ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers advanced a bill on Thursday that would pause the mandatory voting machine changes they previously required for this year.
The legislators, at the Capitol for the second day of a special session, also continued to line up more than 80 local bills aimed at reducing homeowner property taxes in communities across the state.
The election measure was one reason Gov. Brian Kemp first called lawmakers back to Atlanta for the special session, but in early June he added the property tax subsidies to their agenda.
The Senate Rules Committee quickly approved Senate Bill 3EX after it got a nod from the Senate Ethics Committee earlier in the day. The two votes set the election procedures measure up for a Senate floor vote.
“I think we have a bill here that addresses the reason that we are here,” Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Sam Watson, R-Moultrie, said before Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, outlined the details of SB 3EX.
Burns’ bill is needed because the Legislature previously banned the use of QR codes to tally votes. That mandate, approved two years ago, will take effect July 1, absent legislative intervention.
The current voting machines use those digital codes, which led to the pending ban. Lawmakers had approved removing them from election procedures after backlash following President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and mistrust among some in Georgia of the state’s voting system.
But in the intervening two years, the Legislature failed to approve or pay for an alternative voting platform. Now, election officials say there is too little time to implement one ahead of the November general election, let alone the special election in July to fill the seat of Rep. David Scott, who died in late April.
Lawmakers had considered delaying their QR code prohibition, but they finished their regular session in early April without approving a measure to do so.
SB 3EX would push the effective date to January 2028. It also would establish a nine-member legislative committee to set the specifications, standards and requirements for a new system. Members would be appointed by the governor and by legislative leaders, currently all Republicans.
It also would require audits of the results in more statewide elections than is customary now.
Also at the Capitol this week, lawmakers began introducing legislation that would reduce property tax bills for homeowners.
The measures were authorized by Senate Bill 33 from the regular session. That law capped increases in the taxable value of owner-occupied homes at the rate of inflation. It also allowed local legislative delegations to seek a 1% Local Homestead Option Sales Tax for their communities, with the proceeds used to subsidize the taxes due for homesteaded properties.
If lawmakers approve the legislation, the penny sales taxes would appear as referendums on the November ballots of voters in those communities.
The measures must go through an extended review process under the Gold Dome. The House clerk must read each of them twice on the floor, then an assigned committee must approve them. Then the Rules Committee must tee them up for a vote on the floor and they must get another reading.
From there, any approved bills would go to the Senate for a similar review.
All this must happen before lawmakers gavel out for the final time. So far, they have scheduled legislative days only on Saturday and Monday, but they can add more.
The House clerk gave a second reading to 67 of these tax bills on Thursday after they were introduced on Wednesday. Another half-dozen such bills from Wednesday got a first read, and at least eight more were introduced Thursday.
House delegations seeking the new sales tax were from communities as tiny as the city of Jakin in South Georgia and as large as Gwinnett County in metro Atlanta.
They were from Toccoa in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Brunswick and Glynn County along the Atlantic coast.
The Senate also introduced two of its own such sales tax bills, for Brunswick and Glynn County.