk. On Oct. 8, for example, he released a video with Georgians, including Himali Patel from a hospital bed, speaking directly into a camera. She told the AP on Monday that she goes to an Atlanta hospital at least three days a week to be treated for multiple ailments.

“When you have this many illnesses and you need this much care, having affordable care is extremely important,” Patel said.

Georgians at risk

About 1.5 million Georgians are insured this year through Democratic President Barack Obama’s health overhaul that was enacted in 2010. Because Georgia is one of 10 states that has not fully expanded Medicaid, as was envisioned under “Obamacare,” it has a larger population covered by the law’s marketplace policies than in Medicaid-expansion states.

“Particularly because we have such a high number of low-income folks in our marketplace, and they’re very price sensitive, we have a much higher risk of seeing those people drop out of the insurance pool,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future.

The group, which promotes expanded health coverage, projects that 340,000 Georgians could drop coverage because of higher prices. Georgia’s state-run marketplace released next year’s prices on Oct. 7, and big premium increases are already causing anxiety, said Kirk Lyman-Barner, an insurance agent in Americus.

“So far, everything is as bad or worse than what they expected,” Lyman-Barner said. He said low-income people who had been paying nothing or $10 per month are being quoted at $140 to $160 per month next year, while better-off people who had been paying less than $1,000 per month are being asked to pay $2,000.

Lyman-Barner, like many experts, said a solution for 2026 is “not very likely at this point” because it would take time to revise rates.

“It’s too late right now, and a lot of people are going to get out,” he said. “It’s going to be really hard to market to those folks and get them back in.”

The Republicans critical of Ossoff are not offering much in the way of alternatives. Carter and Dooley say Republicans should negotiate on subsidies after the government reopens. Collins did not respond to questions about his stance.

“Democrats are holding hostage our troops and our federal employees,” Carter told the AP. He said military families and other federal employees are hurting in his coastal district, and he is hoping they will remember it when they vote next year.

Dooley has said Democrats should have pushed earlier to preserve the subsidies. “Why are we bringing this up at the eleventh hour and holding the government hostage to get what we want?” Dooley asked.

Collins echoed Republican criticism of Ossoff for sending fundraising solicitations during the shutdown, saying the senator’s move “certainly doesn’t make it safer or more affordable for Georgians.”

Ossoff, seeking to blunt the pain felt by federal employees, voted with Republicans last week for a bill that would have paid federal employees and contractors who are required to work, as did Democrat Raphael Warnock, the state’s other senator.

Ossoff tries to maintain a reputation for working with Republicans, but he said Tuesday that the “political atmosphere in Washington right now is so poisonous that it’s proving very difficult.” He called for the House to go back into session and for “high level engagement” by Trump.

Democrats bet premium shock will weaken GOP

Democrats believe the shock of those premium increases will bolster their political position and weaken Republicans’ resolve, given polling that shows most Americans want the subsidies extended and there is enduring support for the health law. That is also true in the South, where large numbers of people are insured under the law.

One Georgia Republican who has wavered is U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally who on Tuesday criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for keeping the chamber shut down. She said her party needs a plan to provide lower-cost insurance, even while she made clear that she opposes the health overhaul.

“Is it too much for me to ask what is my party’s plan to build the off ramp off of Obamacare onto price transparency, a competitive market, and affordable high quality care?” Greene posted on X. ”Nov. 1 is Saturday, starting open enrollment with already high premiums skyrocketing.”

Colbert, the health care advocate, said it is possible Georgians will blame their insurers rather than politicians of either party “because the health insurance company is a reliable villain.” But Ossoff said he thinks voters will fault Republicans, who hold power in Washington.

“Over the last month. I think it’s become very clear to Georgians that they are at risk of imminent and unnecessary skyrocketing health care costs,” he said.

But the costs of the shutdown are growing.

Food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be cut off after Friday. Democrats say the Trump administration should use $5 billion in reserve funds to keep paying benefits. Head Start programs could lose funding for preschool programs. Airport delays could worsen as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration workers go unpaid.

