How to ensure that the voters of Georgia appear in the CFP elections? Talk about their electricity bills.

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While any election brings advertisements, events, door comrades and other efforts to remind people to go to the polls, this year’s campaign workers concerning the races of the Georgia Public Service Commission have another obstacle: education.

The climate and environmental organizers met recently in Atlanta to develop strategies on how to mobilize voters before the November elections for two seats on the Georgia PSC. Nicknamed “Watts at stake”, the event brought together organizers, community leaders and influencers to hear about the importance of the somewhat obscure state agency – a message that speakers consider it essential to this electoral cycle.

“If you ask most people, they don’t know what PSC is,” Russell Armstrong with Black Futures Lab Grussell, a group focused on the use of black electoral power.

But, said Armstrong and others, the voters care about what the PSC does, once they understand it.

The Commission regulates public services in Georgia, in particular by supervising the plans and rates of Georgia Power – and electricity bills are climbing. This motivates voters, according to strategists through the political spectrum.

“It is a galvanizing message, I would dare to say energizing, a message that will make voters out of Georgia,” said Carmen Bergman, campaign advisor to the outgoing republican commissioner Fitz Johnson.

Experts and defenders elsewhere are also invested in the Georgia PSC, because while electricity bills go up to the national level, Georgia is one of the ten states that directly elects public services commissioners who have the last word on electricity rates.

“There is in fact more power for the consumer in a state such as Georgia than in any other state because they vote for their regulators,” journalists Charles Hua, founder of the defense of public services and education groups, journalists before the organizational event for last weekend. “The challenge is how to obtain this education and this awareness of as many people as possible?”

One of the biggest jobs for the Georgia PSC is to regulate Georgia Power. This includes how electricity is made – which has an impact on climate change because power plants are a major source of emissions – and the amount of energy costs, which affects the millions of Georgians who draw their electricity from the company.

There are five elected commissioners on a state scale who serve staggered conditions. Currently, they are all Republicans. This year, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson are in the elections. Johnson presents himself against the Democrat Peter Hubbard and Echols faces the Democrat Alicia Johnson.

Helping voters to establish the link between their electricity bills and the two seats on the voting bulletin this year turns out to be a total effort on the level of the state. Groups like Georgia Conservation Voters, one of the organizers of the last weekend summit, said they were holding virtual and in person town halls to educate voters. Black Futures Lab has volunteers hitting the doors and organize a series of events in Southern Georgia.

“The main thing is to show people that, hey, we hold power, we hold the keys to this election and all the other elections by coming to come,” said Omega Calhoun, who directs their efforts in Valdosta.

Bergman said that the Johnson campaign is adopting an “everything above” approach to pass the word, including events, solicitation and advertisements.

“There will be no more stone not returned to make sure that voters know that there is a difference on the ballot,” she said.

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Break a Georgia power bill

This kind of effort is new enough for a Ballots race in Georgia, according to Georgia State University’s public policy professor Tammy Greer. Voters would benefit from more education and engagement in other breeds, she also said, in particular Lieutenant Governor and the insurance, work and agriculture commissioners.

“These spaces have so many political implications on people in the state we are really not careful,” said Greer. “If we have paid more attention to their platforms, we may start to elect people who are looking for all our best interests.”

It is also an unusual year for a typically to profile election, because PSC seats are the only strokes on the state level on the ballot, but there are local elections in some of the big cities, including Atlanta. Thus, while the rural areas of the Republicans of Georgia often have state elections, without the government’s race or even the mayor’s race to bring many rural voters to the ballot box, said GREER, Democratic voters in cities could decide PSC races.

“And I think the people of the commission understand it,” said Greer. “They understand that the tide changes.”

She underlined the unanimous vote of the PSC earlier this year to temporarily freeze power rates as a sign that the five current commissioners know that high power bills lead voters and that Greer called “a little dissent” could soon join the all-republican commission.