Georgia is set to reform its voting system, prioritizing paper ballots and manually verifying touchscreen absentee votes in accordance with new recommendations from a committee formed to assess the state's voting procedures following the 2020 presidential election controversies, Just The News reported late Tuesday (local time).

If the recommendations are finalized through legislation by the Georgia General Assembly, they are likely to be implemented before the 2026 midterm elections later this year.

The House Special Committee on Election Procedures recommended extending the committee's term through December so that the General Assembly could continue its study of the state's election processes and develop further recommendations.

Georgia Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation (HB 1108) based on the special committee's recommendations. The bill includes new voting regulations that closely mirror the recommendations put forth by the special committee.

The bill mandates the use of paper ballots, which voters mark themselves on Election Day, and requires them to be machine-counted. During the early voting period, Georgia voters would have two options: they could either vote using paper ballots, marking their choices directly, or use the state's current touchscreen voting machines to select candidates.

The touchscreen voting machines would then print a paper ballot receipt, which according to the bill, poll workers would have to count manually.

To address concerns that this new method would take too long to produce results, all touchscreen absentee ballot boxes would include a QR code that could be used to check unofficial results, though official results would be announced only after manual tabulation.

The recommendations come shortly after an FBI raid on the Fulton County election headquarters in metro Atlanta and amid calls from former President Donald Trump for Republican lawmakers to federalize parts of the election process due to potential corruption.

The Justice Department also filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Fulton County, a focal point of Trump's fraud allegations from the 2020 election, to obtain records from the 2020 election.

In November 2021, a year after the 2020 presidential election, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp transferred the "sloppy" and "inconsistent" election data managed by the county to the State Election Board, citing significant issues discovered in absentee ballot tabulation, including duplicate counts, calculation errors, and altered data sequencing.

Fulton County's new election board member, Salleigh Grubbs, told reporters that she was "disappointed" that the FBI raided the Fulton election site and said it was "long overdue."

According to Just The News, investigations and reports following the 2020 election have confirmed fraud in the election process in Georgia's most populous county. The outlet reported that in 2021, it discovered that the tabulation sheets the county used for audits and recounts did not match totals extracted from ballot images, suggesting that duplicate counts had occurred.

The Jan. 28 FBI raid occurred after Fulton County notified the State Election Board last month that it had violated state regulations because the proper signatures were not affixed to the ballot-counting machine tapes after the 2020 election, Atlanta News First reported. The county also explained that it had lost other ballot-counting machine tapes and documents related to that election.

Ballot-counting machine tapes are receipts printed from the machines that tally votes and are used to verify that the number of voters matches the number of votes cast.

The Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, which filed a lawsuit against Fulton County last year, Harmeet Dhillon, said that a review of the seized records would be critical to determining the extent of the errors or mismanagement that occurred in Georgia's most populous county.

The Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, which filed a lawsuit against Fulton County last year, Harmeet Dhillon, said that a review of the seized records would be critical to determining the extent of the errors or mismanagement that occurred in Georgia's most populous county.

Meanwhile, Trump has recently increased his criticism of "sloppy elections" in certain states and localities, even telling Republicans in Washington that they "have to take over" voting in more than a dozen locations ahead of the midterm elections.

"I want to see elections done fairly. If any state is not going to do it properly, then the people behind me have to step in and take care of it," Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

"It makes you wonder, the states are acting as surrogates for the federal government in elections. I don't see why the federal government doesn't do it themselves. But when you see how sloppy some states are and how disgraceful it is, I think the federal government has to get involved," he said.

His remarks sparked controversy, as they were interpreted as a call for federalizing elections, which have historically been managed by state legislatures and governments.

The White House has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which would require photo identification for voters nationwide, remove noncitizens from voter rolls, and impose criminal penalties for those who register people to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Tuesday that when Trump urged Republican lawmakers to act on federal elections, he was referring to passing the SAVE Act.

Indeed, the House is scheduled to vote on the "SAVE America Act," which aims to strengthen voter registration requirements.

Democrats are certain to block the bill's passage through a filibuster in the Senate, and Republicans do not appear to be prepared to take extraordinary measures to overcome this hurdle, Politico reported Friday.

Nevertheless, the House is reportedly planning to force a vote next week, and Senate Republicans are under pressure to find a way to send the bill to President Trump without Democratic opposition, Politico reported.

By Sung Ku Hong, Chief Reporter, USA NNP / Special Correspondent for this Newspaper NNP info@newsandpost.com