special election committee

In 2028, as Georgia residents cast their ballots in the presidential primary, voters across the state will be using a brand new election system. At least, that’s the hope of a special committee dedicated to helping state officials make the switch. 

The committee, which includes mostly Republican lawmakers from both chambers as well as current and former election officials and other experts, held its first meeting Friday at the state Capitol. The panel was established under a new law passed in June during the state’s special legislative session. 

Ballot QR code bill headed to governor after Georgia lawmakers scale back hand-counting requirement

Lawmakers had been faced with a self-imposed deadline to end the use of ballot QR codes to tally votes last month. The measure passed earlier this summer extended that deadline out to 2028, when Georgia will be required to count ballots using text that can be deciphered by humans. A last-minute amendment to that law instructed the committee to focus solely on hand-marked paper ballot voting systems. 

Georgia’s current system uses machines to mark voters’ selections and then prints a completed paper ballot. The machines were purchased for $107 million from Dominion Voting Systems, which is now known as Liberty Vote, and used statewide in Georgia for the first time during the 2020 election.

Rep. Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who co-chairs the committee alongside Sen. Max Burns of Sylvania, said he is concerned about the tight timeline to overhaul Georgia’s election system, but remains optimistic that the committee can deliver on its promises.

“We have buy-in from three of the legs of the stool in this state: The Senate, the House and the governor’s office,” he said. “Everybody understands the importance of this. Everybody understands the immediacy of us getting it done, and so I feel very confident that we can do that.”

Anderson added that the committee will be able to build on previous work from other legislative bodies, such as a “blue ribbon” committee on elections that met throughout last summer and fall.

Atlanta Rep. Scott Holcomb, the panel’s sole Democratic appointee, urged the committee to dedicate some of its time to cleaning up the state’s election code and removing references to old systems and technologies that are no longer in use, such as direct-recording electronic voting machines that were used statewide before 2020.

“Part of what we also should be doing is to identify where the code really needs some modernization and updating,” he said. “These things are not divorced from each other. In fact, they’re central and critical to the overall policies that we might implement going forward.”

The committee’s final report is due next year at the end of January to allow state lawmakers to begin the procurement process. The 2027 legislative session will start in January. 

But Deidre Holden, a Paulding County elections director who was also appointed to the panel, urged her colleagues to try and submit it before the end of this year to ensure that local election workers have as much time as possible to implement the new equipment.

“There’s a lot that goes into the procurement process, and there’s also a lot that goes into public education and also into training our staff and our poll workers,” she said.

Procuring the new system is designed to be a multi-step, competitive process. Assuming everything goes smoothly, it could take between four and six months according to Georgia Department of Administrative Services Commissioner Rebecca Sullivan. 

The committee is scheduled to hold two additional meetings focused on gaining insight from a variety of experts, and another two meetings hearing from election equipment vendors and learning about their technical capabilities. The next meeting will be held on Thursday, Sept. 3 in Atlanta.