The Georgia House has passed a bill requiring nonpartisan elections in the five most populous metro Atlanta counties.
House Bill 369 passed the state legislature, 93–64, on March 27 and now awaits Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.
Proponents of the bill say the change would improve public safety coordination by removing politics from certain local offices in the state’s largest counties, rather than applying it statewide.
Critics say the bill, if signed into law, will create a two-tier election system, with one set of rules for counties that comprise metro Atlanta and another for the remainder of the state.
“Different rules, different timelines, different systems,” Clayton County Board of Commissioners chairwoman Dr. Alieka Anderson-Henry, a Democrat, said at a press conference on March 31. “That is not consistency. That is not fairness. That is plain out discrimination. If this were truly about good policy, it would apply to all 159 counties in Georgia.”
The press conference, featuring metro Atlanta county leaders, was held at the Georgia State Capitol.
If signed by Kemp, the bill would make certain county-level elections in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton nonpartisan starting in 2028.
“It singles out a few counties that are among the most diverse and most populated in the state, and that raises serious concerns about unequal treatment under the law,” Anderson-Henry said.
A nonpartisan election lists candidates on the ballot without any political party labels, such as Democrat or Republican, next to their names.
State senator John Albers (R-Roswell), who sponsored the bill, views it as necessary for public safety amid Atlanta’s growing popularity.
The FIFA World Cup is scheduled to take place in Atlanta starting June 15, while the NCAA Gymnastics Regionals are scheduled for March 2027 in Athens, and the National Football League (NFL)’s Super Bowl LXII will be played in Atlanta in February 2028.
The bill would change elections for district attorneys, county commissioners, tax commissioners, and other offices, but county sheriffs would remain partisan.
DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran Johnson, a Democrat, said the bill itself is partisan and unconstitutional and could confuse voters.
“We must call out legislation that aims to hinder or sway results by erasing political affiliations in an attempt to potentially confuse voters who show up at the polls,” Johnson said at the press conference. “It matters who represents you, and a party affiliation is, as a general rule, a precursor to your values as well as your ideologies."
Georgia is known to be a battleground state in U.S. presidential elections. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the U.S. presidency by 0.2 percent, but in 2024, when current U.S. President Donald Trump won the presidency, he flipped the Peach state back to Republican.
Kemp has yet to indicate whether he intends to sign the measure.