The Questions At The Bottom Of Your Ballot

Most of us know who we are voting for before we walk into the polling place. Fewer of us know how we will answer the questions at the very bottom of the ballot.

This year, every voter in Fayette County will be asked three questions to amend Georgia’s constitution. Each one needed a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly to reach the ballot, but each needs only a simple majority of voters to become a permanent part of our constitution.

The questions are short, and they all sound harmless. One question promises to protect family farmland. Another promises to take party politics out of a courtroom. The third promises better 911 service. It is hard to imagine voting against any of these, and that’s on purpose. Ballot questions are written by the people who want them to pass. 

Given this, I wanted to know three things about each amendment — Who asked for it? Who benefits from it? And what does it actually mean for Fayette County?

What I found is not printed anywhere on the ballot.

Amendment 1: Conservation Use Property

What It Does

Georgia’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment program (CUVA) dates back to a 1990 constitutional amendment that voters approved with 62% of the vote. It lets owners of farmland, timberland, and certain environmentally sensitive land pay property taxes based on what the land produces instead of what a developer would pay for it. In exchange, the owner signs a 10-year covenant to keep the land in that use.

Today, a single owner can enroll up to 2,000 acres. Amendment 1 would double that limit to 4,000 acres.

You might assume like me that the winners are large corporate agribusinesses. They are not. CUVA is limited to individuals, qualifying trusts and nonprofits, and family-owned farm entities. Large timber companies already use a separate program, the Forest Land Protection Act, which has no 2,000-acre cap at all.

Overall, the people who would gain from Amendment 1 are the owners of very large family farm and timber operations, but the question on your ballot begins with the words “for the purpose of protecting family farmland.” That phrase brings to mind a small family farm, not an operation with more than 2,000 acres.

How It Got Here

The amendment was introduced in January 2025 by Rep. Chuck Efstration along with a companion bill that sets the new limit in state law. Sen. Sam Watson of Moultrie carried the matching Senate bills.

Watson is not an objective party in agricultural policy. He is the managing partner of Chill C Farms, has served as president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, and is a member of the Georgia Agribusiness Council. In a profile last year, he said he relies on Farm Bureau’s lobbyists to keep lawmakers informed and legislation moving.

When the House Ways and Means Committee took up the amendment, the sponsor thanked the Georgia Agribusiness Council, the Georgia Farm Bureau, and the county commissioners’ association for their work on it and said he knew of no opposition. Farm Bureau later counted it among its wins for the year, explaining that farm operations need to become larger to be profitable.

The farm lobby is not the only supporter. The Georgia Conservancy supported the legislation as a way to keep farms and forests from being developed.

The amendment passed the House 168 to 5 and the Senate 50 to 1.

What It Means for Fayette

Fayette County is not farm country anymore. Very few landowners here, if any, own anything close to 2,000 acres of farm or timber land, so the direct effect on our own taxes is small to nonexistent.

The cost will fall mostly on rural counties and their school systems. No official estimate exists of how much revenue would be lost or how much land would actually be preserved. Even the legislature’s own study committee noted the conflict between preserving farmland and growing the local tax base.

Amendment 2: Nonpartisan Probate Judges

What It Does

Probate courts are where many of us deal with the legal system in our most personal moments. They administer wills and estates, appoint and oversee guardians and conservators, and issue marriage and weapons carry licenses.

Nearly all of Georgia’s roughly 1,600 judges already run without a party label next to their names. The only exceptions are 53 of the state’s 159 county probate judges who still run as Republicans or Democrats. Most counties made the switch years ago by passing local legislation.

Amendment 2 would require every probate judge in Georgia to be elected on a nonpartisan basis. In practice, that also moves the race from November because nonpartisan judicial races in Georgia are decided in May on the same day as the party primaries.

How It Got Here

The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Kimberly New. When she presented it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, she argued that forcing judges to run in partisan races makes it difficult for them to comply with the Code of Judicial Conduct and keep the appearance of impartiality.

