The Gist: Four republican lawmakers are calling for a special session of the state legislature to address “structural issues” with the state’s voting system prior to the Jan. 5 Senate runoff election.
The Players: The four state senators are Greg Dolezal of Cumming, William Ligon of Brunswick, Brandon Beach of Alpharetta, and Burt Jones of Jackson.
What do they want?: In addition to an investigation into voting system issues broadly, the senators want to address what they call “directives from the Secretary of State and the State Election Board that attempt to replace the conditions of Georgia law.”
The senators also want to see any evidence of voter fraud and a way to provide a notary or photo ID requirement for absentee ballots. Lastly, they point out that the decisions the legislature makes during the special session may require more funding to accomplish any initiatives by the runoff election in January.
The quote: The four senators said in their joint statement that Georgia election laws may need to prevent issues like missing ballots. “As the risk limiting audit has shown, we have structural issues with the implementation and proper execution of our ballot counting procedures. The call should allow for changes to existing law to ensure that we never again miss the counting of thousands of ballots in any Georgia County as we all witnessed last week,” they said.