Ossoff said that may leave the question of who is responsible up to voters.

“At some point, if Republicans in Congress and the president are simply unwilling to address the huge increases in health care costs for the American people, perhaps the public’s only recourse will be in next year’s election,” he said.

ATLANTA (AP) — Here’s how a Georgia legislative session is supposed to end:

After a last-minute rush of negotiations, lawmakers jam through final agreements on a few more bills as the clock ticks past midnight.

Legislative staffers crowd into chambers as leaders thank employees against a soundtrack of paper being ripped into pieces.

Finally, the presiding officer recognizes the climactic motion to adjourn “sine die,” a Latin phrase that means to leave without a day to return.

Then everyone tosses shredded paper into the air and cheers.

Friday, though, Georgia’s state Senate just left.

The motion to adjourn by Republican Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch of Dahlonega came shortly after 9 p.m. with none of the usual buildup. There was no thanks to the staff. Senators hadn’t even torn up much paper.

Maybe next year

Georgia lawmakers can pick up bills in 2026 where they left off Friday, the second year of a two-year session, but they left plenty on the table.

Among items that didn’t pass were proposals to force Georgia to leave a multistate election group, a push by Jones to establish more legislative controlover rules enacted by state agencies, an effort to ban diversity programs in public schools and colleges and a bill to let people sue local governments for not cooperating with federal immigration officials.

The sudden departure came after it became increasingly clear some Senate measures were languishing in the House and that Senate leaders had lost their appetite to bargain. It was possible to leave early because lawmakers had already agreed on a budget and other highest-priority legislation including tax cuts, a school safety bill, new limits on lawsuits and banning transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports.

The collision was reminiscent of the 2023 legislative session, the first year Burns and Jones led their chambers. Many big issues didn’t pass after the chambers got into a standoff over the budget and licensing rules for hospitals. Then, it appeared Jones was trying to force his will on the House, a reversal of the traditional dynamic in Georgia, where the House has often had its way.

Ultimately, many issues derailed in 2023 ended up passing in 2024, including loosening hospital permitting requirements, imposing basic protections for renters and creating a voucher program to pay for private school and home-schooling.

House members bewildered by exit

As senators cheered their departure Friday, veteran state Rep. Alan Powell was at the microphone in the House proposing changes to a hotly debated bill to regulate automated speed detection cameras in school zones.

Suddenly, there was no reason for the Hartwell Republican to continue, as there were no senators left to agree to amendments.

Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington and his staff exchanged bewildered glances as House lawmakers murmured.

“It appears that the Senate has checked all their priorities, all their political priorities, and decided to end their night early instead of finishing their work on behalf of the people we represent,” Burns told the House. “Of course, they’re free to do as they please, but this chamber puts policy over politics.”

Many longtime lawmakers were baffled. House Rules Committee Chairman Butch Parrish, a Swainsboro Republican who has served since the 1980s, said senators “broke new ground.”

Representatives approved a few more bills that didn’t need further Senate action, and then also went home early.

Conflict may not cause lasting damage

Jones downplayed any conflict.

“What do you mean what happened?” Jones said afterward. “We ended session.”

Jones said senators had achieved their goals and he had been bucking for an early adjournment all day.

“We got a lot of things done,” he said. “And so there was no need to stay here until midnight.”

Some minority Democrats were ecstatic because bills they opposed didn’t become law. “Victory!” shouted Atlanta Democrat Shea Roberts as she left the Capitol.

“The reality is that a lot of this session was spent on political messaging bills and on politics instead of focusing on Georgian families,” said state Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat considering a run for governor in 2026.

Both Jones and Burns said there are no hard feelings over how things ended Friday, although Burns said he would have liked to clinch an agreement on school zone speed cameras.

House Majority Whip James Burchett, a Waycross Republican, said that while House members may have held off on passing Senate proposals to “fully vet” them, the chambers have no choice but to work together.