The most organized push behind the amendment comes from the judges themselves. The statewide campaign for a yes vote is being promoted by the Council of Probate Court Judges of Georgia. The Council gathered a letter of support signed by nearly 70 leaders from both parties, including former Governors Roy Barnes and Nathan Deal. Chief Justice Nels Peterson has also spoken in favor of nonpartisan judicial races.

The amendment did not have an easy path. In March, the Senate voted it down with one opponent arguing that nonpartisan races draw smaller electorates and that voters hold partial judges accountable through the party ballot. The sponsor moved to reconsider, and it eventually passed unanimously in the Senate and 147 to 20 in the House.

What It Means for Fayette

Fayette is one of the 53 counties that still elect a probate judge on a party ticket. The probate judge race appeared on the Fayette Republican primary ballot in 2024.

This is not the first time someone has tried to change that. In 2011, three Democratic representatives introduced a local bill to make Fayette’s probate judge races nonpartisan, and it died in the House.

This time, local leaders are on board. Fayette County Commission Chairman Lee Hearn, Commissioners Eric Maxwell and Charles Oddo, Peachtree City Mayor Kim Learnard, and Woolsey Mayor Ron Smith all signed the Council’s letter of support.

If the amendment passes, Fayette’s next probate judge race will move from November to May and appear on every ballot without a party label. In a county as closely divided as ours, as I wrote in May, that cuts both ways. 

Today, we choose the probate judge in November when turnout is highest and the party label tells voters something about the candidate. Under the amendment, the race would be decided in May when far fewer people vote, but candidates would have to earn support from voters in both parties without a label to lean on.

Amendment 3: The Next Generation 911 Fund

What It Does

Georgia’s 911 system was built for landline phones. The next generation of the system, known as NG911, would let dispatchers receive text messages, photos and videos during an emergency and route calls more accurately by location.

Amendment 3 would allow the legislature to create a dedicated fund for 911 systems. Money in that fund could only be spent on 911. Any unspent money would carry over from year to year instead of going back to the state treasury.

The amendment does not raise the current $1.50 monthly 911 fee, create a new tax, or set a future fee. It also does not decide which revenues go into the fund or how the money gets divided among communities. Those details are left to future legislation.

How It Got Here

Unlike the first two amendments, this one did not come from an industry group or a professional association. It came out of a House study committee created in 2025 and chaired by Rep. Chuck Martin. The committee held three public hearings and heard mostly from local 911 directors, the county and city associations, and officials from Alabama and North Carolina, which have already made the switch.

The committee also heard from private companies that stand to gain from a statewide build-out. A consulting firm testified, and a mapping company conducted the state’s cost study for the location data NG911 requires. That study put the cost of the data work alone at $52.5 million over six years.

Georgia’s 911 fees bring in about $250 million a year, but they cover only about 55% of what 911 centers spend. Salaries and benefits make up most of what those fees pay for. Georgia has also been placed on the federal list of states diverting 911 fees to other purposes several times since 2010.

The committee’s recommendations went well beyond a protected fund. It called for replacing today’s locally imposed 911 fee with a fee imposed and collected by the state and for the new state fund to prioritize services and equipment over salaries and benefits. Amendment 3 is the first step in that plan.

What It Means for Fayette

Today, 911 fees are collected by the state and sent back to the communities where they were paid. After small deductions, the state returns about 97% of the monthly fees to local governments.

Fayette County runs a well-funded center. Its 911 Communications fund budgeted about $5.5 million in fiscal year 2025, and County Administrator Steve Rapson told commissioners last year that 911 had a healthy fund balance.

Under the committee’s plan, our share would instead come from a statewide formula based on technology readiness, equipment, population and call volume. That formula has not been written, so a well-run suburban center like ours could come out ahead or could end up subsidizing centers elsewhere in the state.

Staffing is the bigger worry. Salaries and benefits make up about 71% of what 911 fees pay for today, but the new state fund would put them last. That cost does not go away. It could fall back on Fayette’s general fund, which our property taxes pay for.

Are These Amendments In Our Best Interest?

As a voter, I am always skeptical of constitutional amendments. Too often, they are written for a narrow interest and dressed in language designed to sound like something everyone wants.

