Georgia lawmakers set up the possibility of swift statewide conversion to paper ballots filled out by hand this year when they failed to pass a bill early Friday morning that would have gradually replaced the state’s touchscreen voting system.
The Senate’s refusal to vote on the bipartisan elections bill leaves Georgia with computer-generated ballots that will soon be illegal, just months before the midterm elections.
The bill would have delayed a state law passed two years ago that set a July 1, 2026, deadline to stop using the kind of ballots produced by Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines, which print computer QR codes on ballots to count votes.
Opponents of the current voting system say humans can’t read QR codes — which contain voters’ choices — to verify that their ballots are accurate.
Without a new law, the July 1 deadline to eliminate QR codes remains in effect.
Instead of those QR-coded ballots, voters would need to use Georgia’s backup voting system: pre-printed ballots with ovals that voters fill in with a pen.
Election directors have warned that an election-year transition to a new voting method, without a plan or funding, could lead to voter confusion and problems in polling places.
“I think we’ve got a problem,” said Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain. “By not acting, we’ve actually chosen chaos.”
The House voted 132-39 hours earlier on a bill that would have moved the deadline to eliminate QR codes until 2028.
But leaders in the Senate, which last week passed a bill to require hand-marked paper ballots this year, let the House’s competing solution die without a vote when this year’s legislative session ended early Friday morning.
It’s unclear how election officials can overcome the hurdles of pre-printing millions of ballots, training election workers, and educating voters in just a few months.
Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said he doesn’t know what will happen next.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said he’d need to sit down with Gov. Brian Kemp to discuss how to move forward.
Burns said the House bill was a “reasonable plan” to update Georgia’s voting technology gradually — not in the middle of an election year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said. “Part of what we want to do is what’s tried and true, working with our locals with a good plan that we knew could work.”
Kemp could call a special session to bring legislators back to the Capitol to resolve the issue.
“There’s still some options. We’ve got to look. We’ve got to investigate. I’m hopeful we’ll get there,” said Senate Ethics Chairman Max Burns, R-Sylvania. “Give us 24 to 48 hours to get a nap, and then we can talk about it.”
Under the bill approved by the House, Georgia would have bought a new election system that would count ballots without using QR codes before the 2028 presidential election year, recording votes directly from bubbled-in ovals or the text printed on ballots.
House Governmental Affairs Chair Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, said election officials needed time to buy and test the new voting machines before they’re rolled out to 8 million registered voters in the next presidential election.
Georgia’s election equipment, purchased from Dominion Voting Systems for over $100 million in 2019, came under fire from Republicans after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Election security experts have also criticized it, saying the technology is vulnerable to tampering.
County election directors from across Georgia supported the bill that passed the House, Senate Bill 214, over the Senate’s proposals that would have forced a rapid switch to hand-marked paper ballots before this November’s midterm elections.
They said such a quick transition would disrupt elections because there wouldn’t have been much time for training, testing, and implementation.
Without a new law, election directors will have to begin preparing for that possibility.
