The State Election Board on Wednesday voted down a proposal that would create a pathway where Georgia’s touchscreen voting system could be eliminated to switch to hand-marked paper ballots.
The proposed rule failed in a 2-2 vote.
“This really is the duty and job of the legislators,” said Vice Chair Janice Johnston, a Georgia Republican Party appointee.
The vote comes after the Georgia Supreme Court invalidated some contentious rules passed last year in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. The court ruled that the board, which is made up of political appointees, cannot create new rules that conflict with or go beyond state laws passed by elected legislators.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s sole Democrat, said she supports hand-marked paper ballots, but that “this is not the appropriate vehicle for that.”
“We are putting ourselves at risk again of getting swatted back under the very precedent that was created to constrain the authority of this board,” she said.
Some opponents of the rule feared it could be used to go around Georgia’s requirement to use the touchscreen system.
State law already requires using paper ballots as a backup if the touchscreen voting system is determined to be impossible or impracticable to use. Proponents of the rule said that it would only clarify what those words mean.
Before the vote, board member Janelle King, who voted in support of the rule, said she was on the fence about whether to pass the rule and risk a potential lawsuit.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
King also raised concerns about the looming July deadline to eliminate QR codes from Georgia ballots, saying if the state doesn’t figure out how to comply with the deadline, county election officials might be left in limbo.
“There is a responsibility that I personally believe falls on this board to lend some support to county election officials so that they can have something to hold onto in case they do have to implement paper ballots,” she said.
Board member Rick Jeffares, a former Republican state senator, also voted for the rule, but said he’d work with legislators to draft a bill that is similar to the proposal.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Georgia’s touchscreen voting system has been a target of conspiracy theories. Conservatives who distrust the machines after President Donald Trump’s narrow 2020 election loss have sought to eliminate them.
The touchscreen system prints paper ballots with a QR code recording votes and human-readable text reflecting a voter’s selection. Critics say they can’t verify what’s encoded on the QR codes because voters can’t read them.
Election security advocates say the state’s voting system has security vulnerabilities, though election officials say those vulnerabilities have never been exploited during an election.
Under the proposed rule, the secretary of state, State Election Board or a court could determine the circumstances triggering a switch to hand-marked ballots.
Beyond operational challenges like power outages, proponents of the rule point to examples of when the system would be impossible to use, including when the bright screens of the upright voting touchscreens don’t protect the secrecy of the ballot or when voters can’t verify the accuracy of the QR codes.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Salleigh Grubbs, the first vice-chair of the Georgia Republican Party, was one of the authors of the rule proposal. She said she supports the idea of working with the Legislature next year for a similar proposal but has concerns that legislative changes might alter a bill’s initial intent.
“I just hope legislators will be hyper-focused on the issues coming up for the primary elections,” she said.
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