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About Georgia's General Assembly| 2008 General Election Endorsements | 2008 Primary Endorsements | Voter Information

In November 2010, all statewide offices, including Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State, will be up for election. Also, all 236 state senators and state representatives elected in November 2008 will be up for reelection to the Georgia General Assembly.

Georgia's state legislators are elected for a “biennium,” which is a two-year term of office. Regular sessions of the General Assembly are held once a year, starting on the second Monday in January. A biennium’s first session is held in the odd-numbered year following a general election, with the second session occurring in the following even-numbered year. Within a biennium, legislative matters pending at the end of the first session can be carried over to the second, but any business still pending at the end of the second session has to start all over in the next biennium.

Regular sessions of the General Assembly last 40 "legislative days." The actual length of the session varies depending on the number of recesses called during the session, but legislators typically gather three days a week. Special sessions are sometimes called, such as the session that used the 2000 census information to re-draw Georgia's state and federal legislative district boundaries -- a process called "reapportionment."

For details on how bills become laws in Georgia's General Assembly, see the UGA Carl Vinson Institute of Government's chart on how laws are passed in Georgia.

The governor can veto a bill passed by both houses of the General Assembly. If a bill is sent to the governor during the first 34 days of a session, he has six days to sign it or veto it, but since most bills are passed in the final days of a session, this rarely happens. After the General Assembly adjourns in March or April, the governor has 40 days to sign or to veto legislation; any bills neither signed nor vetoed automatically become law after this time. If the governor vetoes a bill during the last three days of a session, or during the first 40 days following adjournment, the General Assembly may consider a veto override at the subsequent legislative session. Two-thirds of the Georgia House and Georgia Senate must vote to override for the veto to be overridden.