The Georgia House’s “Blue Ribbon Committee on Election Procedures” opens its first meeting Tuesday, July 15th, at the State Capitol with a six-hour session. Predictably, there’s no published agenda to let the public know that the meeting is stacked with speakers ready to promote the continuing misinformation from state officials about the state of Georgia elections.
The stakes are high—and so is the well-founded skepticism. This Committee must earn its title. If it is a “stay the course study committee,” Georgians will suffer yet another election cycle with insecure systems, unanswered questions, and eroding public trust.
We won’t sugarcoat it. The Committee is comprised of lawmakers long defending Georgia’s deeply flawed voting system, including Chairman Tim Fleming, who had a hand in choosing the system, and is beginning his campaign for Secretary of State. But this is no time for political posturing or defending past decisions. With the critical 2026 midterms approaching and election security risks rapidly escalating, this Committee must act now.
Coalition for Good Governance sent two important letters to lawmakers spelling out the urgent problems and urgent, factual concerns. You can read the letters to the Blue Ribbon Committee here and to the General Assembly here.
Every reporter, county election official, —and legislator—should be asking:
- Why have essential software updates that could reduce system vulnerabilities been shelved, without funding, despite urgent recommendations years ago from CISA, the federal court, Dominion, and cybersecurity experts?
- Why have the State Election Board and the General Assembly refused to investigate the massive breach of Georgia’s voting software in Coffee County, which compromised the statewide system? Why have neither demanded answers nor even basic mitigation and measures to prevent recurrence? (The Committee should avoid the continued partisan-based deflection.)
- Why did no one act after a 2024 DeKalb GOP lawsuit publicly exposed additional severe vulnerabilities that make vote manipulation easy and scalable for anyone with basic technical knowledge? The Governmental Affairs Committee brushed aside this issue in their spring hearing.
- How will Georgia address the goals of President Trump’s Executive Order directing the decertification of barcode-based voting systems before the 2026 election? The General Assembly enacted a bill to remove barcodes (and force compliance with federal law)—but left it unfunded.
- Why does the State Election Board routinely fail to adopt election rules ordered by the legislature with impunity? Why is the Board meeting so infrequently that investigations of complaints of serious election violations pile up for years unaddressed? Essential rule-making is continually deferred. SEB accountability is necessary for functioning oversight.
- Why are audits in Georgia of so little value? The so-called “risk-limiting audits” have been flawed and misrepresented as proof of secure elections. The improperly executed “audits” and the new “ballot image audits” mislead voters and whitewash problems instead of exposing them.
- Why are voters forced to cast votes they cannot read? In Georgia’s touchscreen system, the QR code vote gets counted—not the text that voters can read. If the code doesn’t match the printed text, voters will never know. That’s not a secure election. That’s an invitation to disaster, and the so-called “audit” is not reliable to detect such mis-programming.
- Why has no one been held accountable for the thousands of miscounted votes in the 2020 final tabulations in several counties? There is no evidence that Trump won Georgia in 2020, but the procedures that allowed (or encouraged) thousands of votes to go uncounted or miscounted must be addressed promptly and policies revised—not just buried in bureaucratic apathy, embarrassment, or misguided efforts to restore voter confidence
It is imperative that the Blue Ribbon Committee proceedings have a high degree of public scrutiny, to avoid the likely retreat into continued denial and the status quo. We must not permit them to pretend everything’s fine, issue boastful press releases, use hearings as campaign stops, and stall until forced to act by a crisis or court order.
The truth is this: several Georgia’s core election procedures—including use of barcoded ballots, unverifiable touchscreen machines, and ballot secrecy violations—violate federal and state law. The longer these violations go uncorrected, the more we risk chaos, mistrust, and legal challenges in 2026, and further erosion of trust.
The Committee should seek accountability from the State Election Board for its chronic inaction.
It must insist on near term State Board rulemaking to temporarily allow hand-marked paper ballots where touchscreen systems can’t comply with the law—something Georgia is already authorized to do under back up balloting provisions of state code.
This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about the foundational right of every voter to cast a secret, verifiable ballot—and to have that vote counted accurately, transparently, and lawfully.
Candidates should be demanding answers. Political organizations, Trump allies, voting rights advocates, and government watchdogs should unite in calling for real reform. Legislators should stop protecting flawed systems out of political loyalty and start protecting voters’ rights.
The Blue Ribbon Committee’s opening meeting is a test—not just of its relevance, but of the Georgia General Assembly’s willingness to face the truth and act transparently and decisively. So far, they are off to a bad start—scheduling a six-hour meeting and concealing the agenda of speakers and topics from the public. If they fail the test, they won’t just disappoint voters. They’ll fuel the kind of election controversy and disillusionment that tears at the heart of our republic.
Marilyn Marks is the executive director of the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance.
