ROCKMART — When their elections overhaul bill failed to pass earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in Georgia launched a backup plan, calling for a broad review of election laws ahead of next year.
They might end up with something more than they bargained for.
The Blue Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures has become a public venue for conservative activists to demand major changes to Georgia elections, such as switching to hand-marked paper ballots, ending no-excuse absentee voting and getting rid of automatic voter registration.
Liberals added their wish list as well, including limits on voter eligibility challenges and an elimination of the State Election Board, though the Republican-run committee is unlikely to adopt their political rivals’ requests.
It’s uncertain where the study committee will land when they propose new laws next year — and whether representatives will be able to ignore the desires of their Republican base.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“There’s a lot of concern that I have about making sure we don’t get sidetracked,” said state Rep. Victor Anderson, the committee’s vice chairman and chairman of the House Governmental Affairs Committee. “We’re trying to stay as focused as possible on policy and controlled as possible in the interjection of politics.”
Heading into an election year, lawmakers will face intense pressure to pass bills satisfying their loudest and most involved constituents, many of whom remain unsatisfied by Georgia’s broad elections bills from 2021 and 2023 that were supposed to restore voter confidence.
The committee held its second meeting Friday in Polk County, 45 miles northwest of Atlanta. Several conservative voters who spoke at the meeting said they still distrust Georgia’s elections nearly five years since President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in 2020.
“There are a thousand ways to steal our elections, which steal our constitutional republic,” said Mary Beth Bugea, a Catoosa County voter wearing a shirt calling for hand-marked paper ballots. “Make elections great again!”
Sandra Burkhardt of Fulton County told lawmakers Friday she’s convinced that “my legal vote in Georgia does not count and neither does anyone else’s. The machines must go.”
Other speakers have repeated discredited claims of ballot stuffing at State Farm Arena and “illicit” ballots.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A high-ranking Georgia Republican Party official, Brad Carver, added to the public’s clamor for vast changes on voting machines, absentee voting and voter eligibility challenges. Carver was one of 16 Republicans who attempted to award Georgia’s electoral votes to Trump in 2020.
“This state has made terrific strides since the 2020 election and since the 2018 election,” Carver said during the committee’s first meeting last month in Atlanta. “What I’m pointing out here is there’s still work to be done.”
The debate over election laws in Georgia is similar to many other Republican-led states across the country that have revised their election laws since 2020.
The most pressing issue facing the committee is how to comply with a July 1, 2026, deadline to eliminate computerized QR codes from ballots, as required by a law passed by state legislators last year.
Without a rushed switch from touchscreens to ballots filled out by hand — which don’t include QR codes — election directors told representatives Friday it would be difficult to change the statewide voting system in time. Legislators could delay the deadline, move toward hand-marked paper ballots, or find a different solution.
State Rep. Saira Draper, the only Democrat on the study committee, said its broad scope created an opportunity for activists to push their own agendas.
“What are the issues we are hoping to grapple with?” Draper said. “There’s been a lot of pontificating and generalizations, but there hasn’t been any specificity.”
Lawmakers ultimately will decide how far they want to go.
The study committee meets four more times before issuing its recommendations that could be considered during next year’s legislative session, just in time for the 2026 election season.
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