enacting a law<\/a> in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes. <\/p>\nBut state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,\u201d said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.<\/p>\n
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson’s plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn’t use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Senate has shown that they\u2019re not responsible actors,\u201d Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump’s backing than \u201cdoing right by Georgia voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Jones didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.<\/p>\n
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he\u2019ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is uncharted territory,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are \u201cready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t change horses in the middle of the stream,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n
Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and \u201ctake his temperature” on the possibility of a special session. A spokesperson for Kemp didn’t answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do.<\/p>\n
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November. <\/p>\n
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it,” Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it\u2019s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,\u201d Holden said.<\/p>\n
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner. <\/p>\n
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so. <\/p>\n
Anderson said he wasn\u2019t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a legislative problem,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cIt\u2019s a legislative solution that has to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
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