State Election Board pushes for faster action on shift away from QR codes on Georgia ballots
Georgia’s State Election Board unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday urging state lawmakers to hasten a switch to hand-marked paper ballots, just a day after legislators unveiled a proposal to delay overhauling Georgia’s election system until after the 2026 midterms.
The resolution, introduced by board member Salleigh Grubbs, requests that Georgia implement hand-marked paper ballots “as soon as practicable,” arguing that the state’s current system of using QR codes to tally ballots does not allow voters to fully proof their ballots before casting them.
“I think this is an emergency in Georgia,” Grubbs said at a board meeting Wednesday. “I think a voting emergency should be declared.”
Precisely what “practicable” means, though, is a matter of debate. House lawmakers unveiled a plan Tuesday to make the switch in time for the 2028 presidential election. Rep. Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who is sponsoring the bill in the House, said lawmakers had hoped to remove the QR codes by the original deadline of July, but “very quickly and very abruptly began to realize that the practicality of that happening without causing a severe upset in our election system, it just wasn’t gonna happen. It wasn’t possible.”
https://georgiarecorder.com/2026/03/18/state-election-board-pushes-for-faster-action-on-shift-away-from-qr-codes-on-georgia-ballots/