Georgia state Senator Josh McKoon.

Note: A version of this commentary also ran in the Cherokee Tribune, the Macon Telegraph, the St. Simons Island Islander and four other local papers in rural South Georgia in eluding the Waycross Herald.

Marietta Daily Journal

Opinion

By an unrecorded vote: Georgia Senate OKs driver’s licenses to illegal aliens
by D.A. King
April 11, 2015 10:13 PM

With the 2015 Georgia General assembly now in the rear-view mirror, conservative voters may want to bypass the proclamations of the newspapers in Dunwoody and decide for themselves about the “winners and losers.”

Republican-controlled Georgia is still issuing driver’s licenses, official Georgia ID cards and public benefits to illegal aliens. Those benefits include eligibility for unemployment compensation.

Currently, the number of Georgia illegals enjoying these rewards is well north of 15,000, with that number predicted to swell by about another 200,000 if the now imperiled 26-state lawsuit against Obama’s second executive amnesty fails.

Intended to end this wildly liberal, California-like and hushed-up practice, Senate Bill 6, offered by state Senator Josh McKoon, was never even allowed a hearing in a committee in the super-majority Republican state Senate. And it was never listed as “important legislation” by the agenda-setting Georgia media.

But with a “Plan B” action in a floor amendment offered by McKoon, language from SB 6 that would have ended the practice of rewarding any illegal aliens with a Georgia driver’s license did see a vote in the senate.

Readers would do well to take an interest in the un-reported details of that vote.

McKoon’s surprise amendment created no small amount of commotion and panic in the senate chamber, because if some quick action was not taken, the Republicans who had assured their constituents for years that they were against drivers licenses for illegal aliens would have to actually vote to stop that practice. News tip: There was as much or more pressure exerted on senators to kill SB 6 as there was to pass the $ 1billion dollar transportation tax increase.

In the end, and on orders from the people who really run Georgia, the Georgia Senate defeated the McKoon amendment by a vote of 27-16. Did I mention that the Republicans have a super majority in the state Senate?

Don’t rush to the General assembly website to see how your own senator voted. There is no record. Because the process of that vote and its result are yet another example of the shameless and defiant contempt that many, if not most, current state legislators hold for the voters who elect them as public servants.

Understand this: The vote on McKoon’s amendment was intentionally conducted in a way such that there is no official record of how any senator voted. It was done with an off-the-vote-tally-machine, un-recorded, raise your hand vote while several senators scrambled around the chamber to avoid the video cameras that record each day’s chamber events. See my MDJ blog space for a link to the video.

To re-state it as simply as possible, the Republican-controlled Georgia Senate killed an amendment to stop illegal aliens from getting a driver’s license by holding an unrecorded raise-your-hand-vote on whether or not to have an unrecorded raise-your-hand-vote. Unrecorded won. We the people lost.

This reluctant denizen of Capitol was there and watched this entire display of just how high the contempt factor has risen under the Gold Dome.

When McKoon introduced his amendment, he also made a motion to have the vote on adding it to the bill in question conducted on the vote tally machine. By Senate rules that motion must be quickly supported by at least five four more senators. Of a total of 56 state Senators – thirty-eight of whom are Republicans – only four would defy the real government of Georgia and back McKoon on getting a public, recorded, machine- counted vote.

Confused? That is the intent of the entire maneuver.

It has been stated in this space before that stopping an on-the-record senate vote concerning illegal immigration was and is an ultra-high priority. The event described above represent a very close call for senators who even now will claim to be conservative and pro-enforcement on immigration.

I leave it up to the reader to judge various degrees of deception on the part of these elected servants. But my own view involves my district’s state Senator, Judson Hill (R). Hill stalled for weeks on co-sponsoring SB 6. After finally being cajoled into signing on, he was not one of the four senators who supported McKoon in the failed attempt for a recorded vote on the amendment.

Because of the danger of constituents remembering any of this, a recorded vote would likely have resulted in approval of the amendment.

There were no Democrats who voted for a recorded vote on the McKoon amendment or for the amendment itself.

I know what readers must be asking themselves. How did my own Republican senator vote on the recorded vote motion?

From the Cobb delegation to the state Senate, only Senator Hunter Hill raised his hand in favor of a recorded vote on the McKoon amendment.

Winners and losers anyone?  (An update from  the following week can be read HERE)

D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society. He is not a member of any political party.

Note: Corrected to show correct number of additional senators needed to force a recorded vote when motion offered by one senator.

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – By an unrecorded vote Georgia Senate OKs driver s licenses to illegal aliens