(The Center Square) – When the Georgia General Assembly adjourned on April 2 without passing an election bill, some called for a special session, and some offered other solutions.
More than a week later, uncertainty remains over how votes will be counted in November. The questions are not about the much-discussed 2020 election, which some still scrutinize six years later. It’s about how Georgia’s elections will be conducted going forward.
One of the main questions surrounds QR codes, which are often discussed but less often explained. The codes identify voting information, much like a barcode identifies a product in a grocery store. Georgia voters use touchscreen voting machines. The electronic ballot is placed in a scanner to read the information through the QR code. That information is used to count votes.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill passed by the General Assembly in 2024 that banned the use of QR codes, effective July 1. Georgia’s primaries and runoffs are before the July 1 deadline, so they are not affected.
The General Assembly attempted to address the issue with Senate Bill 214. It would have delayed the QR code ban until January 2028, just before that year’s presidential preference primary. The bill did not pass.
State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs spoke out against Senate Bill 214 during the March board meeting. She led the board to a unanimous vote in favor of hand-marked ballots, an issue on which most Democrats and Republicans agree.
“Nothing can come between the voter and their pen and their piece of paper,” Grubbs said, holding a pen during a video interview with The Center Square.
Sen. Greg Dolezal amended a House Bill addressing Gwinnett County judges into a bill requiring hand-marked ballots by the November elections. That bill also failed.
The “hitch in the giddyup,” Grubbs said, is in advanced voting.
While most Georgia counties have only one advanced voting precinct, some have many precincts and different ballot styles.
“And then, for example, in Fulton County, for Election Day voting, you have some precinct locations that have more than one precinct at the address,” Grubb said. “So it’s become complicated in that way, and unfortunately, it’s so many days of advanced voting that caused the issue.”
Grubbs said the last thing she wants the election board to do is “cram something down the elections directors’ throats.”
“These are people who work really hard,” Grubbs said. “They usually have limited capacity and staff. I want to see us reach out to them and hear them on what they can do and what they can’t do.”
Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance told The Center Square in a video interview that she was relieved to see both election bills die in the General Assembly. She has advocated for hand-marked ballots.
“What we saw being developed over the months was just so irresponsible, reckless, not thoughtful, that you know the best we could hope for was to see it all die,” Marks said.
The ball is in the court of the State Election Board, she said.
“They are the ones charged under the statutes, with the enforcement of law; they are the ones who are supposed to be saying, look, we have machines that cannot meet the law,” Marks said. “Therefore, we need to go to the backup ballot system.”
The backup is a paper ballot system that uses the same equipment as the state. Marks is asking the State Election Board to approve a rule at its Wednesday meeting that would allow election directors to use the system. If the board agrees, a 30-day public process would begin.
But using the back-up system or making any change is not so simple, the chairman of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials told The Center Square previously when discussing House Bill 960, which would have forced election directors to use hand-marked ballots in November.
“This is not as easy as flipping a light switch,” said Joseph Kirk, president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials and Bartow County Election Supervisor. “It takes time, and the timeline contemplated by House Bill 960 is between mid-June and about early September, when we are going to start ramping up for the November general election. And that simply isn’t enough time to get everything we need to get done, everything tested that we need to test, everything written that we need to write to make this successful statewide.”
The issue could return to the General Assembly if Kemp calls a special session.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights organizations are asking Kemp to call lawmakers back to Atlanta. Specifically, they are asking lawmakers to extend the deadline for eliminating the QR codes until February 2027.
The governor’s office told The Center Square on Monday that nothing had changed since the session adjourned. The governor is analyzing the bills that passed “as well as the consequences of those that did not pass,” said Kemp spokesman Carter Chapman.