Georgia House Speaker David Ralston joined GPB’s “Political Rewind” on Friday and made it clear that he’d like to avoid another ‘religious freedom’ debate under the Gold Dome in 2017, as unlikely as that seems.
No doubt feeling the heat from North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s recent defeat, (McCrory passed a similar version of Georgia’s HB 757 last year) Ralston pushed to let the issue drift up the line to the U.S. Congress, who may be better suited to make sure nobody’s Constitutional rights are being infringed upon. Ralston ally and Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, who vetoed HB 757 last year, would surely like to avoid another potential firestorm that would drag all sorts of representatives from religious groups, the business community, and LGBT organizations into his office for the next four months.
That hope, however, seems slim. State Senator Josh McKoon, one of the driving forces behind the legislation, has already promised to resurrect a version of the bill in 2017. After all, the bill sailed through both the state House and Senate before being vetoed by Deal in March. Expect this debate to once again flare up starting in January.
How do you say ‘Gwinnett’ in Spanish?
Per a mandate from the U.S. Census Bureau, Gwinnett County must offer Spanish-language voting materials for all elections, effective immediately. The order comes as a result of Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which states, “Whenever any State or political subdivision [covered by the section] provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language.”
In this case, because a minimum of 5% of voting aged citizens in Gwinnett County were found by the U.S. Census Bureau to not speak enough English to participate in the electoral process, the county must comply with Section 203 and supply Spanish-language materials.
According to Gwinnett spokesman Joe Sorenson, the county will comply with the mandate.
