(The Center Square) – Ethan Compton told a House panel that not using QR code to tabulate ballots is a step forward in transparency, but funding is a barrier.
The Georgia General Assembly passed a law in 2024 that would eliminate the use of QR codes in the 2026 elections for counting ballots but did not provide funding for counties.
Compton, who is the voting system chairman for the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials and the Irwin County election supervisor, said election officials need more time to meet the deadline at a meeting of the House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures held in Savannah.
“If the July 1, 2026 deadline comes to pass with no funding and no further legislation enabling alternatives, we will have no legal alternative but to utilize emergency backup procedures,” Compton told the committee. “These procedures were created to provide for the complete collapse of a voting process currently in place and will be strained to their limits, far beyond their intended scope if used as an alternative primary method.”
The Secretary of State’s Office conducted a pilot test of Optical Character Recognition technology during the 2024 General Election to verify the accuracy of the votes cast. Nearly 5.3 million images from Dominion Voting Systems tabulators were examined during the audit.
No differences were found between the results tabulated by the technology and those counted using QR codes, Blake Allen, state elections director, said. The Secretary of State’s Office is recommending the permanent use of Optical Character Recognition and is asking lawmakers to fund it for 2026.
Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, who chairs the committee, has advocated for hand-marked ballots. Fleming is also a candidate for secretary of state. He and Rep. Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, sent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a letter in early September asking for a pilot program for hand-marked ballots.
“It is evident that the state is at risk of missing this important statutory deadline,” they said in the letter published by the Georgia Republican Party on social media. “For that reason, we believe it is imperative to begin testing viable alternatives to the continued use of QR-coded ballots.”
The committee will hold another meeting Oct. 2 at Georgia Piedmont Technical College in Covington, Fleming said. A final report will be made to the General Assembly by the end of the year.
