One of the bills would require an excuse to vote absent, undoing a 2019 law that allowed voting without an excuse. According to the bill, voters would have to be 75 years of age or older, absent from their district, observing a religious holiday, having a physical disability, being required to provide constant care to someone with a physical disability or to work ” to protect the health, life or safety of the public for as long as the polls are open “to qualify for absentee voting.
The bills would also prohibit ballot boxes and require voters to present identification when requesting an absent voting form. Another of the bills would limit who can distribute the missing voting forms to Georgia officials and election campaigns, preventing outside groups and nonprofits from sending the forms to voters.
Other measures introduced by state Republican lawmakers would expand access for poll watchers, prohibit new Georgia residents from voting in the second rounds, and would require monthly updates for electoral officials from dead voters.
Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, who co-sponsored the projects, said they “vary in their approach to reaffirming confidence in an electoral system that has lost credibility with most Georgians.”
“I want all the legal votes counted and I want better access for all voters. Accusing our suppression reform efforts is a political tactic, plain and simple. Even those of us who never claimed that the election was stolen recognize that the electorate has lost confidence on the legitimacy of the system. We need to work to restore it, “he said in a note to CNN.
The package was severely reprimanded by Democratic state legislators after being presented.
“These bills introduced today by GA in the GOP Senate are a list of # votersuppression tactics designed to reverse voter participation, specifically aiming to reverse the impact of black voters and other voters of color,” says the post.
Democrats won both seats in the Georgia Senate in the second rounds of January, and in November, President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Peach State in almost three decades.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans are looking to repeal an absentee voting law without excuse passed in 2019 by the state legislature led by the Republican Party.
And in Arizona, a bill sponsored by the Republican Party would revoke the state’s permanent early voting list, which allows a voter to automatically receive a ballot in the mail for each election.
CNN’s Kelly Mena contributed to this report.