Georgia lawmakers map out state’s next voting system with eye on 2028

The committee is scheduled to meet Friday to take the first steps in planning a new statewide voting system. The nine members are tasked with issuing recommendations by Jan. 31, 2027 — giving lawmakers the remainder of the legislative session to consider them.

Overhauling the election system in time for the presidential election will be a heavy lift. It requires legislation, funding and a statewide contract put out for bid. Then officials will need to deploy the system and train election workers.

State Rep. Tim Fleming, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, is on the committee, allowing him to help shape a system he may later certify as Georgia’s next election chief. Democrats have little say in guiding the committee’s direction. State Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, is the sole Democrat out of the six lawmakers seated on it.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

For more than two decades, Georgia voters have used touchscreen machines to cast their votes. A shift to hand-marked ballots would make this November’s election the last major federal contest decided that way.

Trump has refused to accept his 2020 election loss, making the security of Georgia’s statewide voting system a flashpoint. False claims from Trump supporters that manipulated machines tainted the results have fed conservative distrust of the machines.

Other longtime election security advocates have raised concerns, pointing to vulnerabilities identified by experts that they say could be exploited — though no evidence shows malicious actors have used such flaws to alter results. Meanwhile, election officials have defended the system as secure and pointed to audit results as evidence of its accuracy.

But the fraught politics of election administration in the aftermath of 2020 have driven a series of Republican-backed election laws. Among the host of things about Georgia’s machines Trump’s supporters push back on are the QR codes on ballots to count votes. That opposition fueled a 2024 law that would outlaw the use of QR codes printed on ballots to count votes by July 1, 2026.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

In a June special legislative session, lawmakers delayed implementing the bar code prohibition after failing to find a viable solution to comply with the self-imposed mandate. Instead, legislators created the election equipment committee, which includes members of the Georgia House and Senate, along with three appointees selected by Gov. Brian Kemp, and reset the deadline.

Many local election officials warned that overhauling the system months before the midterms threatened to throw November into disarray. But the delay comes with a political cost — locking in the machines that Trump has long opposed for November and placing some Republican lawmakers at odds with the ultraconservative wing of the party for failing to ditch the machines, let alone the QR codes they distrust.

Paulding County Election Director Deidre Holden, whom Kemp appointed to the panel, said in her experience talking to voters that most are comfortable with the current system, but a small minority are the ones pushing for hand-marked ballots.

“There’s so much negativity surrounding QR codes and the current system,” she said. “I think that the most important role is to have a system that the voters can use that’s friendly, but most importantly that it’s a secure system.”