This story pure spin another example of Republicans creating their own “election mess” by passing some dumb law based on conspiracy theories and then failing to clean it up. The piece makes it sound like they banned QR codes for no good reason, did nothing for two years, and now everybody’s scrambling because of their incompetence.
-The truth is the current Georgia system prints ballots with a QR code that the scanners actually read for the official count, not the voter’s marks. After 2020 a lot of people pointed out the obvious problem with that setup — if the machine gets messed with, the QR can say whatever it wants and most voters aren’t double-checking every single one. In 2024 the legislature passed a law to stop using those QR codes for the official tally starting this July. The intent was to move toward something more verifiable, like hand-marked paper ballots where the scanner reads what the voter actually filled in.
They just didn’t get the replacement system funded, built, and ready in time. That’s the real mess — not that the concerns were fake, but that changing a statewide voting system is slow, expensive, and full of bureaucratic bullshit. Now you’ve got the Secretary of State’s office telling counties to keep using the old machines while the State Election Board is pushing the hand-marked backup. The special session is mostly about redistricting anyway, so they’ll probably just kick the deadline down the road and buy time to do it right before 2028.
Classic case of media turning a legitimate technical problem and slow implementation into “Republicans broke elections again.”
Georgia lawmakers are expected to try to clean up an election mess of their own making when they return to the Capitol this week for a special session.
abcnews.link/1oNhYxh