One of the bills would require an excuse to vote absentee, undoing a 2019 law allowing no-excuse absentee voting. Under the bill, voters would need to be 75 years old or older, absent from their precinct, observing a religious holiday, have a physical disability, be required to provide constant care for someone with a physical disability, or required to work “for the protection of the health, life, or safety of the public during the entire time the polls are open” to qualify to vote absentee.
The bills would also ban ballot drop boxes and require voters to provide identification when they request an absentee ballot application. Another one of the bills would limit who can distribute absentee ballot applications to Georgia election officials and campaigns, blocking outside groups and nonprofit organizations from sending applications to voters.
Other measures introduced by state Republican lawmakers would expand poll watcher access, prohibit new Georgia residents from voting in runoffs, and mandate monthly updates to election officials of voters who have died.
Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, who cosponsored the bills, said they “vary in their approach for reasserting confidence in an election system which has lost credibility with a majority of Georgians.”
“I want every legal vote counted, and I want better access for all voters. Accusing our reform efforts of suppression is a political tactic, pure and simple. Even those of us who never claimed that the election was stolen recognize that the electorate has lost confidence in the legitimacy of the system. We must work to restore that,” he said in a statement to CNN.
The package was roundly rebuked by Democratic lawmakers in the state after being introduced.
“These bills introduced today by the GA Senate GOP are a laundry list of #votersupression tactics meant to roll back voter participation, aimed specifically at reversing the impact Black voters and other voters of color,” the post read.
Democrats won both of Georgia’s US Senate seats in January runoff elections, and in November, President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidential election in the Peach State in nearly three decades.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans are looking to repeal a no-excuse absentee voting law passed in 2019 through the state’s GOP-led Legislature.
And in Arizona, one GOP-sponsored bill would repeal the state’s permanent early voting list, which allows a voter to automatically receive a ballot by mail for every election.
CNN’s Kelly Mena contributed to this report.