Two members ofGeorgia’spowerful public service commission will finally face primary voters Tuesday after court challenges that threw a competing candidate off of ballots and more than two years of delays that left incumbents in office.
TheGeorgiaPublic Service Commission oversees gas, electric and other utilities, setting rates and regulating power plants for Georgia Power.
Each member of the five-person commission must live in the district assigned to their seat, even though voters across Georgia vote in each race.
All five commissioners areRepublicans, despite Georgia’s close partisan divide and even though two of the districts would strongly favor Democrats if only voters in those districts chose candidates.
A group of Black voters in metro Atlanta led by Richard Rose of the Georgia NAACP challenged Georgia’s unusual at-large system for electing public service commissioners in 2020 under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), arguing that at-large elections dilute Black voting power. Steven Grimberg, a US district court judge, ruled for the plaintiffs in August 2022, leading Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to cancel the 2022 election for two commission seats while lawmakers and appeals courts worked through the issue.
The 11th circuit court of appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling in 2024. The US supreme court declined to take up the case. Had it heard the case, some voting rights advocates were concerned that an adverse ruling might have further eroded the Voting Rights Act by affirming the use of at-large districts nationwide as a broadly acceptable practice.
Raffensberger also canceled the 2024 election for a third seat after the state legislature passed a bill that extended every commissioner’s term by at least one year and reset the election calendar. All three commissioners have been allowed to stay in office while the convoluted legal process played out.
Commissioner Tim Echols faces Lee Muns, a former member of the Columbia county board of education who helped build part of Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle nuclear plant in the late 1980s. The commission has raised electricity rates in recent years to cover cost overruns in Vogtle’s construction. The winner of that contest will face Democrat Alicia Johnson of Savannah in November.
Commissioner Fitz Johnson does not face primary opposition, but three Democrats are vying for their party’s nomination in district three: former Atlanta city councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites, utility activist Peter Hubbard and former utility executive Robert Jones.
A fourth candidate, Daniel Blackman, was removed from the ballot in a residency challenge earlier this month. Joe Biden appointed Blackman as a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency after he narrowly lost a challenge to incumbent public service commissioner Bubba McDaniel in the supercharged January 2021 Georgia runoff election.
Blackman leased a one-bedroom dwelling in Atlanta, but a Fulton county judge ruled that he provided insufficient evidence that he actually lived at the address. Blackman’s wife and child reside in their Forsyth county home north of Atlanta, and Blackman did not change his voter registration from that address until a few weeks ago.
Voters will find notices in polling places of Blackman’s disqualification on Tuesday. Votes cast for him will not be counted, Raffensperger’s office said. Though Georgia voters have increasingly opted to vote early, the off-year election and the uncertainty around Blackman’s challenge to the disqualification has meant a low turnout race so far. Out of about 7.4 million active voters in Georgia, fewer than 75,000 have voted to date.