While most observers are focused on the 2026 midterms, a Republican-dominated panel is already looking past them to map out 2028.
The committee, created by the Georgia Legislature during this summer’s special session, is charged with recommending a new system based on hand-marked ballots printed on demand, which could reshape how the swing state conducts elections in 2028.
The push for a new voting system follows years of spurious attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies against touchscreen voting machines, which Georgia currently uses.
The heavy lift that is overhauling a statewide system came into focus during the committee’s first meeting Friday.
To implement a new system by the March 2028 presidential preference primary, the state will require legislation, funding and a statewide contract put out for bid. Then officials will need to deploy the system, train election workers and educate voters about the change.
Department of Administrative Services Commissioner Rebecca Sullivan told the committee that, in the best-case scenario, the procurement process will take four to six months.
State Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, called the timeline a “very aggressive implementation challenge.”
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
The nine members are tasked with issuing recommendations by Jan. 31, 2027 — giving lawmakers the remainder of the legislative session to consider them.
For more than two decades, Georgia voters have used touchscreen machines to cast their votes. A shift to hand-marked ballots would make this November’s election the last major federal contest decided that way.
Trump has refused to accept his 2020 election loss, making the security of Georgia’s statewide voting system a flashpoint. False claims from Trump supporters that manipulated machines tainted the results have fed conservative distrust of the machines.
Other longtime election security advocates have raised concerns, pointing to vulnerabilities identified by experts that they say could be exploited — though no evidence shows malicious actors have used such flaws to alter results. Meanwhile, election officials have defended the system as secure and pointed to audit results as evidence of its accuracy.
But the fraught politics of election administration in the aftermath of 2020 have driven a series of Republican-backed election laws. Among the host of things about Georgia’s machines Trump’s supporters push back on are the QR codes on ballots to count votes. That opposition fueled a 2024 law that would outlaw the use of QR codes printed on ballots to count votes by July 1, 2026.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
In a June special legislative session, lawmakers delayed implementing the bar code prohibition after failing to find a viable solution to comply with the self-imposed mandate. Instead, legislators created the election equipment committee, which includes members of the Georgia House and Senate, along with three appointees selected by Gov. Brian Kemp, and reset the deadline.
Many local election officials warned that overhauling the system months before the midterms threatened to throw November into disarray. But the delay comes with a political cost — locking in the machines that Trump has long opposed for November and placing some Republican lawmakers at odds with the ultraconservative wing of the party for failing to ditch the machines, let alone the QR codes they distrust.
State Rep. Tim Fleming, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, is on the committee, allowing him to help shape a system he may later certify as Georgia’s next election chief.
“We are here to build tomorrow’s solutions and focus on the future of voting in Georgia,” Fleming said.
State Rep. Scott Holcomb, the sole Democrat on the committee, acknowledged the erosion of trust in the system.
“Georgia is effectively a 50-50 state, and so any system, any change of a system, needs to be broadly supported or else we’re still going to have these trust issues,” he said.
Paulding County Election Director Deidre Holden, whom Kemp appointed to the panel, said in her experience talking to voters that most are comfortable with the current system, but a small minority are the ones pushing for hand-marked ballots.
“There’s so much negativity surrounding QR codes and the current system,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. “I think that the most important role is to have a system that the voters can use that’s friendly, but most importantly that it’s a secure system.”
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
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