Yesterday I talked about how the Georgia Tea Party is fighting against a vote that would approve a 1% sales tax across the metro Atlanta region to build new transportation projects across the region. Since this is such a major initiative it makes sense to allow as many people as possible to vote on the measure. Governor Deal has asked Georgia legislators to vote on a measure to move the voting on the transportation initiative to the November elections in 2012, which will have much more turnout than the July primary vote for which it is currently scheduled.
Step in Georgia Tea Party. They do not want the vote moved. Why? They are afraid that higher voter turnout increases the chance it will be approved. They know that the majority of people support the measure, but think that it should be defeated because it is a tax. Because of that, they will stop at nothing to get the measure to fail. That means doing what they can from stopping people from voting for it. Knowing that voter turnout is much lower for a primary, and knowing that the primary voters will mostly be Republican means their best shot to defeat the measure is to have the vote happen during the primary.
More than likely they will not succeed in keeping the vote on primary day. Logic has to step in at some point. It makes sense to have the vote on a major initiative take place during a major election when the majority of voters will turnout. The Tea Party doesn’t care about logic though. Their motto is clear, it’s my way or the highway.
