ATLANTA — Republican state senators have rolled out a legislative package aimed at overhauling Georgia’s election laws by limiting who can vote by mail, outlining how to prove identification and outlawing absentee-ballot drop boxes.
by | Feb 2, 2021 | Capitol Beat News Service, Elections
The eight bills, filed late Monday by top Senate Republican leaders, mark the most sweeping attempt to change local voting laws after the 2020 election cycle stirred mistrust among many conservative Georgians over the state’s election integrity.
The bills especially target absentee voting in Georgia after all three major elections in the 2020 cycle saw more than 1 million mail-in ballots cast amid the COVID-19 pandemic, helping Democrats carry Georgia in the 2020 presidential election and flip both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
Democratic lawmakers quickly cried foul, slamming the move by Republicans as attempts at voter suppression seeking to halt Democrats’ momentum in statewide elections that are likely to be close for the next several years.
Republican lawmakers including Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have called many of the proposed changes necessary to restore voter confidence in the state’s election system and rein in mail-in voting after local elections officials complained they were overwhelmed during the 2020 cycle.
Three of the bills focus on absentee voting by requiring a driver’s license or other form of ID to request an absentee ballot; banning the mail-in drop boxes voters used often in the 2020 elections; and ending registered Georgia voters’ ability to vote by mail for any reason.
No-excuse absentee voting was installed by Republican lawmakers under then-Gov. Sonny Perdue and touted by Raffensperger as proof against claims of voter suppression, particularly after Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams’ loss to Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
However, Raffensperger called for ending the practice after record-breaking absentee ballots hindered election officials’ ability to quickly process results in the 2020 elections. Former President Donald Trump, who lost the Nov. 3 election by 11,779 votes, lobbed claims of voter fraud in Georgia based on absentee voting.
Other top Republicans including Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, have opposed ending no-excuse absentee voting, preferring instead to boost ID rules for mail-in ballots.
One of the bills filed Monday would require registered voters to provide their date of birth, driver’s license number or other ID card number to request an absentee ballot. The bill would also require voters to submit photocopies of their ID similar to a separate bill proposed by state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, last week.
Five other bills filed on Monday propose:
– ending automatic voter registration for Georgians who receive new or renewed driver’s licenses;
– prohibiting anyone except state and local elections officials and candidates from sending voters applications for mail-in ballots;
– blocking people from casting ballots in congressional or U.S. Senate runoffs after voting in general elections in a different state;
– requiring county coroners to share monthly data on local deaths with county elections officials to prevent illegal ballots from dead voters;
– allowing poll watchers to monitor vote tabulations more closely.
The proposals address many claims Trump and his allies made following the 2020 elections of widespread voter fraud that state officials and federal courts rejected as baseless. Some state lawmakers who held hearings on the fraud claims are co-sponsors of the bills.
The bills also echo pledges to change state election laws made shortly after the Nov. 3 election by Georgia Senate Republican Caucus members, many of whom are co-sponsors.
Lawmakers in the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee will likely review the bills in the coming days. — Article provided by Capitol Beat News Service
Drivers license are not a secure voter registration document alone. Many instances of voters registering in two states just by showing drivers license (how can you actually identify they live there) if both states only require a license if you have just moved. California says you can vote with just drivers license…but guess what…..drivers license are given out to illegals. Vote by mail is ripe for fraud…you need to be able to identify person with ID. Ballot drop off boxes can be stuffed much easier with illegal votes.
And whats wrong with doing the most to secure our most precious right….voting? Why would anyone not require an ID to vote in person. Heck even India requires a national voter ID. You need an ID for everything else in this world…but somehow…voting with an ID is somehow racist.
Drivers licenses are secure enough to fly, should be secure enough for voting.
The mail in fraud myth is so over done at this point. It’s just as secure if not more secure than in person voting. There are lots of ways to make sure a person is who they say they are photo ID is one of them.
Stuffing ballot boxes as if someone couldn’t just mail them in instead? I’m never said that voting IDs were racist, I said that not automatically registering someone to vote when they get a drivers license is voter suppression. Making it needlessly harder for people to vote. People who live in cities also tend to not have cars or drivers licenses, which although unintentional does disproportionately impact Black people. A national voter ID sounds like a good idea. Have highschools issue voting IDs to kids when they turn 18, there would need to be checks to make sure the people are who they say they are but I think it’s a pretty good solution.
Also shut up about “illegals” no one is illegal.
Why have borders? Or Countries even….on yeah, that is what some want. One World Government.
Exactly. I would go the other way though have a bunch of small municipalities where everything is collectively owned and the the municipalities form confederations to share resources between each other. Eventually building from the bottom up to world spanning confederations that individual municipalities are free to enter or leave at anytime.
Henry what’s your address so I can come over and get all my stuff.
So you mean Anarcho-Commuinism?
That’s right. If someone doesn’t agree with you they need to “shut up.” Good job with liberalism.
I’m not a liberal and I don’t want to see people spreading hate.
This is a such a blatant attempt to disenfranchise voters. Why shouldn’t you be registered to vote when you get your drivers license other than add more steps to register to make it harder for people to register to vote.
Oregon has been voting by mail exclusively for the past 20 years and hasn’t had any increase in fraud. They also had a big increase in voter participation, which we can all agree is a good thing.
What’s the danger in ballot drop-off boxes? Is there any reason why ballot boxes are less secure than mail?
Yes, there is a reason ballot boxes are less secure than mail. George Soros funded Antifa Communist Socialist Anarchist supersoldiers take ballot boxes and steal them using fraud. They then modify the ballots to vote for Joe Biden who is a member of the Communist Party led by Carl Marks who killed 1 billion trillion gazillion people in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1867 because Iphone human nature 1984 venzeuale.
(Fun fact, George Orwell who wrote 1984 was a socialist and fought fascists in Spain)