“The Senate needs the House and the House needs the Senate,” Burchett said. “It would do no good if anyone were to hold some sort of grudge for this.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Three Republican holdouts in the Georgia Senate got on board with Gov. Brian Kemp’s top-priority legislation to limit lawsuits, showing the state’s Republican leader remains at the height of his political power well into his second term.

The bills cleared a big hurdle this week by passing out of a Senate committee, at the same time Kemp has been negotiating with potential detractors and marshalling a lobbying and advertising campaign.

Proponents say the legislation, which they call tort reform, would help businesses, physicians, property owners, and others save money from frivolous lawsuits and lower insurance rates. Opponents say there’s no proof insurance rates would drop and worry people won’t win compensation when they’re wronged.

In order to get the bills out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kemp had to get past three legislators most likely to pump the brakes — Sen. Blake Tillery of Vidalia, Sen. Brian Strickland of McDonough, and Sen. Bo Hatchett of Cornelia — all of whom are trial lawyers.

Tillery asked the most questions during the hearing, including a suggestion to make sure whoever loses a lawsuit bear the court costs.

“That’s a different issue for a different day,” said John Kennedy, the Republican Senate president pro tem who’s carrying the bill on Kemp’s behalf. “Not here. It’s not what the governor wanted to propose in his tort reform package.”

Tillery asked again.

“This is the governor’s bill,” Kennedy said.

One bill passed the committee 8-3 late Tuesday evening, with Tillery and Hatchett voting for it. Strickland, who chairs the committee, only votes to break ties. A second bill passed with support from all Republicans and two Democrats on the committee, with one opposing.

Kemp, in 2023, promised one of his top allies, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, that he’d limit lawsuits but opted for further study after he couldn’t build consensus for action at the Capitol.

“This year has changed the previous playbook on this issue to engage people outside of the Gold Dome,” said Cody Hall, a Kemp political strategist.

Lobbyists on both sides of the issue are spending heavily and Kemp has threatened a special session if his bills don’t pass. Hundreds of proponents — including doctors, business owners and even road-paving workers with reflective vests — swarmed the state Capitol when Kemp unveiled his legislation.

Jen Jordan, a Democrat who gave up her state Senate seat to make an unsuccessful bid for attorney general in 2022, said Kemp’s leadership committee is a big source of his power. That campaign finance vehicle allows the governor to raise unlimited campaign funds even during a legislative session, while regular candidate committees face contribution limits and can’t raise money during session.

“Kemp has so much power right now because he has all the money, and he is using it,” Jordan said.

Kemp’s Georgians First leadership committee reported $3.25 million on hand as of Jan. 31, having raised $2.4 million in the preceding six months.

The first bill sets stricter standards for when people are accountable for injuries on their property, and stops attorneys from recovering fees twice for the same case. It also makes sure people are compensated for how much they actually paid for medical procedures, and separates trials for assigning responsibility and determining damages, among other changes. A second bill regulates outside parties investing in litigation and prevents foreign adversaries and governments from funding it.

ATLANTA (AP) — From Georgia’s mountains to its Atlantic shore, challenges to the qualifications of voters have rolled in this summer and fall, part of a wide-ranging national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to enlist Republican activists to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls.

Thus far, barely 1% of people called into question have been removed from the rolls or placed into challenged status, mostly because counties are disregarding challenges. But those who allege Georgia’s voting rolls are bloated with ineligible voters are trying to change that, filing lawsuits and pushing the Trump-aligned State Election Board to order counties to do more.

The Associated Press finds more than 63,000 Georgians have been challenged since July 1, when a law that could make it easier to uphold challenges partially took effect. The AP’s survey covered Georgia’s 39 most populous counties, as well as six other counties with challenge activity. That’s a big surge from 2023 and the first half of 2024, when the AP found that about 18,000 voters were challenged.

And efforts are spreading geographically. They had been concentrated in majority-Democratic counties in metro Atlanta. But since July 1, 100 or more voters have been challenged in at least 20 counties statewide, including some heavily Republican areas.

