Secretary Raffensperger Announces Safe, Secure, and Accessible Elections Task Force

(ATLANTA)-Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is forming a bipartisan task force to improve elections in Georgia. The Georgia Bipartisan Task Force for Safe, Secure, and Accessible Elections will meet weekly between now and the end of the year to further the discussion on the election this fall and to address the challenges in election administration.
“As Secretary of State, I want to work to always keep Georgia voters as the focal point of all of our elections here,” said Raffensperger. “I am grateful that these leaders, from various professional and ideological backgrounds, are coming together to help meet that goal. Not just for this election, or the next, but for elections in years to come. Improving the integrity of our elections and increasing voter confidence in their outcomes is vital.”

Secretary Raffensperger has called together a bipartisan group of leaders in the political, civic, and educational spaces to meet weekly and discuss the ways elections processes can be enhanced moving forward. The Secretary will solicit the task force members for innovative ideas to build on the nation-leading ballot access options provided in the Peach State, including no-excuse absentee ballot voting by mail or through a secure dropbox, gold-standard three weeks of early voting, and Election Day voting.
Confirmed participants in the Georgia Bipartisan Task Force for Safe, Secure, and Accessible Elections:
• Congressman Lynn Westmoreland
• Ambassador Andrew Young
• Rev. James Woodall, State President, Georgia NAACP
• Paige Alexander, The Carter Center, Chief Executive Officer
• Vasu Abhirman, ACLU of Georgia, Policy Counsel
• Chris Clark, Georgia Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO
• Professor Angelos Keromytis, Georgia Institute of Technology
• David Becker, Founder and Executive Director, Center for Election Innovation and Research
• Jake Evans, Chairman, Republican National Lawyers Association Georgia
• Joseph Kirk, Elections Supervisor, Bartow County
• Erica Hamilton, Director of Voter Registration and Elections
• Janine Eveler, Director of Elections and Registration, Cobb County
• Rick Barron, Elections Director, Fulton County
• Monica Childers, VotingWorks
• Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
• Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs
Additional participants may be added in the future.
Georgia is recognized as a national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 16 days of early voting (which has been called the “gold standard”), and no excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and election participation, seeing the largest increase in average turnout of any other state in the 2018
midterm election and record primary turnout in 2020, with over 1.1 million absentee by mail voters and over 1.2 million in-person voters utilizing Georgia’s new, secure, paper ballot voting system.
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