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Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter

Representative for Georgia’s 1st District

pronounced BUH-dee // KAHR-ter


Carter is the representative for Georgia’s 1st congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 6, 2015. Carter is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 65 years old.

Elections must be decided by counting votes

Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.


Carter was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Carter joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Carter voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Photo of Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter [R-GA1]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2022 Report Card for Carter.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Carter is shown as a purple triangle in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Carter has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 28, 2023. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Earl “Buddy” Carter sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Carter was the primary sponsor of 9 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 9 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.

We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Carter sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Health (44%) Taxation (13%) Science, Technology, Communications (10%) Armed Forces and National Security (8%) Energy (6%) Environmental Protection (6%) Commerce (6%) Crime and Law Enforcement (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Carter recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Carter voted Nay

Passed 360/64 on Sep 22, 2022.

Carter voted Yea

Carter voted Yea

Passed 278/134 on Jul 29, 2022.

Carter voted Yea

Carter voted Yea

Passed 294/130 on Nov 30, 2021.

This bill would authorize $400 million in grants to state, local, tribal, and territorial public health departments to update their computer databases of immunization records …

Carter voted Yea

Carter voted Nay

Passed 369/47 on Dec 12, 2018.

See the Congressional Research Service's 122-page summary of the bill. * * * H.R. 2 amends and extends major programs for income support, food and …

Carter voted Nay

Passed 369/53 on Jul 6, 2016.

The Global Food Security Act of 2016 (Pub.L. 114–195), is a law introduced on March 24, 2015 in the 114th Congress by Representative Christopher Henry …

Carter voted Yea

Passed 338/88 on May 13, 2015.

The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048, Pub.L. 114–23) is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015 that restored in modified form several provisions of …

Carter voted Nay

Missed Votes

From Jan 2015 to Mar 2023, Carter missed 121 of 4,660 roll call votes, which is 2.6%. This is worse than the median of 1.6% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including: