Georgia’s special legislative session wasn’t particularly special

State lawmakers returned to Atlanta for a special legislative session with high hopes: Many Republicans wanted to conduct mid-decade redistricting to bolster their numbers and curtail local property taxes, but most of all, lawmakers needed to fix an embarrassing error that risked throwing elections into chaos. Yet, after lawmakers adjourned the short special session on June 23, they had few wins to show for their efforts.

In the wake of the Louisiana v. Callais decision that questions the constitutionality of majority-minority districts, Southern states, including Georgia, seemed primed to redraw their congressional districts. Doing so would very likely increase Republican representation, and elicited cheers from the GOP and groans from Democrats.

Many Republicans wanted to see Georgia revisit its maps and add up to two GOP seats to Congress, and it seemed that the special session might provide that opportunity. However, legislative leadership quickly dashed those hopes and determined that it wouldn’t be on the docket this session.

“[Speaker Jon Burns] said it was more important for lawmakers to focus on economic matters rather than ‘partisan games.’ He also cited pending litigation over existing Georgia districts and the need to understand the full ramifications for how race can or cannot be used in redistricting,” according to PBS. That is a fair and balanced justification.

Other opposition to redistricting might not be as principled. As insiders have noted, there is a fear in the Gold Dome that a rushed redistricting before November could imperil GOP incumbents by firing up the Democratic base. In short, it could be risky. While punting on redistricting disappointed many partisan activists, officials may find a way to conduct it in a deliberate manner without risking incumbents: calling another special session after the November elections.

Regardless of the redistricting false start, Burns wanted to focus on local property tax reform. It was a top priority for House and Senate Republicans earlier this year, but they failed to pass meaningful landmark reforms. This is because Democrats continually hampered their designs by unifying in opposition. The special session gave the Legislature a chance at redemption, but it wouldn’t be easy.

The property tax measures required a legislative supermajority — meaning some Democrats would need to cross the aisle for Georgians to hope for relief. Instead, the proposals largely failed along partisan lines. Ironically, hours after the property tax measures fell short, the city of Brookhaven — a Democratic stronghold — hiked the city’s property taxes by a whopping 40%

While these losses stung for some Republicans, the Legislature can boast about one win, although it was fixing a problem it created. Back in 2024, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 189 — a 24-page voting bill — that contained four infamous lines that have haunted officials:

“The official tabulation count of any ballot scanner shall be based upon the text portion or the machine mark, provided that such mark clearly denotes the elector’s selection and does not use a QR code, bar code, or similar coding, of such ballots and not any machine coding that may be printed on such ballots.”

In layman’s terms, this simply meant that elections officials couldn’t count votes using QR, bar or similar codes starting later this year. The only problem is that this is precisely how we tabulate votes — relying on QR codes — but lawmakers did not provide a funded transition plan. Without that, Georgia would need to re-adopt our elections method of the 90’s, the 1890’s, and hand count all votes.

This would have been a disaster. Hand counts are notoriously inaccurate, costly and take considerable time to conduct. The General Assembly saw this coming and failed to address the looming problem in the 2025 and 2026 regular sessions. In response, the Legislature took it up in the special session. They passed a bill that delayed the implementation of the computer code ban until 2028 and created a committee to recommend a new uniform voting system. It’s now up to Gov. Brian Kemp to sign it into law.

Curiously, the bill also mandates hand recounts for the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s races if they are decided within a 0.5% margin. Having systems in place to verify vote counts is important, but implementing one that triggers a recount using the slowest, most expensive and by far the most error-prone method is an interesting choice. This could ultimately undermine voter confidence.  

Either way, lawmakers entered the special session with ambitious plans: to redraw congressional maps, reform the tax code and fix an election crisis in-the-making. In the end, lawmakers averted the chaos of a hand-counted November election. While this is cause for relief, it is a modest victory. Lawmakers have no other wins to highlight from a special session that was not that special after all.

Marc Hyden is the senior director of state government affairs at the R Street Institute. You can follow him on X at @marc_hyden.