Rep. Jody Hice: Georgia State Legislature Will Shut the Door on Future Fraud in Elections

Georgia will elect Republican senators if the state’s legislature “shuts the door on future election fraud,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) told Breitbart News on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with special guest host Matt Boyle.

Hice said some Republican voters abstained from voting in Tuesday’s runoff U.S. Senate elections in Georgia due to distrust in election integrity.

“It was a high turnout for a runoff election,” he remarked. “It was a significantly high turnout. Now there were some [Republican voters] who did not turn out, because of their lack of confidence that it was going to be a secure vote, and that has to be addressed.”

Hice continued, “Georgia is a red state, probably from anywhere from three to five percent. It’s a red state. Unfortunately, we’ve had a secretary of state who has made some horrible decisions, decisions for which he has no constitutional authority to make [sic].”

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In December, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) ordered automatic sending of absentee ballot request forms to all 6.9 million active voters registered on the Peach State’s voter rolls for the runoff elections, ostensibly to reduce the coronavirus’s spread.

Raffensperger previously ordered an automatic sending of absentee ballots to all registered voters for the presidential election.

“Only the legislature can create and make or change election laws, but [Raffensperger] unilaterally took it upon himself to change the election laws,” Hice noted. “For example, sending out applications for absentee ballots to everyone on the voter registration list in Georgia, that’s nearly seven million people — that without any request from them — he just sent them applications for absentee ballots. He has no right to do that.”

Hice went on, “That’s a kind of thing only the legislature can do, but in so doing, when you have a voter registration file that is probably at least 10 percent inaccurate, and you’re sending that many applications out, that’s 700,000 illegal voters who received an application to receive a ballot, and I think that is what has turned Georgia blue in this election cycle. It’s not the people of Georgia. It’s not where we are. It’s been horrible decisions made by our secretary of state.”

Georgia’s state legislature will improve election integrity, Hice predicted.

He stated, “As [Georgia’s] General Assembly comes in and closes those gaps and shuts the door on future fraud in elections in Georgia, I believe we’ll see Georgia come back to what I believe it really is, a red state.”

The Georgia Republican further remarked, “The Georgia legislature has pretty much total control. They can do whatever they want to. What cannot happen is one individual usurp the Georgia General Assembly and do it on their own, and that’s what happened.

Hice said members of Georgia’s General Assembly told him they are making election law “a top priority.”

“[Georgia’s legislature is] going to close the doors on things like [absentee ballot] applications being sent out to everyone to receive a ballot,” Hice said, “They’re going to close the door on no-excuse absentee ballot requests like it used to be in Georgia.”

Hice continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they heightened the signature verification [requirements]. I believe they will probably include some overall photo ID requirements for absentee ballots, like we have for every other ballot in the state. They will probably address the drop-off boxes, and hopefully they will address purging the voter registration files. Those are just some of the kind of obvious issues that I believe they will address.”

In July, Raffensperger and the Georgia State Election Board authorized the use of 300 absentee ballot drop boxes for November’s general election, claiming public health concerns over the coronavirus as justification for such a measure.

Hice concluded that Georgia’s state legislators must “actually dig down get into weeds and fix the problems” in order to “have absolutely secure fair elections with only legal ballots being cast and only legal ballots being counted.”