The Cobb Chamber of Commerce will host a bipartisan voter-confidence forum Friday, Oct. 30, featuring election lawyers from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. The panel arrives ahead of the Nov. 3 election and a planned deployment of federal monitors to Cobb County on Election Day.
Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, and Ben Ginsberg, a former national counsel to the Bush and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns, headline the event. Blake Evans, elections director for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, rounds out the lineup.
The forum runs from 11 a.m. to noon at the Chamber's Wellstar Community Room, 1100 Circle 75 Parkway. Business networking precedes the discussion.
It is part of the Chamber's "Conversations in Democracy" series, East Cobb News reported. The discussion focuses on voter confidence in Georgia as the 2026 midterm election wraps up, with control of the U.S. Congress at stake.
The Chamber said in an Oct. 26 release that the panelists "have spent four decades on opposite sides of many of the country's most contentious election disputes."
The forum comes as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prepares to send Election Day monitors to Cobb and five other Georgia counties. The Georgia Recorder reported that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called the deployment "the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history." Bibb, Chatham, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties will also receive monitors.
All six counties are considered Democratic strongholds and were won by presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024, the Georgia Recorder reported. Georgia has drawn national attention over election administration since the disputed 2020 presidential results.
Outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Georgia's election process will be open and transparent. Poll watchers from both major parties and the Carter Center will also monitor elections alongside DOJ officials, he said.
Ginsberg also serves on a bipartisan Election Integrity Task Force that Raffensperger launched in August. Former Gov. Roy Barnes is among its members.
Nearly two million Georgians had already cast ballots during the early voting period, which ends Friday, Oct. 30. The Chamber's forum takes place at the same address that morning, at 1100 Circle 75 Parkway, starting at 11 a.m.
