Lazy voting help leads to GOP sweep

Many factors played into the Republican sweep in our state. The state GOP candidates did a good job of tying President Obama to Georgia and the majority of voters fell for it hook, line and sinker. The races on the Georgia ballot were not about Washiangton, D.C. but voters are easily swayed by sound bites. Many are even fooled by a fake news network from which misinformation is delivered on a daily basis.

I will say this. Republicans control it all in Georgia politics now. It will be interesting to see how they blame Democrats when things go wrong in the next four years.

•The election of Nathan Deal as governor is nothing short of an embarrassment for our state. For the past eight years I’ve heavily criticized Sonny Perdue for being the least effective governor in Georgia’s history. I stand by those comments but I believe down deep Perdue is a man who has tried to do some things right. It’s just that he hasn’t really known how.

Deal is one of those I like to describe as believing government is “of, for and by politicians.” He is a career politician who has been described as one of the most corrupt congressmen in the country. He slipped out the backdoor as the wolves were calling. He left the taxpayers of his district holding the bag for a special election.

He somehow won the Republican nomination for governor when more qualified candidates opposed him.

He has numerous ethical issues still to answer for. Tom Crawford, whose column appears in this and numerous newspapers across the state, has tried to get answers from Deal concerning his finances and other ethics issues but like a sly fox, Deal tries to point the finger at the one asking the questions.

Deal is an outright joke and the fact he was elected governor shows how lazy Georgia voters have become in 2010. Just because Deal was the Republican nominee did not mean you had to vote for him. Two other candidates were on the ballot. For all the faults of Roy Barnes, and believe me he has many, he would have far better than the corrupt Deal.

It makes me wonder if some people would have voted for the name with the “R” by it had it been Manilla Gorilla or Grape Ape. Deal, quite frankly, is as big a buffoon as either of those two.

•Lazy voting also led to the election of Sam Olens as the state’s new attorney general. Olens is a career politician who has never prosecuted a single case. Yet since Olens was the candidate with the “R” by his name, a majority blindly voted for him and send him into office.

Ken Hodges had the backing of numerous law enforcement agencies but this was a race which didn’t generate as much interest as the governor’s contest so I doubt few knew much about it other than who was “R” and who was “D.”

•Let’s hope newly elected Secretary of State Brian Kemp will do something about the archaic ballot access laws in our state. Candidates wishing to run for statewide or even local office should not face such obstacles from the two-headed monster of the Republicans and Democrats. Voters need more choices, not less.

Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal, a sister publication of The Banks County News. He can be reached at cbridges@barrowjournal.com.