Georgia must eliminate QR codes from ballots by July. Is the state ready?

QR codes must be eliminated from Georgia’s ballots by July 2026, but less than a year away from midterms, the state hasn’t figured out how to comply.

State lawmakers passed the bill in 2024 to eliminate the codes, but they didn’t allocate any money to do so this year. And election officials warn it’s too late to make significant changes or switch to a new system before the midterms.

If nothing changes and there’s no guidance in place to handle the July deadline, it could be a “recipe for total chaos,” said Travis Doss, the Richmond County Elections Board executive director and former president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials.

House Governmental Affairs Chairman Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, warned earlier this year the mandate is a “train wreck coming.”

Currently, all in-person voters use touchscreens to select candidates, which are printed on paper with QR codes and human-readable text. Scanning machines read the QR codes to record votes, but critics say voters can’t verify what’s encoded there.

The state purchased the current voting system in 2019 for a 10-year contract with a $107 million price tag. At the time lawmakers voted on legislation requiring touchscreens, nearly all Republicans supported the measure, while most Democrats opposed it.

But distrust and opposition to the state’s election equipment has grown among conservatives after President Donald Trump’s narrow 2020 loss. The president’s claims of widespread voter fraud have never been proved following multiple recounts, investigations and court challenges.

Running up against the July deadline, pitches to come into compliance with the new law show a glimpse into diverging views on how to eliminate QR code tabulation.

Officials at the secretary of state’s office offered a proposal to Anderson and House elections study committee Chairman Tim Fleming, R-Covington, in a November letter.

Rather than paying tens of millions to overhaul or upgrade the state’s voting system, they requested lawmakers consider “double-blind counts,” with an estimated price tag of $300,000 per election.

Under the proposal, there would be two vote counts. The first would be a count of scanning QR codes on election night. The second would tabulate the results based on the text from ballot images before state certification. Counties, however, would certify results based on QR codes under the proposal.

Using optical character recognition technology isn’t new. The secretary of state’s office used it to audit the ballot images of the 2024 presidential contest and the results of the Nov. 4, 2025, elections, showing nearly identical matches to the election night counts.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is running for governor in 2026, has defended the accuracy and security of the state’s voting system and has said that audits have repeatedly shown Georgia’s vote counts are accurate.

But critics of Georgia’s voting technology say it remains vulnerable to possible hacks.

A federal judge acknowledged security vulnerabilities earlier this year in a decision dismissing a seven-year election security lawsuit because the plaintiffs did not prove they were harmed by the government’s actions. The judge said there are “substantial concerns” about Georgia’s voting system.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Marilyn Marks, who advocates for hand-marked paper ballots, said it’s a bad idea to count ballot images as a way of checking the output of an already vulnerable system.

“There is no reason for Georgia to stay married to a system this expensive, this fragile and this easy for bad actors to exploit,” she said.

Election officials say those vulnerabilities have never been exploited during an election.

In an effort to get ahead of the QR code deadline, Republican state Reps. Anderson and Fleming pitched a test run of hand-marked paper ballots before the Nov. 4, 2025, Public Service Commission elections. The secretary of state’s office shot the idea down as not legal under state law, which requires voters to use the same system across the state.

Support for hand-marked paper ballots, largely backed by Republicans in recent years, has gained traction among some Democrats.

“We do need to be planning for and moving away from this particular system,” said state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta. “It should be done in an organized way with appropriate funding provided, and that has not been the case.”

Nearly 70% of the country primarily uses paper ballots filled out by hand, according to the election technology organization Verified Voting. Georgia is one of the few states where all in-person voters use touchscreens that make printed ballots.

Lawmakers could also delay the effective date, giving the state more time to figure out how to comply with changes.

Legislators could also consider making the change contingent on funding.

Raffensperger told lawmakers earlier this year that removing the QR codes would cost more than $60 million.

And while lawmakers gear up for next year, the State Election Board is expected to consider a rule next week that would establish criteria under which the state board, secretary of state or county boards could declare the touchscreen voting system illegal, impossible or impracticable, triggering a switch to hand-marked paper ballots.

With the looming deadline, what lawmakers do could be shaped by the coming elections. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Raffensperger are running for governor, while Fleming, who chairs the House elections study committee, is running for secretary of state.