As the AP found earlier, county election officials continue rejecting the vast majority of challenges. Fewer than 800 voters since July 1 — mostly in the suburban Atlanta Republican stronghold of Forsyth County — have been removed from the rolls or placed in challenged status. Voters in challenged status can cast ballots if they prove their residence, but counties are supposed to consider removing them next year if they don’t vote.

The effort to remove voters has drawn scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department, which in September issued a seven-page guidance memo that aims to limit challenges and block parts of the new Georgia law by citing 1993’s National Voter Registration Act.

Most of the targeted voters appear to have moved away from their listed addresses, and activists argue letting them stay registered invites fraud. Challengers have been aided by tools which rely on change-of-address lists and other documents to help identify people who could be wrongly registered.

“When ineligible voters remain on the voter rolls, it increases the likelihood of those persons voting in our county, which dilutes the legitimate votes of our citizens,” said Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, which sued its county board of elections this month alleging it was failing to hear challenges. “And every vote by an ineligible voter robs us as citizens of our vote.”

A room full of angry voters

Often, when counties send letters to challenged voters, no one appears at a hearing to defend their eligibility. But in the Savannah suburb of Bryan County on Oct. 10, a room full of angry voters applauded as the county board dismissed challenges because the person who filed them didn’t appear for a hearing.

“I’m frustrated with this entire process, that we all had to be here today,” Michael Smith said at the hearing. “I’m frustrated that our state passed a poorly thought-out law that required and allowed somebody to do this to all of us.”

Many Democrats and liberal voting rights activists argue Republicans are challenging voters either to remove Democrats or to sow doubt about the accuracy of elections in advance of 2024 presidential voting. The voter challenge movement stems from fears that long existed about illegal voting but grew to dominate the Republican Party after Trump’s unsupported claims of voter fraud led many to believe Joe Biden didn’t win Georgia in 2020.

“We are amplifying lies and misunderstandings, fundamental misunderstandings, of how election law works,” state Rep. Saira Draper of Atlanta, who was the state Democratic Party’s director of voter protection in 2020, told the State Election Board on Oct. 8.

Opponents say disqualification efforts rest on faulty foundations. They say voters who change their mailing addresses haven’t necessarily changed their residences and that some information challengers use is outdated. Particularly under fire are voter challenge tools including EagleAI and True the Vote’s IV3.

“EagleAI is a third-party program that scrapes the internet that was reviewed by county election offices as being worse than the programs that they have already,” Draper said.

But State Election Board Executive Director Mike Coan, assigned by the board to examine whether challenges are being unfairly denied in eight counties, said he believes challengers are providing “a free public service for our state” by helping clean up the rolls. Some counties say challenges compiled using EagleAI don’t meet the legal standard to remove a voter, but Coan disagrees.

“When you’ve got people out there who have technology that is far superior, you should be listening, not turning your head and looking the other way,” Coan said.

He concluded the denial of many challenges by counties “goes against the very spirit and the letter of the law.”

“There are thousands and thousands of challenges that have been dismissed arbitrarily,” Coan told board members. He and Trump-aligned board members suggested the board should make statewide rules to guarantee more challenges are heard.

Federal and state law may conflict

Rulemaking would confront underlying disagreements over whether federal and state laws block counties from hearing the vast majority of activists’ challenges. Justice Department guidance issued last month suggests some parts of the state law that took effect July 1 are overridden by federal law.

After the 2020 election, the GOP-led state legislature specified each voter can file unlimited challenges against other people in their county. That came after Texas-based vote monitoring group True the Vote challenged 364,000 Georgia voters prior to two U.S. Senate runoffs in 2021. Lawmakers this year enacted another law that defined probable cause for removing challenged voters and said counties could remove voters until 45 days before the election.

But federal law says a state can make systematic changes to voter rolls only up to 90 days before an election. The Justice Department guidance says systematic changes include not only government-led efforts but also challenges compiled using programs like EagleAI.

Even some deeply Republican counties postponed action until January, but a few counties have considered action after the 90-day deadline.

Another disagreement involves challenges to people who have moved.

Through routine voter list maintenance that doesn’t require a challenge, officials remove voters who are dead, convicted of felonies, mentally incompetent or no longer living in Georgia.

