(The Center Square) – A bill requiring hand-marked ballots for the November general election failed in the Georgia Senate, prompting questions about how the state will count ballots without using QR codes.
The General Assembly passed a bill in 2024 would require election officials to stop using the codes beginning July 1. QR codes record the votes and are used to tally election results.
The Legislature did not fund the bill, and so far, no plan has been announced as to how ballots would be counted on July 1.
Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, said when pitching Senate Bill 568 to the Senate Ethics Committee that the change would solve the state’s QR code problem. Some state election officials told the committee they support hand-marked ballots but did not have enough time to train poll workers or make changes before the November general election.
The bill would also have given the Georgia State Election Board the authority to fine local elections boards $10,000 for each person on a voter roll who is not eligible to vote. It also reduces the number of early voting polling locations.
Georgia’s elections are under scrutiny as the results of the 2020 general contest are questioned more than five years later. The FBI raided the Fulton County Department of Registrations and Elections in January, seizing boxes of tabulator tapes, ballots, and other election materials from the 2020 elections.
Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who chairs the Senate Special Committee on Investigations, proposed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed a statewide grand jury to investigate election fraud.
“We have had this, I guess just a series of issues involving voting, different accusations, different prosecutions of different folks, even the apparently the federal government is involved at this point in some of these,” Cowsert said during a committee meeting. “It seems to me that an issue like that that has statewide impact might be best handled by the Attorney General’s Office, who’s elected by the entire state, rather than leaving that with various district attorneys.”
Dolezal and Republican Steve Gooch of Dahlonega co-sponsored the resolution. Cowsert is running for attorney general. Dolezal and Gooch are running for lieutenant governor. It failed to get the two-thirds majority vote needed to go on the November ballot during a marathon legislative session on Friday night.