State Election Board weighs paper ballot options ahead of Georgia midterms
Faced with a vote-counting system that may soon violate state law, the State Election Board is weighing Georgia’s backup system: paper ballots filled out by hand.
The Republican-controlled board spent hours Wednesday debating its rulemaking authority and a proposal to abandon Georgia’s current touchscreen voting system that uses QR codes, unreadable by humans, to count votes. The proposal would switch the state to a system where voters would fill in bubbles on a paper ballot that would then be read by a scanner.
Critics — including many local election officials — fear a midyear switch would cause disruption at the polls in November. Others said the rule change would overstep the board’s legal authority.
Proponents say those concerns are overblown, noting that poll workers are supposed to be trained to use the backup system and a majority of the country already uses paper ballots.
The move comes as the state hurtles toward a July deadline to eliminate using QR codes to tally votes, leaving election officials and elections in limbo with no clear plan for compliance.
The Republican-controlled state Legislature adjourned without taking action on two separate bills to address the deadline set two years ago when lawmakers voted to remove the codes. One called for a switch to hand-marked paper ballots. Another sought to push the deadline and overhaul the state’s voting system by 2028. Now pressure is mounting on Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session to force state legislators to fix the problem.
State Election Board Chair John Fervier said the board should not try to resolve what he considered to be a legislative issue.
“The Legislature deserves a right to get this correct,” he said.
Many proponents of hand-marked paper ballots are longtime critics of the state’s voting system. Many are conservative activists whose opposition traces back to President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him.
A backup plan?
The proposal, brought forward by election security advocates, would mandate Georgia’s 159 counties switch to hand-marked paper ballots as the primary voting method.
Counties would still use voting touchscreens to accommodate people with disabilities.
State law calls for the use of the backup balloting system when officials decide there is a critical issue with the touchscreen system. An example would be a power outage at a polling location.
Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, argued the current system is already unusable, pointing to the bright screens of the upright voting touchscreens that she says don’t protect the secrecy of ballots and that voters can’t verify the accuracy of their QR codes.
“If the voters ever deserved a time to be able to know that they are casting a trustworthy ballot that wasn’t going to be challenged, it’s now,” she said.
The switch to paper ballots could present logistical problems for county election directors.
In Georgia, voters are allowed to vote at any early voting site in their county. A shift to paper ballots would require counties to be able to provide every ballot permutation at each early voting site, a move that many local election officials fear could cause disruptions.
In DeKalb County, election officials are expecting to have more than 200 different ballot permutations.
The board didn’t act on the proposal. It instead voted to meet with Marks to work on it and meet again next week.
Vice Chair Janice Johnston said the proposal goes too far as written.
Board member Salleigh Grubbs appeared open to the idea, saying the Legislature had since 2024 to address the matter and didn’t act.
“I don’t see how we can prolong taking action as a board in this great crevasse we find ourselves in,” she said.
Board member Janelle King, whose husband is running for secretary of state, appeared open to acting on a revised version, but she said she wants the implementation in the proposal to be more clear.
“I do think that we have more authority than what we are perceived to have,” King said.
King said she doesn’t want to pass a proposal that the board can’t fully explain and defend in court. That would be familiar territory.
Board authority
In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the board passed a series of contentious election rule changes. The Georgia Supreme Court invalidated several of those changes, ruling that the appointed board cannot create rules that conflict with or go beyond laws passed by legislators.
Ordering a switch to paper ballots could be another test for the board’s authority.
“The suggestion that this is not a legislative issue is really belied by the fact that the Legislature tried to make a determination,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s sole Democrat.
In a board meeting last week, Scot Turner, the executive director of the conservative election advocacy group Eternal Vigilance Action, urged the board not to “be tempted by those who come before you and ask you to be lawmakers.”
About the Author
Caleb Groves is a general assignment reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's politics team and a Kennesaw State University graduate.
