World News | Georgia Senate GOP Introduce Bills to Limit Mail Voting

Atlanta, Feb 2 (AP) Republicans in Georgia's state Senate have introduced a raft of voting legislation, moving quickly to seek new limitations and requirements after Democrats won the presidential election and two U.S. Senate runoffs in the once reliably red state.

Democrats say the bills are unnecessary, politically motivated and will suppress legal votes.

Many of the proposals target absentee voting by mail, after former President Donald Trump and his allies — including some lawmakers who co-sponsored the bills — made relentless false claims about widespread fraud in mail voting. State election officials have said unequivocally that there was no widespread fraud or irregularities.

The bills introduced Monday include proposals to restrict who can vote absentee by mail, require a photo ID for those who do vote absentee by mail, ban ballot drop boxes and block outside groups from sending out absentee ballot applications.

Other proposals would end automatic voter registration when obtaining a driver's license and ban new residents from voting in a runoff election. Taken together, the bills represent a sweeping attempt to tighten control over the state's voting system.

Senate Republicans said in December that they would move to implement new voting legislation as soon as the 2021 session convened, though some of the bills unveiled this week go even further than what they called for then. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)