Georgia Senate pushes paper ballots, setting up a clash with House

The standoff over the bill, which passed 32-21, has put lawmakers and elections officials in a bind as they grapple with how to meet a mandate they set two years ago to eliminate QR codes from ballots by July.

The debate traces to the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s narrow 2020 loss, when conservative activists began pushing to scrap Georgia’s touchscreen voting system manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems.

The system produces a ballot with a QR code that is then counted by a machine. Critics, many of whom are MAGA loyalists, mistrust the QR codes because they are not readable by humans, leaving them uncertain about whether their ballots will be accurately tallied.

They also cite potential vulnerabilities in the system, noting lawmakers have yet to fund a recommended security patch, leaving the state vulnerable to tampering or hacking that could alter election results.

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Democrats note election officials say such flaws cannot be exploited in real-world conditions. State Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, said the bill was designed to placate “conspiracy theorists.”

“When elections are chaotic, people don’t feel confident. And when people don’t feel confident, they don’t participate,” Kemp said. “That is not election integrity. It’s voter suppression.”

In a rare move, Senate Democrats also publicized a scathing written report calling the measure “some legalese with a dash of technobabble.”

“If we’re going to waste Georgia’s time and money with a circus of conspiracy theories, we should be more creative,” read the minority report, a formal dissent from Senate Democrats. “Let’s debate the questions the man doesn’t want us to touch! Is Elvis still alive? Does Batboy exist?”

The bill is on a collision course with a House-backed bill that would keep Georgia’s voting touchscreens for the midterms and call for a switch by 2028. That would allow whoever succeeds Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is running for governor, to refine the policy.

“We’ll push the deadline,” House Speaker Jon Burns said in an interview this week. “But then let the next secretary of state kind of help hash out the details.”

An election overhaul

The Senate earlier this month failed to pass a broader elections bill that would have also limited early voting locations. That effort failed when seven GOP senators skipped the vote.

The measure that cleared the Senate on Friday calls for preprinted, hand-marked paper ballots scanned by machines as the primary method of voting. Voting touchscreens would still be available for voters with disabilities.

Using preprinted ballots would require stacks of ballots to accommodate every configuration of districts and races at each early voting site in a county.

Credit: John Spink /

Credit: John Spink /

House Bill 960 would also empower the Republican-controlled State Election Board to impose up to $100 fines against counties for each ineligible voter not removed from its voter rolls and would mandate full hand recounts after certification for major federal and state races.

Under current law, candidates can request recounts if the margin is within half a percentage point. The Senate proposal would expand that threshold to 1%.

With the House advancing a competing plan and the session set to end Thursday, the two chambers are either headed toward a last-minute compromise or a stalemate that could force courts to intervene.