Georgia First Issues “Negative Watch” Risk Score for State of Georgia Elections, Signaling Decline from 2023 Report

Risk Rating Bulletin highlights legislative, regulatory, and legal activities impacting election administration stability

Flowery Branch, Ga., March 19, 2025 — Yesterday, Georgia First, a Georgia-based nonprofit policy and advocacy organization whose mission includes ensuring election access and security, released its 2024 interim Democracy and Elections Risk Rating Bulletin, which assigned Georgia a “Negative Watch” risk rating, signaling an observed decline in election administration stability since the release of its full Democracy and Elections Scoring Report in 2023.

The 2024 “Negative Watch” designation comes as Georgia has seen a significant uptick in legislative, regulatory, and legal actions challenging the elections process during the second year of the Georgia Assembly’s 2023-2024 biennial legislative session. On the legislative front, the report highlights several bills heard in the 2024 legislative session with language Georgia First identified as problematic to the democratic elections process, including HB 976, SB 189, and SB 358. Ultimately, SB 189 was passed into law, with key problematic elements of the bill lowering the threshold for mass voter challenges and removing Georgia’s Secretary of State from the State Election Board (SEB), among others.

On the regulatory front, the report highlights significant changes to and from the SEB, including a range of SEB appointments that created a far-right majority on the board, an increase in overtly partisan public statements by the SEB, and most concerningly, the SEB exceeding its statutory authority and legislating through the rulemaking process in the final months before a national election, defying the advice of its mandated legal counsel, the Georgia Attorney General (AG).

These regulatory actions by the SEB resulted in legal action from a host of plaintiffs across the political spectrum, many arguing that the SEB had exceeded its authority under Georgia law. In partnership with pro-democracy and rule-of-law supporters, Georgia First, driven by the belief that the SEB has a responsibility to make voting easier and more accessible for all eligible voters, not just those who are politically aligned with Board members, filed nine amici curiae (friend of the court briefs) in support of both Republican- and Democratic-led lawsuits. Ultimately, the lawsuits resulted in favorable judicial rulings, halting the implementation of SEB proposed rules for the 2024 General Election.

In its inaugural Democracy and Elections Scoring Report, released during the first year of the 2023-2024 General Assembly biennium cycle, Georgia First scored Georgia “Above Average”, using the authors’ five-tier, custom-developed rubric focusing on multiple criteria across four categories: elections integrity and security, election administration, elections funding, and voter access and participation. Yesterday’s 2024 interim Risk Rating Bulletin provides an update to the 2023 full report, reflecting important democracy and elections-related developments between the 2023 legislative session and its release, using a custom-developed three-tier risk rating scale:

• Positive Watch, which signifies no legislative or regulatory tinkering and compliance with state legal guidance and constitutional authority;
• Neutral Outlook, which signifies that overall legislative, regulatory, and legal landscape have generally maintained conditions at the time the preceding full report rating was issued; and
• Negative Watch, which signifies significant legislative tinkering, regulatory actions that fall outside the purview of a board or elected official, inconsistent compliance with all state laws governing administrative functions, and significant legal actions resulting from questionable or unlawful legislative/regulatory election actions.

Georgia First will continue to issue full democracy and elections scoring reports during the first year of each biennium legislative cycle and shorter, interim risk rating bulletins to reflect the second year.

Informed by developments through 2024, Georgia First is closely watching several pieces of legislation introduced in the first year of the 2025-2026 biennial legislative session that will negatively impact Georgia’s democracy and elections score in the full 2025 report if passed as written: HB 215, HB 604, HB 661, & SB 303.

“We support several bills as they are written this session, but these four bills do not enhance Georgia’s election integrity,” stated Natalie Crawford, Founder and Executive Director of Georgia First. “Limiting access to the ERIC system, making it difficult for eligible voters to participate, requiring unreliable hand counts, and undermining the constitutional authority of the Secretary of State to place that power in the hands of a partisan State Election Board do nothing to increase the security and integrity of our elections.”

To mitigate further risks for the upcoming 2025 scoring report, Georgia First recommends that the state focus on halting excessive legislative changes, ensuring proper election funding, consulting local election officials, adhering to legal counsel guidance, and maintaining the constitutional role of the Office of the Secretary of State. Georgia First believes these steps are crucial to preserving trust, rebuilding voter confidence, and ensuring Georgia’s electoral process is safe, accessible, secure, and easy for every eligible voter.

The full Democracy and Elections 2024 Risk Rating Bulletin is available here.
The full Democracy and Elections 2023 Report is available here under “Resources.”

####