We’re less than a week from Election Day, and many Georgians believe this year’s election won’t be fair.
The latest evidence comes from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll that found nearly 3 out of 10 likely voters are not confident the election will be conducted fairly.
That’s why the work of the Democracy Defense Project is so important.
It’s a new organization led by a bipartisan group of former elected officials and leaders from Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin working to defend the transparency, safety, security and validity of our nation’s electoral system.
The Georgia branch of the project focuses on a bipartisan group of politicians that includes: former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, former Democratic Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, former Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes.
Franklin, Chambliss and Barnes sat for a conversation with “Politically Georgia’s” Bill Nigut this week.
Franklin said she joined the project because she wanted to help people understand that “elections are safe and (people) can count on them being safe.”
So far, more than 3 million Georgians have already cast their ballot during early voting. But deep partisan divides remain over the fairness of elections, particularly among Republicans.
In that same AJC poll released earlier this month, about 39% of Republicans responded they are not so confident or not at all confident the election will be conducted fairly. But some 16% of Democrats and 18% of independents also doubt the election will be fair.
Barnes, Chambliss and Franklin have all gained millions of votes over the past decades, and they reflected on their time in office and that sacred transition of power.
Franklin won the office of mayor in an upset in 2001 without a runoff. This made her the first female mayor in Atlanta’s history and the first Black woman to lead a major urban city in the South.
The Democrat said immediately after winning, lines were opened to reach out to people across the aisle.
“I want(ed) to be mayor of Atlanta, not mayor of a few people on one side or the other,” Franklin said. “So the door was open, the phone was open, the emails were open for everyone.”
Just a year later in 2002, Barnes was defeated by Sonny Perdue, who became the first Republican elected governor in Georgia since Reconstruction. Barnes said he remembers a few members of the Democratic Party tried to convince him that the election was rigged.
“I laughed and I told them, I said, ‘Nah, I think I lost that election all on my own,’ ” Barnes said.
Chambliss, who served as a U.S. senator from 2003 to 2015, also spoke of the importance of bipartisan relationships in the Senate.
He spoke about the importance of his friendship with Zell Miller, a Democrat who served as Georgia’s governor and then represented the state in the U.S. Senate.
“When I was elected in ′02 to the Senate, my counterpart on the other side of the aisle was Zell Miller. Zell was a strong advocate for my opponent,” Chambliss said. “(But) he never said anything bad about me, but he was the kind of opponent you would want to have as a candidate.”
With that lived experience of preserving democracy, the trio also spoke about the ”importance of coming together after Election Day.”
“Once the, election is over (we unite) as Georgians, as Americans,” Chambliss said.
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