What if they held an election and no one came?

That was nearly the case last month when only about 2.4% of Georgia’s roughly 8.4 million registered voters cast ballots in Republican and Democratic primaries for seats on the state Public Service Commission (PSC), which regulates utilities.

The low turnout likely will be even more dismal Tuesday when Democratic primary voters return to the polls to choose the party’s nominee for the PSC’s District 3 seat. With incumbent Commissioner Tim Echols having won the Republican nod to seek reelection in District 2 in last month’s GOP primary, the Democratic contest in District 3 will be the only race on Tuesday’s runoff ballot.

Neither former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites nor clean-energy advocate Peter Hubbard won a majority of the vote in last month’s three-way Democratic primary in District 3, which covers Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties, forcing the runoff. Former utility regulator and technology executive Robert Jones finished third and was eliminated.

Waites and Hubbard differ more in their career backgrounds than in their positions on issues facing the PSC. Waites served three terms in the Georgia House of Representatives before being elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2021. Before entering city and state politics, she spent 15 years working in the federal government, with the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hubbard has worked on energy issues from outside of government circles as an advocate for the nonprofit Georgia Center for Energy Solutions. In that role, he has served as an intervenor calling for reducing the use of fossil fuels in the production of electricity, which is expensive, pollutes the air and harms human health.

Both candidates have criticized the five-member commission – all Republicans – as a rubber stamp for Atlanta-based Georgia Power, signing off on a series of rate increases in recent years without sufficiently considering the impacts of rising monthly bills on the company’s residential and small business customers.

“Georgia Power has brought in record profits,” Waites said. “I don’t have a problem with Georgia Power making money. I just don’t want them to do it on the backs of consumers.”

Hubbard said members of the PSC have stood by while Georgia Power increases its profits by building more electric generating capacity using fossil fuels.

“With Georgia Power, the more you build, the more you earn,” he said. “We’re just keeping [coal and gas plants] for reliability purposes. But I say renewable energy technology has reached a point where those sources have become reliable.”

Waites said Georgia Power could do more to increase its use of solar energy, given the Peach State ranks seventh in the nation in solar power generating capacity. If elected, she said she support increasing the cap the PSC has imposed limiting its rooftop solar program to no more than 5,000 homeowners.

“Georgia Power has no incentive to push that because it messes with their profits,” she said.

Hubbard said solar, wind, and batteries accounted for 90% of the new power generation in the U.S. last year.

“With solar, you build it once and there’s no fuel costs,” he said.

The winner of the Democratic primary between Hubbard and Waites will challenge incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November.

Early voting ends on Friday, and polls across Georgia will open on Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

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.