This Thursday is the last day of the Georgia legislative session, and there are several election security bills still in play that have passed both chambers and have the chance to become law by then.
Last Friday, Georgia State Republican Senators passed HB960, a repurposed hand marked paper ballot bill that provides several features to help secure the 2026 Georgia General Election.
- HB 960 proposes to use hand marked paper ballots to replace Quick Response (QR) coded ballots generated by Georgia’s Ballot Marking Device (BMD) system. These ballots violate several Georgia statutes because they contain votes that are embedded in QR codes that are unverifiable to the voter but still used to tabulate results.
- HB 960 mandates post certification hand recounts of key federal and state races in all types of elections to ensure correct voting system results. It also mandates that recounts in contests with under a 1% victory margin are hand counted to ensure the election is awarded to the correct candidate. Current law offers no hand recounts to verify secret voting system counts as close races are recanvassed which simply reprints previous unverifiable results.
- HB 960 also mandates timely posting of current eligible voters lists before the election and prompt posting of current lists of voters who voted immediately after the election. These lists are essential to reconcile the number of voters who voted with the number of ballots cast.
- HB 960 mandates ballot batch identifiers for all election ballots and activates current infrared detection that can verify ballot security paper. The batch identifiers and infrared detection will help deter fraudulent duplication of ballots that can easily be inserted into election results.
But in spite of these significant election security features, Senate Democrats unanimously opposed the bill.
Another Senate hand marked paper ballot bill, SB 214, was repurposed by the House after pressure from county election officials to delay the replacement of QR coded ballots for another two years. This is a sticking point with grassroots election integrity advocates for several reasons.
In October 2020, a U.S. District Court found the Dominion QR coded voting system in violation of two Georgia statutes requiring voter verifiability and human readable text. https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/curling-v-raffensperger-rulling-101120.pdfAfter Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to address the issue, the General Assembly passed a more explicit statute in 2024 to ban QR code voting no later than July 1, 2026. QR code vote tabulation also conflicts with a voter verifiability statute in the 2002 Help America Vote Act. In fact, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14248 in March 2025 ordering the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to ban QR code vote tabulation.
The House Elections Study Committee recommended to hand count the verifiable text of all 2026 QR coded election ballots to ensure security and accuracy. But the House did not adopt this recommendation after several county election officials said there was not enough time to change procedures. However, in 2002, Georgia moved from disparate systems to a paperless, unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system in six months after signing a May 3 contract. A U.S. District Court found that DRE system was constitutionally deficient in 2019.
But perhaps more importantly, the SB 214 substitute bill version authorizes the purchase of a new unsecure voting system that allows existing security threats to continue indefinitely. In spite of the known security issues, the House substitute bill authorizes funds for the purchase of a new voting system that can be foreign made, proprietary and remotely accessible. It does not mandate compliance with U.S. critical infrastructure guidelines. It offers Ballot on Demand printing as an option to replace BMDs but has no requirement for ballot identifiers to help detect fraudulent duplication of any type of ballot. It also does not allow for adequate emergency ballots in Election Day precincts if BODs fail as they did in Arizona in 2022.
Most of these shortcomings can be corrected while the bill is in House Rules Committee or even after it crosses back to the Senate for a final agree or disagree. Better security provisions are needed to transform SB 214 from a vendor bill back into a voter bill.
In addition, another bill, HB 397, with election integrity provisions from the Senate last year, could address important voter roll security issues such as:
- Banning the distribution of our voter and driver Personal identifying information from being sent to the partisan third-party Election Registration and Information Center,
- Ensuring that ineligible registrations are removed from the voter rolls and,
- Ensuring that ineligible drivers are not improperly added to the voter rolls.
This week will be an interesting week for election integrity. HB 960 is essential to secure our elections before the 2026 general election. SB 214 must be reworked with serious security provisions before passage or abandoned. HB 397 can morph into a good omnibus election bill that can truly benefit Georgia elections. All of these are House bills. The Senate has done their job and now it is up to the House to secure future elections for Georgia voters.
Roswell resident Garland Favorito is the co-founder of VoterGA, a non-partisan, non-profit organization which advocates for Georgia election reform.