The 2012 charter school amendment is a good example. The ballot asked whether the state or local school boards should be allowed to approve charter schools, something both could already do. The amendment’s real effect was to let a state commission approve charter schools that local boards had rejected. The campaign for it was funded almost entirely from outside Georgia, including by for-profit charter companies. It passed anyway with 59% of the vote.

So I hold every amendment to the same standard. I look at who pushed it through the legislature and who stands to benefit once it passes. If the answer is a single interest group, the burden is on that amendment to show what it does for the rest of us. If it cannot meet that burden, I vote no. 

Here is how each of this year’s amendments holds up.

Amendment 1: No

This amendment fails the test most clearly. It was carried by a state senator with deep ties to organized agriculture, credited to the farm lobby by the sponsor himself, and placed on the ballot under wording that describes the supporters’ argument instead of the policy.

The benefit goes to a small number of very large landowners. Fayette County will likely get nothing from it. The legislature is also asking voters to put a larger tax break into the state constitution without anyone having estimated what it will cost the rural counties and school systems that will lose revenue.

That said, I do like the conservation angle. But if the goal is to preserve land, Georgia already has better tools to accomplish that. Owners can place a conservation easement on their land, which protects it from development permanently, and the state rewards that with the Georgia Conservation Tax Credit. In 2023, the legislature created the Georgia Farmland Conservation Program, which pays farmland owners to conserve land that is under threat of development.

Both tools buy permanent protection with public dollars and support. Neither requires amending the constitution to double a 10-year tax break for the largest landowners in the state.

Amendment 2: Yes, With Eyes Open

This one is a closer call. The strongest advocates are the probate judges themselves, and taking party labels off their races spares incumbents a partisan primary fight. That is self-interest, and we should see it for what it is.

But the case for the change goes beyond the judges’ own interest. Every other judge in Georgia already runs without a party label, and leaders from both parties support bringing probate judges in line, including three of Fayette’s five county commissioners and two of our mayors.

For Fayette, the trade-off is a smaller May electorate in exchange for candidates who have to win over voters of both parties. That trade serves us as long as Fayette voters actually show up in May to make it count.

Amendment 3: Yes, With Conditions

This amendment has the strongest public-safety case and the weakest claim of special interest. Protecting 911 money from being diverted to other uses is a good idea.

However, there are negatives. The committee’s plan would take the 911 fee away from local governments and put staffing behind equipment, and all of it still has to be written into law. For a county like ours that runs its center well, those details matter as much as the amendment itself.

I would vote yes, and then I would hold Fayette’s delegation to the Gold Dome responsible for the enabling law that follows. That law should guarantee that Fayette does not get back less than it pays in and that the people who answer our 911 calls are not treated as an afterthought.

Here’s Where You Come In

None of these questions will decide who runs Georgia, but each one will be written into our constitution and will stay long after the people who pushed for it have moved on. That is reason enough to read past the ballot language.

One amendment was pushed by and for a single industry. One was pushed hardest by the officials it affects, but it brings long-overdue consistency to how we choose judges. One answers a real public-safety need, and its most important details have not been written yet.

You may weigh those trade-offs differently than I do, and that is fine. What matters is that you weigh them yourself instead of letting a single sentence on the ballot do it for you.

Early voting in Fayette County runs from Tuesday, October 13, through Friday, October 30. Polls are open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and Saturdays and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 25. You can vote at any of the four early voting sites, no matter where you live in the county:

• Fayette County Elections Office, 175 Johnson Avenue, Fayetteville (this is also the ballot drop box location)
• Fayette County Library, 1821 Heritage Parkway, Fayetteville
• M.T. Allen Memorial Library, formerly the Peachtree City Library, 201 Willowbend Road, Peachtree City
• Tyrone Community Room in the Museum Building, 881 Senoia Road, Tyrone

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on that day you must vote at your assigned precinct.

You can see your sample ballot and confirm your polling place on the Georgia My Voter Page or contact the Fayette County Elections Office at 770-305-5408.