The 2026 special session of the Georgia General Assembly may be remembered more for what did not happen than for what did.

Gov. Brian Kemp called lawmakers back to the Capitol mainly to complete work they had left unfinished during their regular session last winter and spring.

They had failed to address a looming deadline of their own making: had they gone home Tuesday without addressing their own July 1 prohibition on the use of QR codes in the state’s voting machines, pandemonium would have reigned in the November midterm elections.

Georgia would have been left with no legal method for tallying votes, other than the paper ballots intended for sporadic emergencies, such as power outages.

On Tuesday, lawmakers, after creating that deadline two years ago, managed to push it back by nearly two more years.

They also checked another item off Kemp’s to-do list, retroactively approving his second gas tax suspension of the year. Kemp ordered the first one in March after lawmakers, still in session, authorized it.

But they had already gaveled out of their regular session when he declared a state of emergency to extend the suspension into June.

So the Legislature retroactively approved that second suspension on Tuesday.

They did not pass any other major policy, although they may have gathered more fodder to present to voters as they campaign ahead of November.

About an hour before the special session started last week, Republican leaders from the House and Senate announced that they would not pursue a big and controversial item: redistricting.

Kemp had put that on their agenda after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in April that weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections against maps that dilute minority voting strength.

The proposal had already created an outcry among Democrats and civil rights groups, leading GOP lawmakers to consider the potential downsides of fueling opposition rage and Democratic turnout during the midterms.

No new sales tax

Republicans also failed to win Democratic support for Kemp’s call to consider putting a new 1% sales tax on local ballots. The referendums would have generated hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce homeowner property tax bills.

The scores of nearly identical local measures were introduced mostly by Republicans, one per city or county. They required a two-thirds vote for passage, and it became clear after the first votes last week that Democrats would oppose all of them.

Even so, after a string of defeats, Republicans kept calling up more of those bills. In the House, Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Mulberry, moved to reconsider each of them twice, the maximum allowed.

Each vote went down more or less the same way, prompting Rep. Ruwa Romman, D-Duluth, to quip, with a chuckle, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”

Democrats said they opposed the measures because they would have increased the cost of groceries and other daily necessities, with the revenue going to people fortunate enough to own a home.

They called it a tax increase.

Republicans supported the measures, saying that rising property taxes had made homeownership unaffordable for many.

Brookhaven, a city in metro Atlanta, had just raised its property tax rate 40%, noted Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners. “By voting red, you are suppressing voters’ cherished right to vote on property tax relief,” he said.

By invoking that color, Hilton meant the “no” button on lawmakers’ desks, not the color associated with his political party.

But red incumbent lawmakers will likely be using the blue ‘no’ votes against the tax swap during their political campaigns this year.

The strategy prompted a rebuke from Rep. Angela Moore, D-Stonecrest, who complained about the cost to taxpayers of the special session.

That money would have been better spent on a state down payment assistance program, she said, “instead of wasting our time on trying to tax our constituents.”

No veto override

Yet Democrats engaged in political sport, too, calling for a vote on a matter Republicans managed to evade. GOP lawmakers in the House wanted nothing to do with a Democrat’s call to override a veto by Kemp.

During their regular session, House Bill 1192 had been a bipartisan measure, with both Efstration, the majority leader, and Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, the minority leader, among the top co-sponsors.

It had passed the House and Senate unanimously, driven by frustration over funding shortfalls at the Georgia Departments of Human Services and Community Health.

It mandated stricter accounting practices and annual reporting to the General Assembly, and it prohibited commingling of funds from different sources.

Kemp vetoed HB 1192, writing that it violated the separation of powers.

On Monday, Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, moved to override the veto. But House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, with the help of a Kemp ally on the House floor, used parliamentary procedure to table the motion.

Thus, Republicans avoided a difficult vote that would either have pitted them against their GOP governor or caused them to flip their position.

Later that evening, during their customary time for announcements, Evans got around the rules that limit debate by announcing that it was the anniversary of Congress’ adoption of the Pledge of Allegiance during World War II.

“And when we table motions instead of taking up issues, when we sit on our rights,” she said, “we are really spitting in the face of so many that came before us to stand for our flag.”

Meeting with reporters after the motion to table, Evans was less diplomatic, calling Republicans “spineless” for avoiding the veto vote, and saying it exemplified why voters should give Democrats a majority in the House.

The next day, the Senate unanimously approved the gas tax suspension that the House had unanimously approved on Saturday, and Republicans in both chambers voted to delay the QR code ban, mostly along party lines.

Then, they went home.

Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org.