But federal law says Georgia can only cancel a registration for a voter who has moved if the voter doesn’t respond to a mailing, enters what is called inactive status, and then doesn’t vote in the two following federal general elections. That process takes more than two years.

Challengers, relying on change-of-address lists, have been targeting inactive voters for immediate removal. They argue the waiting period doesn’t apply to challenges.

Officials in Democratic counties have routinely disagreed, but some Republican-dominated counties see it differently. Forsyth County has removed or placed in challenged status 635 voters since July 1, according to board minutes, accounting for 80% of challenges upheld in surveyed counties.

Forsyth County remains an outlier, though. For now, voter challenges have had little impact in Georgia. But if courts and the Republican-majority State Election Board smooth the path, that could change. Challengers show no signs of going away.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s state House speaker says lawmakers in 2025 will consider new policies to foster student mental health, detect guns and encourage people to safely store guns after a school shooting killed four at a high school northeast of Atlanta.

But Republican Jon Burns of Newington is stopping short of Democratic demands that include universal background checks, a mandate to safely lock up guns and a “red flag” law letting the state temporarily take guns from someone in crisis.

The proposals made Thursday by Burns are the first policy response to the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.

The gambit by the Republican leader comes as he tries to protect his party’s 102-78 majority in the state House in November’s elections. Arguments over gun policy could influence a handful of competitive seats in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, including three held by Republican incumbents.

“While House Republicans have already made significant investments to strengthen security in our schools, increase access to mental healthcare, and keep our students safe, I am committed to not only continuing this work but pursuing additional policies that help ensure a tragedy like this never happens in our state again,” Burns wrote.

It’s unclear what response other top Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov Burt Jones, will desire. Kemp called the shooting “our worst nightmare” hours after the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. Nine others were injured — seven of them shot.

Democrats have been slamming Republicans, arguing the shooting is an outgrowth of the GOP loosening Georgia’s gun laws.

“What makes this more devastating than it already is is knowing that we had the policy tools to prevent this tragedy from ever happening in the first place,” Rep. Saira Draper of Atlanta said Friday as she and fellow Democrats demanded a special legislative session on gun violence. “And that we did not use them because my Republican colleagues chose to gamble with our children’s lives rather than face the wrath of the gun lobby.”

Investigators say the shooting was carried out by 14-year-old Colt Gray, charged as an adult with four counts of murder. Authorities charged his 54-year-old father, Colin Gray, with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children. Investigators allege Colin Gray gave his son access to a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle when he knew the teen was a danger to himself and others.

Burns said he wants to consider information sharing among police, schools and mental health workers, a nod to the fact that Colt and Colin Gray were questioned in 2023 by a Jackson County sheriff’s deputy over an online post threatening a school shooting. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum has said her office didn’t find enough evidence to bring charges. It’s unclear if Colt Gray’s earlier schools were notified about the threats.

“We are aware that a breakdown in communication between school systems and law enforcement officials allowed the shooter’s prior history to slip through the cracks upon his transfer to Apalachee High School,” Burns wrote.

The speaker also said he wants to expand mental health care for students. The state’s voluntary Apex program steers students toward counseling. The program covered 540,000 of Georgia’s 1.75 million students in 2022-2023, about 31%.

Burns also wants to examine ways to catch guns before they enter schools. Some schools are using camera systems and artificial intelligence to try to detect guns instead of metal detectors.

The speaker proposes increasing penalties for threats against schools, saying he wants to crack down on copycat threats seen since the shooting. Criminal penalties would apply only to those charged as adults, and most threat makers have been arrested as juveniles.

Finally, Burns said House Republicans would again promote safe firearm storage. The House passed legislation this year to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for the purchase of gun safes, trigger locks, other security devices or the costs of courses on safe firearms handling. The Senate preferred a bill exempting gun safes and other safety devices from state sales tax. Both bills failed after the chambers couldn’t agree.

Democrats gained little traction on legislation that would have created a misdemeanor crime for negligently failing to secure firearms accessed by children. Rep. Michelle Au, a Johns Creek Democrat, has promised to bring back that measure.

