In the closing days of the Georgia legislative session, major changes to the state’s voting laws are under consideration.

“We’re in a different ballgame now,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D, Georgia). “There is an all-out assault, war on the voices of the people.”

Warnock is introducing legislation to address the issue on the federal level, but the Republican-controlled General Assembly is working to alter current voting laws. That concerns Warnock, who won a narrow victory over incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler.

“Because while I am celebrating what Georgia voters have done, some of the politicians in our state legislature have decided they don’t like what the voters have done, they want to make it difficult for some voters to vote,” Warnock said.

A new bill — Senate Bill 202 — popped up Wednesday afternoon. By Thursday afternoon, a revised version of that bill was in front of the state Senate.

It’s more than 90 pages. Has 34,000-plus words. And makes massive changes to the status quo.

Senate Bill 202 would do the following:

— Prohibit counties from taking grant funding

— Local elections officials could be removed by the state

— Places restrictions on weekend advance voting

— Requires additional ID for advance voting

— Places restrictions on absentee applications and return

The last paragraph in the first section of the bill explains why Republicans maintain election reform is needed: “… The changes in total reflect the General Assembly’s considered judgment on the changes required to Georgia’s election system to make it ‘easy to vote and hard to cheat,’ applying the lessons learned from conducting an election in the 2020 pandemic.”

Local elections officials have been monitoring the legislation closely, said Nancy Boren, the Muscogee County director of Elections and Registrations

“It makes huge changes to the way elections officials conduct elections currently,” she said. “It limits advance voting, absentee voting, puts in lots of requirements for elections officials.”

One of the major changes in Muscogee County is the elimination of grant funding.

“In Muscogee County for 2020 we received a little over $900,000 in grant funding,” Boren said. “We used that to open early voting locations, we had five instead of the one we normally have. We had it for the runoff and for the November election. We won’t be able to do that without grant funding.”

The real-world impact can be measured in dollars.

“I just submitted my budget for FY-22 and I have in there three early voting locations but it comes with a price tag of about $150,000,” Boren said.