State Senate in Georgia Passes Bill Requiring Photo ID for Absentee Voting

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

You will now be required to have absentee by mail applications verified using a form of ID after the Georgia State Senate passed a bill on Tuesday with a vote of 35 to 18. All Democrats voted in opposition of the bill.

The bill was sponsored by Majority Caucus Vice Chair Sen. Larry Walker (R-Perry) who said it would improve security and efficiency of the absentee process.

Georgia Public Broadcasting reports:

“It’s not about disenfranchising voters, it’s not about overly burdening the electorate,” he said. “It is about efficiency and security and election integrity and allowing the Georgia public to have confidence in the vote.”

But Sen. David Lucas (D-Macon) gave an emotional speech in opposition to the proposal, calling it “malarkey” and warning that the measure would be costly because of inevitable court challenges.

“You’re going to spend taxpayer money trying to defend it,” he said. “I will not go back home and tell those who vote that I took away the right for you to vote.”

Georgia has been at the center of many controversies surrounding the 2020 election. In a story we covered before on   Georgia’s election data , data scientists discovered irregularities in the scraped data including one county that showed an exact flip from Trump to Biden Votes, as seen in the chart below that has never been explained.