The speaker said he’s open to other proposals, saying the House will “examine every reasonable idea and solution to protect and defend the most vulnerable among us — our children — while also protecting the right and privilege of our citizens to protect their families and property.”

Burns argued that previous school safety efforts reduced the toll at Apalachee, helping pay for wearable panic buttons that alerted authorities and school resource officers who responded.

State lawmakers and Kemp earlier approved multiple rounds of one-time security grants totaling $184 million.

The budget that began July 1 includes more than $100 million in ongoing funding, enough to provide $47,000 a year to each public school for safety. Schools can use that for chosen security purposes, though Kemp has said he wanted it to help underwrite a security officer for each school.

ATLANTA (AP) — Presidential candidates Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz are disqualified from running for president in Georgia, two state court judges ruled Wednesday, saying that their electors didn’t file the proper paperwork.

For now, at least, the decision means votes for West and De la Cruz won’t be counted in Georgia, even if their names remain on ballots because it’s too late to remove them. Military and overseas ballots are scheduled to be mailed starting Tuesday.

Fulton County Superior Court Judges Thomas A. Cox Jr. and Emily Richardson ordered the state to post notices in polling places warning that West and De la Cruz had been disqualified and that votes for them would be void if their names still appear, a common remedy in Georgia for late election changes.

West has been running as an independent in Georgia. De la Cruz is the nominee for the Party of Socialism and Liberation but technically qualified for the Georgia ballot as an independent.

If the rulings stand, presidential choices for Georgia voters will include Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Kamala Harris, Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, the most candidates since 2000.

Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians automatically qualify for elections in Georgia.

Spokespersons for West and De la Cruz said they would appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.

“We are confident that we will win the appeal,” Edwin DeJesus with the West campaign wrote in an email.

“We are appealing this decision which negates basic democratic rights of the people of Georgia to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Estevan Hernandez, co-chair of De la Cruz’s campaign in Georgia, said in a statement. “This is the result of the effort by the Democratic Party to sabotage democratic rights of Georgia voters at the very moment that they say that the 2024 election is about democracy itself.”

Wednesday’s rulings were the latest turn in the on-again, off-again saga of ballot access for independent and third-party candidates in Georgia. An administrative law judge disqualified West, De la Cruz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Georgia Green Party from the ballot. But Raffensperger, who gets the last word in such matters, overruled the judge, and said West and De la Cruz should get access.

Raffensperger also ruled that under a new Georgia law, Stein should go on Georgia ballots because the national Green Party had qualified her in at least 20 other states.

Kennedy’s name stayed off ballots because he withdrew his candidacy in Georgia and a number of other states after suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump.

Democrats appealed Raffensperger’s decisions on West and De la Cruz and filed a fresh action challenging his decision on Stein, seeking to block candidates who could siphon votes from Harris after Joe Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.

Cox dismissed the Democratic challenge to Stein’s inclusion on Wednesday. He wrote that Raffensperger “has a clear legal duty to allow the Unified Green Party to qualify candidates for presidential elector and to allow those candidates access to the Nov. 4, 2024 General Election ballot.” If Democrats want to contest the issue further, they should do so before an administrative law judge, Cox wrote.

The judge agreed with Democratic arguments that under state law, at least one of West’s electors should have filed a petition with the required 7,500 signatures from registered voters in their own name. Instead, the petition was filed only in West’s name.

“While Dr. West only needed a single presidential elector to properly qualify to provide him with ballot access, none of his candidates satisfied the requirements to do so,” Cox wrote.

Richardson made a similar ruling against De la Cruz.

Georgia is one of several states where Democrats and allied groups have filed challenges to third-party and independent candidates.

Republicans in Georgia intervened, seeking to keep all the candidates on the ballot. That’s just one push in a Republican effort across battleground states to prop up liberal third-party candidates such as West and Stein in an effort to hurt Harris. It’s not clear who’s paying for the effort. But it could matter in states decided by minuscule margins in the 2020 election.