“Georgia Republicans on Tuesday outlined a plan to restrict mail voting and roll back the election laws that contributed to the state’s record-high turnout in the presidential election – unwinding rules the party itself put in place. The framework for legislation – which would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, add a voter ID requirement to mail ballots for voters with an eligible excuse and eliminate drop boxes – appears designed to respond to President Donald Trump’s repeated and false claims that mail voting is rife with fraud” NBC News reports.

“‘As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will reform our election laws to secure our electoral process by eliminating at-will absentee voting. We will require photo identification for absentee voting for cause, and we will crack down on ballot harvesting by outlawing drop boxes,’ the Republican Senate majority caucus said in a press release issued Tuesday. There’s no evidence of substantive voter fraud in American elections, a fact affirmed by numerous academic studies and even Trump’s own voter fraud commission. Attorney General William Barr, who has made misleading claims in the past about voter fraud, has also said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. There’s also no evidence that drop boxes, mailbox-like receptacles that allow voters to return their ballots directly to election officials, are more vulnerable to fraud than other methods. Sealed ballots in those boxes are collected by election officials. What Republicans call ballot harvesting – the handling or delivery of a ballot by someone to whom that ballot does not belong – is already illegal in Georgia.”