Most days, we’re political frenemies. Election season? We scrap like cats in a sack. We chase every voter, fight for every ballot and leave no yard sign unplanted. Our job is to get our candidates elected and keep each other’s candidates from winning. We’re good at it.
But here’s the unexpected twist: even while we’re on opposite sides of the Republican-Democrat battlefield, we still believe the battlefield should have rules— and fair ones. You can argue policy until the cows come home (and we do), but democracy only works if everybody plays on a level field.
That’s why we’ve teamed up— two politically opposite baby boomer women, who wish for the bygone days of bipartisan cooperation, and its patriotic value— to co-petition the Georgia State Election Board. Our ask is simple: let’s use Georgia’s long-standing backup system, hand-marked paper ballots, for the 2026 elections, and then publicly audit the outcomes with full and equal oversight by both parties.
$200 Million Elephant in the Room
Back in 2019, Gov. Brian Kemp corralled legislators into buying a $150 million Rube Goldbergian electronic ballot-marking device system. Some lawmakers argued for hand-marked paper ballots instead, where Sharpies would be economical “ballot marking devices” on printed paper ballots. Experts practically screamed from the rooftops that these touchscreen machines were insecure, unauditable, overly complex, and a never-ending money pit. Guess who was right?
Fast-forward to today: Georgia has blown through almost $200 million— before counties even add their ballooning costs— on machines that can’t meet basic state or federal laws. That’s money we could’ve used for schools, health care or fixing a few potholes. Or returned to the voters. Instead, it went to prop up vendors who promised modern magic and delivered headaches costing scores of thousands of excess labor hours, unnecessary in most other state’s systems. The majority of states ditched touchscreens years ago for security reasons, and readopted the gold standard of hand-marked paper ballots.
The Law Isn’t Optional
Federal law is crystal clear: voters must be able to privately read, verify and correct votes recorded on their ballots before casting them. Georgia’s QR-code system flunks all three. A mis-programmed machine? It just keeps spitting out errors, not allowing correction, like a stubborn toaster burning every slice. Privacy? Forget it. Those giant glowing screens turn every vote into a public announcement.
Georgia law doubles down, requiring votes to be readable by the voter to verify the accuracy of their vote. This system doesn’t pass muster— the official vote is in an inscrutable QR code which may not reflect the text printed on the ballot. But the voter has no way of knowing for whom they cast their official QR code vote. The touchscreen system doesn’t even meet Georgia’s minimum testing laws. Even when federal Judge Amy Totenberg told the Secretary of State and the State Election Board to comply with the minimal testing procedures, they have ignored her for five years. You don’t need a law degree to see that’s a problem.
2026: Bring the Receipts
Let’s not kid ourselves: 2026 is shaping up to be wild. Everyone is already talking about the unknown impacts that could come from President Trump’s Executive Orders on voting, and his calls for paper ballots and the end of barcode votes. If Georgia stubbornly sticks with this BMD circus, we’re asking for unnecessary controversy and last-minute pre-election chaos.
Hand-marked paper ballots, on the other hand, bring the receipts—literally. They give us irrefutable evidence of exactly what the voter marked. When disputes arise, you can actually look at ballots marked directly by voters, not by a touchscreen. Count them. Audit them. Settle the fight. No conspiracy theory can survive hard proof in black Sharpie on white paper. The scanner tallies can be audited.
A Call to Action
We’re asking our fellow Democrats and Republicans alike: tell the decision-makers – Governor Kemp, Secretary of State Raffensperger, the State Election Board and our legislators– to work together to put hand-marked paper ballots in place for 2026. Let’s have an election year where we argue about candidates and policies— not about whether the machines counted the votes.
We’ll still be fighting tooth and nail to beat each other. But at least we’ll know that the voters— not the vendors, not the machines, not the QR coders— decided the outcome.
Salleigh Grubbs is the First Vice Chair of the Georgia GOP and Jeanne Dufort is Chair of the Morgan County Democrats
