Special Committee Meets Ahead of Setting Rules for Next Voting System in Georgia

A new special committee tasked with instituting rules for Georgia’s next “system of election equipment” met Friday at the state Capitol to create a new voting tabulation method in time for the 2028 election.

The task of the Election Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee comes following the Legislature’s prior direction to abolish the state’s QR code system for vote tabulation. While legislators previously faced a deadline to retire the QR codes last month, that deadline was extended to 2028, when the state will be required to tally votes using text that is readable to humans, not merely machines.

The meeting last week was primarily logistical in nature. Deidre Holden, a Paulding County Elections and Voter Registration director and special committee member, told the Daily Signal that the meeting held on Friday “was to set dates for future meetings and go over committee rules.”

The purpose of the committee is “to prepare recommendations for specifications and standards for a uniform system,” she added.

State Sen. Max Burns, a Sylvania Republican, sponsored the legislation that established the committee. His bill, SB 3EX, was a result of the special session this summer.

When asked about testing voting equipment and software, state Rep. Victor Anderson, co-chair of the committee, told the Daily Signal that the members are “soliciting input from cybersecurity experts, auditing experts, accessibility experts and many others in order to prepare recommended specifications and standards.”

Dr. Janice Johnston, a former member of the State Election Board, said the work is important for ensuring election integrity. 

“According to reports from the intelligence community that President [Donald] Trump recently provided, voter registration databases have been compromised by foreign adversaries and local data breaches,” she told the Daily Signal.

Johnston said that hand-marked paper ballots “are voter verifiable, which is consistent with federal and state law in addition to being available for forensic audit.”

“Paper poll books would prevent realtime manipulation of electronic voter rolls or post-election manipulation of voter databases,” she added.

Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, said Friday’s presentation on the procurement process “was significant.”

“The committee is going to have to determine a method to ensure that the voting system produces the correct results,” he said.

Favorito added that publicly recorded hand counts are a good method for ensuring election integrity as “that eliminates so much cost and security risk.”