He has maintained throughout the 2020 General Election and through the vote certification process that there was absolutely no vote fraud across Georgia. Now, Georgia’s Secretary of State tells a Georgia House hearing on election fraud that “no excuse” absentee voting facilitates vote fraud.
Brad Raffensperger (R), Georgia’s embattled Secretary of State, did something he has rarely done this election cycle. He sided with Republicans.
Raffensperger joined his fellow Republicans last Wednesday to call for an end to what that state terms “no excuse absentee voting.” This law allows any voter in Georgia to request and submit an absentee ballot without providing justification for why they can’t vote in person.
“The no-excuse system voted into law in 2005 – long before most of you, if not all of you, long before I was in the General Assembly – it makes no sense when we have three weeks of in-person early voting available,” Raffensperger said. “It opens the door to potential illegal voting, especially in light of the federal rules that deny us the ability to keep voter lists, registration files, clean.”
Many states – some in violation of their own state constitutions, instituted “no excuse” absentee voting in 2020 to minimize large crowds of voters at polling places during the COVID scare.
.@GaSecofState is speaking in front of a GA House Governmental Affairs committee about the Nov. election
Raffensperger began the meeting by calling for an end to no excuse absentee voting in the state. He also suggests using state ID verification for absentee ballots
— Brooke Zauner (@BrookeZaunerTV) December 23, 2020
Georgia is one of the few states that had “no excuse” voting in place prior to the alleged pandemic. The law has been on Georgia books for 15 years.
Raffensperger appears to have come to understand the vulnerability of unrestricted absentee and mail-in voting only after the 2020 General Election high voter turnout and a flood of credible vote fraud and ballot tampering claims.
Raffensperger continues to maintain that there was no measurable vote fraud, ballot tampering, or tabulation manipulation in Georgia during the 2020 General Election cycle.
In addition to requiring justification for the use of an absentee ballot going forward, Raffensperger also called for the imposition of a voter ID requirement for absentee ballots. He stated that the current signature-matching system was “subjective.”