In an effort to increase the board's autonomy from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, House Speaker Jon Burns is calling for voting reforms and the nomination of a fifth member to the State Election Board.
Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones nominated Rick Jeffares, a former state senator, to the Senate Republican Caucus on Thursday. Jeffares must be confirmed by the entire Senate.
Republican Jeffares would succeed Matt Mashburn as board member. Several months ago, Republican leaders in the Senate informed Mashburn that they had no plans to reappoint him. It wasn't until he voted against probing Raffensperger that word got out about his removal.
Activists on the Republican side, who say Georgia lost 16 electoral votes to Donald Trump in 2020 and want major changes—like replacing Georgia's computerized voting machines with paper ballots that would be recorded and tallied by hand—would beg Jeffares to join their board.
In fact, Republican politicians are responding to the same concerns, so the pressure on board members is only going to increase this presidential election year. Despite Joe Biden being officially declared the winner, Jones and fifteen other Republicans asserted their legitimacy as Trump electors in Georgia.
Burns stated his intention to have the state's Dominion voting machines removed from the system on Wednesday. These devices employ computer-readable codes.
Touchscreen voting devices, which are used by almost all voters in person across the state, feature a summary of the voter's choices that can be read by humans and a QR code that can be read by scanners to tally the votes.
On Monday, a federal trial commenced, with a portion of the proceedings devoted to the question of whether or not the devices may be used to modify QR codes.