SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — Right-hander Chris Bassitt and the Baltimore Orioles finalized their $18.5 million contract Friday.
After the past three seasons with Toronto, Bassitt is staying in the AL East with a deal that includes a $3 million signing bonus. He can earn $500,000 in performance bonuses if he starts at least 27 games.
Bassitt went 11-9 with a 3.96 ERA in 32 regular-season games for the American League champion Blue Jays last year. He had a 1.04 ERA with 10 strikeouts in seven relief appearances during the postseason.
An 11-year veteran who will turn 37 on Feb. 22, Bassitt has pitched at least 157 1/3 innings and made at least 27 starts in each of the past five seasons. Only once in the last eight seasons has he posted an ERA above 4.00. He has an 83-65 career record with a 3.64 ERA while pitching for the Chicago White Sox (2014), Oakland (2015-16, 2018-21), the New York Mets (2022) and Toronto (2023-25).
Bassitt joins a Baltimore rotation that includes Shane Baz, Trevor Rogers and Zach Eflin. Baz was acquired in a December trade with Tampa Bay, and Eflin re-signed with the Orioles for a $10 million, one-year contract.
After two straight years in the playoffs, Baltimore finished last in the AL East with a 75-87 record in 2025, when its starters ranked 24th in the majors with a 4.65 ERA.
The Orioles made a big splash in free agency when they signed first baseman Pete Alonso to a $155 million, five-year contract in December. They traded right-hander Grayson Rodriguez in a deal for outfielder Taylor Ward, then later added Baz and brought back Eflin.
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FILE - Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt throws against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the seventh inning in Game 4 of baseball's World Series, Oct. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.
The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.
Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.
But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.
“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.
Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.
“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”
A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.
“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.
“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”
FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
