ATLANTA, Ga. — Georgia voters casting ballots in the Nov. 3 election will still see party labels next to candidates’ names, despite social media posts in recent weeks warning that the letters R and D had been removed from midterm ballots.
The posts point to House Bill 369, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law in May. The law does make several county-level races nonpartisan, including district attorney, but it does not take effect until Jan. 1, 2028, and it covers only five metro Atlanta counties: Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett.
Lawmakers tied the change to counties where the elected office of county coroner has been abolished in favor of a medical examiner. Supporters in the Republican-led General Assembly argued the change would promote public safety and give voters more say over prosecutors.
The law is already in court. DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court on June 3, challenging House Bill 369 on three grounds. Her complaint argues it violates the Georgia Constitution’s uniformity clause, which bars special rules for one part of the state, as well as state and federal equal protection guarantees.
The third claim invokes the state constitution’s rejected bills clause. Before the measure passed as HB 369, the same proposal failed a full Senate vote as SB 573, and the constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the rejecting chamber before it can be taken up again. That did not happen, according to the lawsuit.
Boston has said the law singles out the five counties, which have large Black voter populations and are led by Black female district attorneys, from the state’s other 154 counties.
For this fall, nothing changes at the polls. Candidates in the 2026 midterms appear with their party affiliations, and the nonpartisan rule, if it survives in court, would first apply to county races in 2028.
