The Georgia Republican Party’s Election Confidence Task Force, appointed by State Chairman David Shafer and led by Atlanta attorney Brad Carver, has released its reported recommendations with the unanimous approval of the State Executive Committee.

Among the proposals in the report:

• Requiring photo ID verification for all absentee ballot applications and ballots, ending the legally compromised system of signature verification, to combat ballot harvesting and absentee ballot fraud.
• Allowing observers at each step of the process, including ballot verification and duplication, with meaningful access, not the sham access allowed under the Secretary of State’s official election bulletins.
• Allowing videotaping of all election activity except voters casting their ballots.
• Eliminating unmanned ballot drop boxes (or, alternatively, mandating a strict chain of custody procedure) to combat supposedly ballot harvesting and absentee ballot fraud.
• Removing no-excuse absentee by-mail voting, allowing absentee ballots only for voters who have a specific reason. Current Georgia law is more liberal than New York law.
• Eliminating third-party and government solicitation of absentee ballot applications. The myriad of solicitations created voter confusion and opens the door to illegal ballot harvesting and fraud.
• Making “Motor Voter” voter registration at drivers license offices opt-in, rather than automatic, to reduce the number of ineligible voters accidentally added to the voter registration list.
• Requiring any organization registering voters to first register with the Secretary of State who will maintain a public list of registered organizations and the number of registrations each organization has collected.
• Replacing all Dominion software with auditable and transparent software.
• Enacting revolving door ethics restrictions on Secretary of State employees.
• Prohibiting so-called mobile voting locations, except in the case of a natural disaster. (Mobile voting locations – vans driven around by Fulton County elections workers with bullhorns – are not authorized by the current Georgia Election Code and an open invitation for fraud.)
• Requiring all third party election grants to be made to the State Elections Board for uniform distribution throughout the state.
• Streamlining the process for election contests and giving the Supreme Court original jurisdiction over Presidential election contests.
• Streamlining the process for voter challenges. County elections boards groundlessly ignored or rejected challenges with impunity.
• Giving the State Board of Elections the power to temporarily appoint county elections superintendents in the event of incompetence or repeated violations of the Election Code.

Chairman David Shafer: “An unlawfully cast vote cancels out a lawful vote and suppresses a lawful voter as thoroughly as if that voter was physically barred from the polls. Every legal vote should be counted and every illegal vote rejected. All votes should be counted in the open and in accordance with law.”

A full copy of the GAGOP Elections Task Force report can be found here: