Georgia’s vote-counting method will soon be banned. Lawmakers will try to find a solution this week

ATLANTA (AP) — When Georgia lawmakers return to the Capitol this week for a special session, they are expected to try to clean up an election mess of their own making.

The electoral system used across the political battleground state relies on a QR code printed on ballots to count votes. Lawmakers passed a law two years ago prohibiting the use of this bar code to officially count votes after July 1 of this year, but no alternative method of tabulating votes has ever been implemented.

One of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s instructions to lawmakers when he called the special session was to “address the issues created” by this law. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s Office and the State Board of Elections further complicated matters by issuing conflicting guidance to county election officials on how votes should be cast and counted.

If these issues are not resolved soon, confusion and possible litigation over state elections after July 1 are likely. A special election for a seat in the US House of Representatives is scheduled for that month.

How did we get here?

Georgia’s current electoral system was first used statewide during the 2020 primary. After that year’s general election, when Republican President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump and his supporters claimed, without evidence, that machines had deleted or altered votes.

Trump supporters continued to complain about touch-screen voting machines, with some loyalists espousing wild conspiracy theories. Election integrity advocates have also criticized the devices, saying they are vulnerable to hacking and that voters cannot be sure their choices are accurately reflected because people cannot read QR codes.

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Republican lawmakers in 2024 tried to address these concerns by passing a law banning the use of bar codes in “official tabulation counts” after July 1, 2026. But in the next two years, neither the Secretary of State’s Office nor the General Assembly took any action to comply. Now, the deadline is fast approaching, and key midterm elections loom on the horizon.

Trump singled out these machines, which are used in at least some counties in more than a dozen states, in his first executive order on elections shortly after he took office for his second term in January 2025. The order was blocked by multiple courts and has not been implemented.

The governor intervenes

Last month, Kemp announced a special legislative session, set to begin Wednesday, to draw new congressional maps for the 2028 elections and address the QR code issue.

It’s possible that lawmakers could extend the deadline in the law to allow the use of QR codes for now and give themselves some time to come up with a new system before the election in 2028. But in the final hours of the regular legislative session earlier this year, they rejected a proposal that would do that.

Even if lawmakers agree on a solution, it could be difficult to implement before a special election is held to fill the remainder of the term of U.S. Rep. David Scott, who died in April. The special election is scheduled for July 28, with early voting beginning on July 6.

The Secretary of State provides guidance to election offices

Last week, the Secretary of State’s Office issued guidance to election officials in the six counties included in that congressional district. The office says it is preliminary and subject to change based on any developments from the special session.

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Ballots will be run through scanners, which will read a QR code to generate a vote count on election night. Then, before the county is certified, electronic images generated by the scanners of each ballot will be uploaded to a server, where optical character recognition software will be used to count votes using human-readable text. The results of this second process will be the official tabulation statistics.

The Secretary of State’s guidance explicitly states that counties must continue to use the current election system, including touch-screen voting machines, and that nothing in the law permits the use of hand-marked paper ballots for in-person voting.

Conflict with the Election Commission

The state Board of Elections weighed in two days later with conflicting guidance. Board members argued that the plan proposed by the Secretary of State was not authorized under the law.

The council passed a resolution directing counties on what to do if the special legislative session does not result in an extension of the deadline for using QR codes. The resolution directs counties to use their own emergency backup, which calls for manual marking of paper ballots using scanners used to calculate voters’ choices.

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When Elizabeth Young, an attorney with the state Attorney General’s Office, was asked about the conflicting directives during the Board of Elections meeting, she said that although the directives are not binding, “it’s obviously going to cause confusion for election supervisors if they receive different instructions from two agencies, both of which have some authority over what they’re doing.”

The Elections Board is controlled by a majority allied with Trump and is often at odds with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is a frequent target of Trump.

Local election officials are in the middle

Henry County in suburban Atlanta is one of the counties where voters will go to the polls for a special election next month. Interim Elections Director Xavier Harris said the county is aware of the conflicting guidance and is awaiting further clarification from the state.

“Given the uncertainty surrounding currently available guidance, we believe it is prudent to wait for further guidance to ensure that any decisions made are consistent with state requirements and election administration best practices,” he wrote in an email.

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Marcy Scott, who is running in a special election for the remainder of her late father’s term, said she is not sure most voters are aware of the issue and is focusing her attention elsewhere.

“My goal is to get people to the polls, get my people to the polls and get them to vote for me,” she said.

But Carlos Moore, one of the six other candidates running in the special election, said he was concerned about legal challenges if a new method of counting votes is implemented without sufficient time. He hopes lawmakers will extend the deadline to allow the use of QR codes for the time being.

“I would ask lawmakers to do the right thing and leave enough time for the special election,” he said. “Otherwise there will almost certainly be court challenges.”