I got to explain what “gaslighting” meant to one of my republican colleagues this week. If you don’t know the term already, it may help you articulate what you are experiencing over the next four years. Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their own perception of reality.  Like insisting to someone the sky is red when they can clearly see the sky is blue.

This week, the gaslighting was more pervasive than usual. Multiple federal and state level officials are telling us that DOGE is actually about government efficiency. Yeah right. Attorney General Chris Carr and those carrying his water are trying to convince Georgians that Carr isn’t putting Section 504 disability protections at risk with his politically motivated lawsuit. He did. And members of the General Assembly and election denier supporters are saying the best way to “clean” the Georgia voter rolls is to pass a law that will prohibit our use of the best tool that exists for *checks notes* cleaning the voter rolls. Make it make sense.

You know what? No one is going to convince me the sky is red when I can see with my own eyes it is blue. Stay resolute about what you know to be true. Keep repeating the truth, which will give others the comfort to do the same. Do NOT let the gaslighters dictate the narrative.

In this edition of the Draper Paper

• Making Noise About Federal Layoffs

• Election Bills on the Horizon

  • HB 215: ERIC Prohibition Bill

  • HB 502: Parents to the Front of the Voting Line

  • SEB Reforms: Stop last minute rules

  • SEB Reforms: SEB member removal

    • Does AG Chris Carr read his lawsuits before signing them?

    • Highlights from this Week at the Capitol

Last week we set out to bring attention to the cruelty directed at federal workers by the Trump administration. From the emails pressuring federal workers to resign to the mass indiscriminate firings at the CDC, it’s been a rough few weeks.

I asked you to join me at a press conference last Friday. My goals were to bring attention to the issue, frame the issue for the press, and help Georgians understand how the incapacitating of the CDC could impact them, too.

And wow did you deliver. We had an extremely successful press conference and got our message out. We were the leading story in Saturday’s AJC.

We also made 11 Alive, Atlanta News First, The New York Times, and CNN (so far!)

A special thank you to our three public health experts who spoke. They really made the case for the importance of the CDC and the potential public health harms if the CDC were to be gutted. As Dr. Katrina Kretsinger, retired team lead for the CDC’s global measles team, put it: “The work the CDC does is invisible until it’s not.” The other speakers were Dr. John Besser, former Deputy Chief of the Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch at the U.S. CDC, and Dr. Carlos del Rio, chair of the department of medicine at Emory University and professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. del Rio was also the past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

And to everyone else who showed up—current and former CDC employees, allies, friends and neighbors—THANK YOU. We cannot bring the attention this issue deserves if people don’t demand it.

During the conference, we called on our statewide leaders to stand up for us, and they showed us who they are. Governor Kemp hasn’t deviated from his “rightsizing” comment. Lt. Governor Jones said this was Trump doing what he said he would do— trim the fat. Shame on them. DOGE’s reckless approach will harm more and more Georgians if it’s allowed to proceed unfettered. In the clip below, I ask them to do the right thing.

votesaira

View more on Instagram

Do not despair. We will continue to call on them and others to stand up for Georgians rather than their own political interests. Rest assured, there are many standing with us.

If you would like to see the whole press conference, which lasted about 35 minutes, you can view it here.

On Saturday, after an email went out to federal employees telling them to account for what they did in the previous week or possibly lose their jobs, I took to social media to call out the insanity. It’s not “just an email.” It’s an escalation of a pattern of harassment by a hostile actor. Let’s continue to call it out. These layoffs and heavy handed pressure tactics are going to backfire.

votesaira

View more on Instagram

So what’s next? We keep making noise. More plans coming soon (have you subscribed to the Draper Paper yet?)

HB 215: Election deniers want to prohibit the best tool we have against voter fraud 

First, the bad. This week, a sub-committee advanced HB 215, which would prevent Georgia from participating in a multistate data exchange that election officials and voting rights advocates say has been key to maintaining accurate voter rolls.

The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, has been around since 2021 and identified more than 1.9 million registrations of voters who should be removed from the rolls. Georgia is one of 24 member states that depends on this database to maintain accurate voter rolls.

ERIC is reliable because it gathers voter status information from secured government records, property tax records, motor vehicle department reports and other sources that identify people who have moved from one state to another, died, or are ineligible to vote for other reasons.

At the same time, ERIC employs rigorous security protocols such as encryption and hashing to protect voter personal data from being leaked.

It’s a powerful tool for preventing voter fraud. The most powerful one available, in fact.

