State Senator Rick Williams addressed Putnam County Republican Party stalwarts Monday evening, answering questions and reporting on bills he had worked on during this winter’s session of the General Assembly.
Flipping the usual order, though, Williams took questions first, and the first was about when Georgia might return to using paper ballots.
Among other positions like county commissioner and six years as a state representative, Williams served Baldwin County as elections superintendent for 16 years. “I have some strong feelings about elections,” he said. “We took some very strict oaths to follow the law … if you commit fraud, you need to go to jail.”
And while he remembers, and liked, the days of paper ballots, Williams also pointed to problems in counting votes in large counties like Fulton, Cobb, and DeKalb. “They are so large, everybody would need their own vote counter,” he said.
In another elections-related comment, Williams said he voted in favor of the high-profile district attorney oversight bill that set up a panel that could remove a district attorney.
He cited a couple of examples of D.A.s who declined to prosecute cases, including protestors accused of attacking law enforcement officers at the proposed “Cop City” training facility in DeKalb County.
However, he did not take up a response to Democratic objections that the law could as well be used against Fulton D.A. Fani Willis for investigating former president Donald Trump’s actions after Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Another elections bill Williams voted for would allow out-of-county residents to work in a county’s elections. It can be difficult sometimes in small counties to find enough people willing to run the polls.
He also favored the banning of outside funding to run elections. The issue, he said, was accountability. “What was that money used for? Nobody knows.”
One non-election bill drew excitement from the audience – the so-called “well water” bill. Senate Bill 111 would allow city residents with more than one acre of land to choose to drill a well. “If you have more than one acre and do not like city water … well, you are looking at $12to $14,000 to drill,” he said.
Williams also spoke of about 20 bills he’s involved with, many of which rose out of his chairmanship of the Senate Retirement Committee, his vice chairmanship of the Senate Ethics Committee, and his membership on the Senate Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee.