Georgia elections bill dies, leaving absentee ballot drop off before Election Day intact

Instead of passing a bill, the House created a study committee to review Georgia’s touchscreen voting equipment, a possible switch to hand-marked paper ballots and voter registration accuracy.

“We are going to look at the elections process as a whole here in Georgia, to craft a more thoughtful, meaningful piece of elections legislation to bring back to the 2026 session,” said state Rep. Tim Fleming, a Republican from Covington and the sponsor of the bill that failed to move Friday. “I’m disappointed we didn’t get House Bill 397 across the finish line.”

Under the bill, Georgia would have become the 10th Republican-led state to quit a 24-state organization that aims to identify outdated voter registrations, the Electronic Registration Information Center. Although the group flagged ineligible voters who have moved away, it has become a target of conservatives who said it wasn’t effective enough.

The legislation, which also would have prohibited dropping off ballots, came after Republicans objected to Fulton County’s decision to open election offices the weekend before last year’s election, collecting 307 ballots in-person after it was too late to put them in the mail.

Voting rights organizations and Democrats opposed the bill, saying it would have made elections less accessible and accountable.

“This bill undermines public trust in our democracy,” said Rosario Palacios, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, a government accountability organization. “This country is great because of pro-democracy policies, and this bill goes in the opposite direction.”

The bill also would have empowered the State Election Board, whose Republican majority attempted to pass a series of election rule changes last year before a judge ruled the board exceeded its authority.

The politically appointed State Election Board would have gained custody of all election investigative reports created by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, is a frequent target of the board and members of his own party after he resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In addition, the bill would have put the State Election Board in charge of making recommendations for improving voter list accuracy in the absence of ERIC.

But it also would have limited the State Election Board in one way, preventing it from passing new rules within 60 days of an election. Last fall, the board tried to pass rules requiring hand ballot counts and changing requirements for certifying results.

The provision of the bill calling for Georgia to quit ERIC came as state election officials plan to cancel 455,000 inactive registrations this summer, one of the largest registration removals in U.S. history.

ERIC identified more than half those registrations, about 255,000 voters who moved away, who will be canceled because they haven’t voted in over nine years or their election mail was undeliverable.

Opponents of ERIC said it isn’t as useful since several other Republican states left the organization and stopped collecting information on voters who moved from Georgia.

ERIC’s supporters, including Raffensperger, said it’s the most effective tool in the nation for finding invalid voter registrations. Without ERIC, election officials warned that Georgia’s voter registration list would have become less accurate.