Yet election deniers want to prohibit Georgia from using it.

The reality is, despite what they say publicly, backers of HB 215 aren’t worried about clean voter rolls.

That’s their ruse for dismissing ERIC because in addition to making the voter rolls more accurate, ERIC can be used to identify people who are eligible to be registered.

More evidence of a ruse: the bill prohibits ERIC while allowing Georgia to use other third-party groups to verify voter information.

During sub-committee testimony, the bill sponsor encouraged the use of EagleAI as an alternative to ERIC. EagleAI is the same error-ridden program election deniers use to file mass, meritless voter challenges.

The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice bluntly labeled it as a program created for no other reason than to undermine voting rights.

The information collected by EagleAI is notoriously inaccurate. Unlike ERIC, EagleAI does not have access to private personal information like driver license numbers, full birth dates, and Social Security information— the kind of details needed to specifically identify a voter. Without ample, accurate data, it is easy to confuse voters with the same names or similar birth dates, etc. Which of course, in the election denier world, is a feature, not a bug.

HB 215 should go to a full committee vote this week. I’ll keep you posted.

HB 502: Parents to the Front of the Voting Line

I filed several election-related bills this week that I hope will improve our voting system.

I brought back a bill I filed last session that would allow parents with young kids to skip to the front of the voting line. It was inspired by my experience in 2020 when I showed up to vote in the Senate runoff and had to wait in a long line with two of my three kids in tow. While I stuck it out, many parents would have gone home.

HB 502 would give parents accompanied by a child 2 or under he option to go to the front of the line. It’s a courtesy we already offer our seniors and voters with disabilities. Giving parents the same break would make it more likely they vote.

The bill has bipartisan support and passed committee in 2023 and 2024. I hope to have a committee hearing this week.

SEB Reforms: Stop last-minute, non-emergency rule changes

You may recall just days before voting started last fall, the State Election Board began pushing rule changes that were impossible for election offices to fully implement in the time they had before the election. The last minute rule changes injected chaos into election preparations and diverted resources from other critical voter services. In essence, by passing so many rules at the last minute, the SEB weaponized the rules process against the offices that administer elections. Thankfully, the courts stepped in and stopped the rules from moving forward. 

My bill House Bill 503 would stop that fiasco from happening again.

HB 503 prohibits the SEB from making any non-emergency rule changes in even numbered years— years when we hold federal elections. If this bill were adopted, new rules would have to be proposed early and there would be time for thorough deliberation and implementation.

The bill is assigned to the Governmental Affairs committee and I have requested a hearing for this week.

SEB Reforms: SEB member removal

Georgia law already provides a process for naming the five members of the State Election Board, but it is silent on how a member can be removed when the Legislature is not in session.

I proposed in House Bill 501 that the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate have the authority to remove any member selected by their respective chambers while the legislature is not in session.

It is too dangerous to hold off on these decisions until the few months that the General Assembly meets. I consider tapping the Speaker and Senate President a good alternative as it mirrors the SEB member selection process while we aren’t in session.

The bill is assigned to the Governmental Affairs committee and I have requested a hearing for this week.

You probably heard that GOP Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr wants to run for governor next year. That is the only reason I can find that would explain some of his politically driven decisions like the one to sign onto a Texas lawsuit that calls for the elimination of federal funds benefiting disabled students.

Last week, several members of my caucus went to the well lamenting his decision to risk Section 504 protections. Thousands of Georgia children with disabilities depend on Section 504 to provide them the educational services they need to have equal access to education

I was shocked to hear the AG and my Republican colleague in the House tell the public Democrats were lying to them and stoking fear for political gain. In a statement, Carr said the lawsuit “in no way, shape, or form would affect Georgia’s existing 504 disability program. The lawsuit would not end 504 protections for Georgia students.”

He told terrified parents calling his office the same thing. 

He was gaslighting us, and I couldn’t let that stand. 

It was easy to call him out. All I had to do was use his own words against him. And thanks to my friend Senator Josh McLaurin, I even got to use a prop. Hear my short speech here. 

votesaira

View more on Instagram

Since the outcry, Carr continues to double down and say that’s not what he “intended.” No one cares what you intended, sir. What matters are the words on the page of the lawsuit you signed.

Let’s remember this come election time, shall we?

Another busy week! I love visits from my constituents.

And if you made it this far, wish my oldest happy birthday. He turned 10(!!!) last week. Double digits!

Yours in service,