Greg Dolezal, GOP nominee for Georgia Lt. Gov., said he submitted fake mail ballot applications to test system 

Georgia state Sen. Greg Dolezal, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, has built his campaign around distrust of the state’s elections and demands for stricter voting rules. 

A measure proposed by Dolezal that would require manual recounts was set to be debated Monday by Georgia lawmakers in a special session.

But in previously overlooked remarks, Dolezal said he and “a number of friends” deliberately submitted mail-in ballot applications with intentionally altered signatures — including forms signed by children — and then used the fact that they received ballots to argue that Georgia’s system facilitates fraud.

Dolezal won Georgia’s Republican runoff for lieutenant governor last week and will face state Sen. Josh McLaurin (D) in November. 

The winner will become the state’s second-highest elected official and president of the state Senate, a position with substantial power over committee assignments and the flow of legislation.

His campaign says he was personally thanked by President Donald Trump for his work on “election integrity” and highlights his support for eliminating Georgia’s voting machines. 

Earlier this year, Dolezal introduced Senate Bill 568 (SB 568), a proposal that would have assigned early voters to a single location, required voters to use hand-marked paper ballots and expanded the public release of voter information. While that bill failed two votes short of the majority needed, Dolezal has continued attempting to revive Republicans’ push to overhaul Georgia’s elections. 

During a special legislative session Saturday, Dolezal proposed an amendment to an election bill that would require counties to manually recount every voter cast in the top two races on a ballot before certifying an election. 

The GOP-controlled Senate approved the amended bill and the House is considering the measure Monday. If passed, the recount requirement would apply to the races for governor and U.S. Senate in November.

Against that record, Dolezal’s description of how he and friends deliberately challenged Georgia’s signature-checking process stands out.

Before a Georgia voter can cast a mail-in ballot, the voter must first submit an application asking election officials to send one. Election officials then compare the signature on that request form with signatures already in the voter’s file.

During a February interview on the Charlie Kirk Show that he posted to his own YouTube channel, Dolezal said he and others intentionally submitted signatures that looked different to see whether officials would still mail them ballots.

“So the way you get an absentee ballot is you would sign your name to a ballot request form, send it in, and they’d send you a ballot. They’re supposed to check the signatures,” Dolezal said. “Well, we know essentially that they didn’t check the signatures because myself and a number of friends botched our signatures, had kids sign signatures, do all that, send our ballots in the ballot request forms, and in every case, we got a ballot back.”

Dolezal did not publicly identify the friends involved, explain who signed which voter’s name or say whether he organized the effort. Nor did he say whether any ballots issued after those applications were completed, cast or counted. 

But he has repeatedly used the applications as evidence for his claims against Georgia’s election safeguards.

“So, yes, we do have essentially a Republican, governor or secretary of state, General Assembly. We’ve moved the needle a good bit. We did move on voter ID, and we have passed some good things, but there has been really no interest in looking at what happened in 2020,” Dolezal added.

He doubled down on the scheme in a separate March interview, saying friends in Cherokee and Gwinnett counties also intentionally altered signatures and still received ballots.

“I signed my own absentee ballot request form with a signature that in no way, shape or form matched my actual signature. So in other words, I tested the system and I got my ballot,” Dolezal said. “I had friends who had their kids sign their absentee ballot request form and next thing you know, the ballot comes in. I had people botch their signatures in multiple counties, Cherokee, Gwinnett. They all tested the system, and in every single case all of us got our ballots back.”

Dolezal’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dolezal’s push to reshape Georgia elections began almost immediately after Trump lost the state to Joe Biden in 2020. 

Days after the election, Dolezal joined three other Republican senators in urging state leaders to convene a special legislative session to consider claims of voter fraud and rewrite election rules before the January 2021 Senate runoffs.

The senators’ statement called for lawmakers to hear purported evidence of fraud and impose a notary or photo identification requirement for mail-in voting. Georgia’s presidential result was upheld after a statewide hand audit and a machine recount.

In 2021, Dolezal also admitted to deliberately writing his own signature differently on an absentee ballot application than it appeared on his driver’s license. Election officials said that they approved the application after finding similarities among several signatures on file.

Dolezal nonetheless presented the receipt of a ballot as proof that signature verification was nonexistent. 

During a committee hearing on SB 568 around the same time, Dolezal struggled to answer basic questions about the recount deadline and the cost of printing and stocking hundreds of different ballot styles.

“I’m not sure where the two-day process is in here,” Dolezal said when state Sen. Kim Jackson (D) asked whether a major race would have to be recounted by hand within two business days.

After Jackson directed him to the language, Dolezal acknowledged that the provision did not say what he intended.

“I do not believe that we’d be able to complete that within the two business — That’s a good catch. Thank you,” Dolezal said.

He was similarly unable to say how the statewide transition would be funded.

“Senator, I think that there’s an open question as to kind of how we make the paper purchase,” Dolezal said. “I’d be fine looking at a budget appropriation for that. The bill is silent on that currently.”

Dolezal has also targeted election administration in Fulton County, the heavily Democratic county that Trump and his allies have spent years blaming for his 2020 defeat. In February, Dolezal called for the Republican-led State Election Board to take control of the county’s elections.

“When you have dirty voter rolls, you have dirty elections,” Dolezal said.

The State Election Board declined to take over Fulton County. 

Despite years of fraud allegations aimed at Fulton County and Georgia more broadly, repeated reviews have not found evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the 2020 result. 

A signature audit conducted by the secretary of state’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found no fraudulent absentee ballots in a sample of more than 15,000 envelopes.