ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers set up the possibility of a swift conversion to hand-marked paper ballots this year when they failed to pass a bill early Friday morning that would have gradually replaced the state’s touchscreen voting system.
The Senate’s refusal to vote on the bipartisan elections bill leaves Georgia with computer-generated ballots that will soon be illegal, just months before the midterm elections.
The legislation, Senate Bill 214, would have delayed a state law passed two years ago that set a July 1, 2026, deadline to stop using the kind of ballots produced by Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines, which print computer QR codes on ballots to count votes.
Opponents of the current voting system say humans can’t read QR codes — which contain voters’ choices — to verify that their ballots are accurate.
Without a new law, the July 1 deadline to eliminate QR codes remains in effect.
Instead of those QR-coded ballots, voters would need to use Georgia’s backup voting system: pre-printed ballots with ovals that voters fill in with a pen. Existing ballot scanning machines can read hand-marked ballots.
County election directors have warned that an election-year transition to a new voting method, without a plan or funding, could lead to voter confusion and disruptions in polling places.
It’s unclear how they will handle the hurdles of pre-printing millions of ballots, training election workers, and educating voters if QR codes are banned two months from now.
“I think we’ve got a problem,” said Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain. “By not acting, we’ve actually chosen chaos.”
The House voted 132-39 hours earlier SB 214, which would have moved the deadline to eliminate QR codes to 2028.
But Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, let the House’s competing solution die without a vote as the legislative session ended early Friday morning. The Senate passed a bill last week to require hand-marked paper ballots in this year’s elections, but the House didn’t consider it.
Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said he didn’t know what would happen next.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said needed to talk with Gov. Brian Kemp about what, if anything, lawmakers should do next.
Burns said the House bill was a “reasonable plan” to update Georgia’s voting technology gradually rather than immediately during a high-stakes election year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said. “Part of what we want to do is what’s tried and true, working with our locals with a good plan that we knew could work.”
Kemp could call a special session to bring legislators back to the Capitol to resolve the issue.
“There’s still some options. We’ve got to look. We’ve got to investigate. I’m hopeful we’ll get there,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania. “Give us 24 to 48 hours to get a nap, and then we can talk about it.”
Under the bill approved by the House, Georgia would have bought a new election system that would count ballots without using QR codes before the 2028 presidential election year, recording votes directly from bubbled-in ovals or the text printed on ballots.
House Governmental Affairs Chair Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, said county election officials need time to buy and test a new voting system before it’s rolled out to Georgia’s 8 million registered voters.
Georgia’s election equipment, purchased from Dominion Voting Systems for over $100 million in 2019, came under fire from Republicans after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Election security experts have also criticized it, saying the technology is vulnerable to tampering.
County election directors from across Georgia supported the bill that passed the House, SB 214, over the Senate’s proposals that would have forced a rapid switch to hand-marked paper ballots before the November midterm elections.
They said such a quick transition would disrupt elections because there wouldn’t have been much time for training, testing, and implementation.
Without a new law, election directors will have to begin preparing for that possibility.