When you vote Tuesday, your ballot could have a survey question, four questions or none at all, depending on your request.
The Georgia Republican Party included one question about school choice on its ballots statewide for those participating in the party’s primary. Democrats will get four questions about Medicaid expansion, family leave, stream buffers and voter registration. Local parties may have added their own questions.
If you ask for a nonpartisan ballot, you’ll only get to vote for a few judicial races with no chance to express your opinion.
The straw polls don’t have any formal impact, regardless of the results. They do serve to gauge the level of support within each party of particular issues.
The most interesting recent example was in 2012 when both parties coincidentally happened to put on each primary ballot a question about limits on gifts to legislators. Between the two, 81 percent of primary voters signaled their support for the gift restrictions.
As a result, legislative leaders reluctantly enacted a cap on how much lawmakers can accept.
Sometimes the response to straw polls is less pronounced. For instance, the 2012 Republican ballot also contained a question about expanding legalized gambling that just a bare majority favored, showing party leaders that support was too tepid to risk.
This year’s Democratic questions represent positions the party has advocated for some time. The Medicaid-expansion question has even appeared on prior primary straw polls.
No matter how overwhelming the support is among Democratic voters, Republicans holding the levers of power in this state are unlikely to retreat from their staunch opposition to broadening Medicaid eligibility.
However, the results to the sole question on their own primary ballot does have the potential to kick start legislation.
Republicans have already enacted several bills designed to give parents more say in where their children attend school, specifically if there are temporary classrooms or if their child has a handicap. Making vouchers available to all children, though, has only been the subject of one bill since the party took the legislative majority more than a dozen years ago, and the sponsor, Rep. Mark Hamilton, has since resigned, leaving the bill to languish without ever coming to a vote or even a hearing.
A poll of 1,000 Georgia adults conducted in 2014 for Georgia College by Braun Research of Princeton, N.J., showed two out of three people expressed agreement to a question about education savings accounts, another name for vouchers.
That poll offers hope to voucher advocates even though it didn’t propel Hamilton’s bill.
One bit of caution may be warranted from reading too much into the survey. The wording of the question did not mention any of the arguments used against vouchers, such as that they supposedly benefit mostly the rich or that they allegedly take resources out of public schools. If there is a public debate of vouchers, surely those and other arguments will be loudly made.
Nevertheless, Tuesday gives parents their chance to weigh in on the matter for those voting Republican.
Without Hamilton in the legislature, there is no guarantee anyone will propose another voucher bill. There are some very conservative members
and some just as conservative vying in the primary, so a sponsor may be ready to step forward when the General Assembly convenes in January.
Education will already be on the agenda in next year’s session when the recommendations of Gov. Nathan Deal’s reform commission get consideration. The commission proposed changes in how schools are funded but narrowly voted down two draft recommendations related to school choice, including one dealing with vouchers.
Deal hasn’t said publicly how he would react to a voucher bill. Both his parents were public-school educators, a group largely opposed to vouchers.
But then, Deal has pushed other initiatives that most educator groups oppose, such as the state takeover of chronically failing schools that is on the November ballot. So, it’s conceivable that the governor would also be emboldened by an overwhelming “yes” vote on the straw poll question.
The House and Senate leadership usually commission their own voter surveys before assembling their legislative agenda for upcoming sessions. Support for a proposal typically must top 75-80 percent within the party before leaders will claim it as part of their agenda, creating a threshold for the straw poll question.
Farsighted leaders may want to include in their consideration the fact that demographic trends make evident that Georgia will soon turn purple as Republicans see their dominate majority shrink. That may also dampen leaders’ reaction to the straw poll, although a strong response could prompt a new, more balanced survey.
Nevertheless, since no one other than the absent Hamilton has made a voucher proposal, the straw poll is the first chance voters have
gotten to sound off. The results will be interesting to see.
BREAKOUT BOX:
Tuesday’s primary voters will have a chance to participate in a straw poll since the parties have put non-binding questions on the ballots.
Republican question:
Should Georgia empower parents with the right to use the tax dollars allocated for the education of their children, allowing them the freedom to choose among public, private, virtual, and home schools?
Democratic questions:
Should Georgia invest less than 1% of its annual budget to provide healthcare to 500,000 low-income citizens and military veterans by expanding Medicaid?
Should Georgia guarantee paid family leave to include pregnancy, serious illness, care of a family member with a serious health condition, or care for a newborn, newly-adopted child or newly placed foster child?
Should private property on rivers and streams be protected by natural vegetative buffers to ensure that Georgia’s waters are swimmable, drinkable, and fishable?
Should Georgia automatically register to vote all legal and permanent residents upon issuance of a driver’s license or state-issued ID which includes an opt-out provision?
