Georgia Sec. of State Raffensperger opposes no-excuse absentee voting in the Peach State

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is publicly opposing the state's no-exucuse absentee voting.

"The no-excuse system voted into law in 2005 — long before most of you, if not all of you, long before I was in the General Assembly — it makes no sense when we have three weeks of in-person early voting available," Raffensberger said at a Georgia House hearing on Wednesday, according to Fox News. "It opens the door to potential illegal voting, especially in light of the federal rules that deny us the ability to keep voter lists, registration files, clean."

More than 1.3 million absentee ballots have already been requested ahead of the state's closely-watched January Senate runoff contests, according to Fox News.

“Asking county elections officials to hold no excuse absentee ballot voting in addition to three weeks of early, in-person voting, and election day voting is too much to manage,” Raffensperger said in a statement posted online. “The way Georgia’s election system is set up under law, county elections officials are essentially required to run three elections simultaneously, one each for a population that wants to vote a different way. Until COVID-19, absentee ballot voters were mostly those who needed to cast absentee ballots. For the sake of our resource stretched and overwhelmed elections officials, we need to reform our absentee ballot system.”