State law requires us to organize by counties. The GA Green Party’s bylaws call our county bodies affiliates.

You become a local affiliate of the GA Green Party by filing a petition to convene a local affiliate. The petition asks you to pledge adherence to the Ten Key Values of the Georgia Green Party and to pledge that you will follow relevant legal requirements and Georgia Green Party rules faithfully. For our purposes, we’ll call county groups whose local affiliate requests are pending “county organizing committees.”

The affiliation committee will organize a site visit with the county conveners. Your petition will be reviewed by the affiliation committee, which makes its recommendation to the state committee, which alone has the power to accept or reject it.

State law requires our county affiliates to adopt their own bylaws (don’t worry, we have model bylaws), to properly advertise their meetings, and to meet quarterly, with an annual meeting to elect officers and endorse candidates for office. The state defines your very first meeting at which your initial officers are elected as an “annual meeting.” After a county’s initial annual meeting, the county organizers may make application for affiliation with the Georgia Green Party. Subsequent annual meetings of county affiliates should be scheduled to precede the GA Green Party’s statewide annual meeting (held in mid or late February in even-numbered election years traditionally).

County affiliates are encouraged to designate a treasurer and open a bank account. If the affiliate does so, the affiliate becomes subject to compliance with the Georgia Ethics in Government Act (OCGA Title 21, Chapter 5), which requires the filing of periodic disclosure reports with the Georgia Ethics Commission. Local treasurers are urged to confer with the state party treasurer over the requirements of this law.

Updated 2023-01-26