Georgia voters deserve fair, transparent, and secure elections. But Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is again misleading lawmakers and the public— this time with deceptive justifications to keep Georgia’s dangerously flawed voting system in place for at least another six years.
Instead of prioritizing election security, Raffensperger is lobbying the legislature to delay the removal of QR codes from ballots until 2030. He claims the state must wait for an entirely new voting system. This is unacceptable.
Georgia’s QR-coded ballots have long been identified as a severe cybersecurity vulnerability— a violation of both state and federal election laws. Instead of addressing the problem, Raffensperger is doubling down on bad decisions and peddling falsehoods to lawmakers to stall improving the security of the system.
The simple, inexpensive answer (saving millions of dollars) is to do what the vast majority of the nation’s jurisdictions do: Use hand marked ballots counted by the current scanners.
While the 2024 legislation that mandates QR code removal by 2026 is far from adequate, Raffensperger wants to gut that deadline, and that would effectively ensure another 5 years of unverifiable elections under Dominion’s deeply flawed touchscreen system. If he succeeds, the General Assembly will have been played, and Georgia voters will once again be denied real election security.
Misleading Testimony & a Dangerous Cover-Up
Raffensperger’s deception doesn’t stop at QR codes. In recent testimony before the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees, he misrepresented the security of the voting system and pushed a deeply flawed and conflicted so-called “audit” as proof that everything is fine.
This 2024 so-called “ballot image audit” was supposed to be an independent, third-party verification of election vote tallies. Instead, it was a sham audit, orchestrated by a vendor that had a direct conflict of interest in the audit findings. Worse yet, Raffensperger has used the results to mislead the public and lawmakers, falsely claiming the audit “confirmed” election results of all ballots and contests with near 100 percent accuracy.
Here’s what he’s not telling legislators:
• Numerous vote tally inaccuracies were discovered, and some quietly ignored. Others were quietly corrected behind closed doors, while making false claims made about the accuracy.
• The audit did not examine actual paper ballots. It only analyzed ballot images created by the same high-risk machines. (Who really won, based on the voters’ intent, can never be known when recorded by touchscreen machines.)
• These electronic images can be electronically manipulated.
• The State Election Board was given direct instructions by the General Assembly to ensure a truly independent auditor, provide financial oversight, ensure that all ballots and races were audited, publish all images used in the audit, yet they exercised no oversight whatsoever, and all of these restrictions were violated.
• The vendor chosen to conduct the audit, Enhanced Voting, has glaring conflicts of interest— it is the very company that compiles, calculates and publishes Georgia’s election results for official certification, as well as provides a voting application recording military and overseas voters’ votes.
Instead of conducting a serious, independent review, Raffensperger outsourced the job to the very people responsible for counting the votes in the first place. It’s an outrageous betrayal of the public trust.
The $5 Million Audit Budget Defied the Legislature
The details of how Enhanced Voting was selected— and how the audit was conducted— are even more damning.
• The General Assembly mandated that the audit vendor have no ties to Georgia’s voting system. Raffensperger and the State Election Board ignored this fundamental requirement.
• Enhanced Voting, the vendor in question, was paid over $300,000 more than the approved contract amount– with zero oversight from the State Election Board.
If the General Assembly does not take action, this questionable arrangement will continue into future elections, and Raffensperger will continue to hide behind a bogus audit while refusing to secure Georgia’s voting system.
Lawmakers Must Demand Answers and Accountability
The Republican-controlled legislature must not allow Raffensperger to manipulate them into funding another year of compromised elections. They should be demanding answers about:
- Why Raffensperger is fighting to keep QR codes on ballots until 2030, despite proven severe security risks.
- Why Enhanced Voting, a vendor with glaring conflicts of interest, was engaged to conduct Georgia’s audit in direct defiance of legislative orders.
- Why the State Election Board rubber-stamped a $5 million contract with no oversight or objection and gave Secretary Raffensperger sole discretion.
The Coalition for Good Governance has filed complaints with the House Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs Oversight and the Senate Government Oversight Committee on these issues. Both should immediately open investigations into the so-called audit and officials’ actions, the contract with Enhanced Voting, and the over-budget payments made to the firm.
Marilyn Marks is the executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance.
