ATLANTA — Following Georgia’s massive election reform of 2021, Republican lawmakers are proposing more changes to enhance election security.

The proposed Senate Bill 221 merged at least two other proposed bills and grew from seven to approximately 20 pages before its Feb. 28 Ethics Committee hearing.

“Its intent is to clean up the language to clarify areas that have been questioned to ensure that all Georgia counties follow Georgia law,” said Republican Sen. Max Burns, who sponsored the bill. “You’ll notice that it dealt a lot with ballot security, a lot with digital ballot access, and we dealt with voter challenges.”

The original version was a simpler bill, clarifying weekend voting days for early voting and extending the amount of time elections offices have to post information after closing polls.

Notable parts of the amended bill presented to the Ethics Committee received pushback from several speakers during the committee hearing.

One section of nearly a dozen amendments allows a voter’s residency to be challenged if the voter’s name is on the National Change of Address program. Updates to residency requirements, Burns said, would “ensure that the local election board determines voter eligibility in a consistent matter.”

Another provision of the amended bill would require all absentee ballot drop boxes to have video recording availability that can be accessed live online. Burns said the measure would make it easier to verify and maintain oversight of all ballots. However, groups against the bill said it could encourage intimidation and voter disenfranchisement by requiring live video of “the faces of each person” using a dropbox.

Fair Fight Action, ACLU of Georgia, Common Cause Georgia and Progress GA hosted a press conference condemning SB 221 before the hearing.

The groups said the bill would strengthen mass voter challenges by undermining— and likely violating — the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by allowing unreliable address data to be sufficient to remove a voter’s ability to vote and to remain on the voting rolls.

“Georgia Republicans, who touted the effectiveness of elections last year and even pushed to limit challenges, have capitulated to extremists and renewed attacks on our democracy by giving unprecedented power to conspiracy theorists one day after data came out that exposed the discriminatory impact of their baseless voter challenges,” Fair Fight Action’s Deputy Executive Director Esosa Osa stated.

According to a Feb. 27 article published by NBC news, there were 92,000 challenges to Georgia voter registrations last year based on data collected by Fair Fight Action. According to the NBC report, the challenges resulted in the removal of approximately 2,200 voter registrations at hearings and more than 3,500 others moved into pending or challenged status, requiring voters to update their registrations.

The Ethics Committee passed the bill 5-3, and senators must approve the bill by the end of Crossover Day on March 6 to keep the bill active in the legislative session, which ends March 30. The amended bill was not available online prior and was not immediately available online after the committee meeting.  

The proposal continues the ongoing election reforms in several states in 2021 and 2022 after the unsuccessful reelection of former Pres. Donald Trump, a Republican.  

Georgia’s SB 202, The Election Integrity Act, was approved along party lines in 2021 and, in part, requires an ID for requesting and submitting an absentee ballot and prohibits local election offices from sending out unsolicited applications for absentee ballots. Georgia’s new law also makes it a crime to pass out food or drinks to voters waiting in line, a common practice in areas where hours-long waits to vote have occurred.