With midterms looming, Georgia fails to make election security upgrades

Nor did lawmakers fund an upgrade to Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines that would have patched vulnerabilities in time for the midterms.

And a proposal to switch to paper ballots filled out by hand will have to wait at least until next year — and likely longer.

Critics of Georgia’s voting technology are worried that tampering or hacking could flip votes and throw a race, though election officials say that has never happened so far.

“I’m still not confident. Nothing has changed. We have the same software that was deployed in 2020 and the very same system we’ve been using for the last four years,” said Field Searcy, cofounder of the conservative group Georgians for Truth, which advocates for hand-marked paper ballots. “We don’t have a process that we trust on either side of the aisle.”

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Adding to the legislative inaction, a federal judge dismissed a major election security case a few days before the end of the legislative session. In her decision, the judge noted “substantial concerns” but dismissed the case after deciding the plaintiffs couldn’t prove they had been injured by the government’s actions. The decision is being appealed.

Georgia voters are left with the same Dominion voting equipment purchased in 2019 for $107 million, with little chance of modifications before next year’s midterms. The system relies on touchscreens attached to printers that create a paper ballot with a QR code that is then read and counted by scanning machines.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the proposed upgrades — with an estimated taxpayer cost of $66 million to remove QR codes — aren’t necessary.

“We’ve shown that our system is secure and accurate. In fact, in the last election we just had, we did a 100% retally of the human-readable text and there were zero errors with the machines,” Raffensperger said. “We have voter ID for all forms of voting. We have virtually no lines. People can trust the system.”

This was the first year the General Assembly hasn’t changed election laws since President Donald Trump narrowly lost the 2020 election — and then loudly complained that the election was stolen, an assertion that has been repeatedly debunked.

After Trump won last year’s election, he didn’t allege fraud as he did when he lost four years ago, but he still tried to mandate national changes to voting technology through an executive order last month. Trump’s order sought to ban QR codes, require citizenship checks and set absentee ballot deadlines, though his authority to make those changes are being challenged in court.

Besides election security proposals, Georgia legislators also let an elections overhaul bill die that would have withdrawn Georgia from a voter registration accuracy organization and banned in-person absentee ballot drop-off the weekend before Election Day.

‘Train wreck coming’

The General Assembly’s failure to pay for election tech upgrades creates the potential for a crisis next year.

Under a state law passed last year, QR codes must be removed from ballots by July 1, 2026. But without funding to buy 33,000 new ballot printers across the state, there’s no way to pay for the upgrade.

Lawmakers were unwilling to spend tens of millions on a voting system they plan to replace in the coming years.

“There’s this train wreck coming, and we’ve got to figure out how to deal with it,” said House Governmental Affairs Chairman Victor Anderson, a Republican from Cornelia. “Everybody I’ve talked to is aware of the pending problem — but nobody is coming up with a solution.”

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Critics say QR codes, which are accompanied on ballots by the printed text of their choices, make it impossible for voters to know that their selections are accurately recorded by scanning machines. Election officials say audits check the printed text to ensure counts were accurate.

Anderson said Georgia’s elections are already “very secure” even with the state’s QR-coded ballots. He said he’ll seek quick approval of a bill addressing the QR code law when the General Assembly reconvenes in January. Possibilities could include delaying the law or making it contingent on funding.

Raffensperger had proposed a cheaper alternative: Instead of spending $66 million on removing QR codes, he sought $15 million to upgrade Dominion’s software on thousands of voting machines across the state.

The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency verified vulnerabilities in 2022 — including a hack that could alter QR codes so ballots were counted differently from the human readable text — but a patch has never been applied in the nearly three years since.

The weaknesses in the system were identified by University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman, who showed in federal court last year how he could gain access to voting touchscreens by using a pen to put them in “superuser” mode.

“Waiting for it to happen is just nuts,” said Jeanne Dufort, an advocate for hand-marked paper ballots and chair of the Morgan County Democratic Party. “When the banks know there’s a problem, they shut the accounts down immediately. You don’t just keep going until someone takes your money.”

Election officials say Halderman’s hacks have never been exploited during a Georgia election, and they could only be successful if election workers weren’t watching.

Are audits the answer?

Election experts said the additional security features sought in Georgia might have been beneficial, but they’re not essential.

What’s more important are paper ballots and election audits — which Georgia already has, said David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

An audit that scanned the readable text of all 5.3 million Georgia ballots cast last fall showed just 87 discrepancies with the official results — almost all of them caused by unclear marks on absentee ballots that required human review. During a separate audit, election workers counted a sample of ballots by hand to confirm they were tabulated correctly.

Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“The evidence is pretty clear that our elections are secure regardless of whether there’s a barcode on the ballot or not, so long as there is human-readable text on the ballot,” Becker said. “It is essential, no matter what system we use, to have paper and audits, and Georgia has all paper ballots and very robust audits.”

Stephen Richer, who managed elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, until 2022, said a ballot paper trail and election audits ensure that ballots are counted correctly, no matter what voting technology is used.

Georgia is one of two states, along with South Carolina, that uses ballot-marking devices — touchscreens that create a printed ballot — for all voters. About 68% of the United States uses paper ballots filled out by hand, according to the election technology organization Verified Voting.

“So many of the alleged vulnerabilities are predicated on this world where every single one of the workers in a voting location decided to get a drink in the middle of the day and leaves equipment unattended for manipulation,” said Richer, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. “If that happens, you have bigger problems then someone sticking a pen in the tabulator.”

Throughout the recently decided election security case, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg had previously criticized state election officials, urging them to do more to address vulnerabilities and safeguard ballots from tampering. But ultimately, she dismissed the seven-year litigation without requiring any changes, such as a mandate to convert to hand-marked paper ballots.

“Every day that goes by, Georgia voters are getting into a worse and worse situation with much higher risk,” said Marilyn Marks, executive director for the Coalition for Good Governance, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “We are seeing a continuing deterioration of any type of governmental oversight, and now we’re in an ‘anything goes’ mode.”

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

Joseph Kirk, elections director in Bartow County, disagreed with the idea that Georgia elections aren’t secure.

Kirk said he had hoped legislators would fund the Dominion software upgrade, but it wasn’t essential. And he doesn’t see a “dire need” for hand-marked paper ballots.

“A better approach is to focus on audits, on reconciliation procedures, on voter education to understanding all the processes we go through to make sure votes are counted properly,” Kirk said. “Nothing is ever perfect. We’re always trying to improve and make the process better and give people good evidence that the election had integrity.”

The inaction on election security leaves Georgia in an uncertain position heading into the 2026 election year.

Several elected officials are planning runs for higher office and will be looking to burnish their credentials next year as they face intense pressure from activists, lobbyists and political parties to do something — right before voters go to the polls in next spring’s primary.

Attorney General Chris Carr and state Sen. Jason Esteves have already announced their plans to run for governor. Other politicians — including Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — are likely to make their decisions about their next campaign soon.