Georgia Votes to End Unverifiable, Secretly Counted Elections

New Bills Deter Bal­lot Traf­fick­ing, Coun­ter­feits and Bal­lot Box Stuff­ing

ATLANTA, GA, MARCH 30, 2024 The Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly vot­ed toban unver­i­fi­able QR-cod­ed vot­ingand improve elec­tion trans­paren­cyby mak­ing phys­i­cal bal­lots pub­lic recordbefore it adjourned for Sine Die just after mid­night Thurs­day. New elec­tion secu­ri­ty mea­sures alsorequire improved bal­lot chain of cus­tody pro­ce­durestodeter bal­lot traf­fick­ingand vis­i­ble water­marks on all bal­lotsto help detect bal­lot coun­ter­feit­ing. The lan­guage fur­ther requires all absen­tee vot­ing tab­u­la­tion to be com­plet­ed on Elec­tion Night tohelp pre­vent post-elec­tion bal­lot box stuff­ing.

SB189, an omnibus bill, ensures all phys­i­cal bal­lots are sub­ject to Geor­gia Open Records Request law soelec­tion results can be pub­licly ver­i­fied. Bal­lots will be inspect­ed or copied at requestor expense while in cus­tody of coun­ty elec­tion offi­cials. The bill requires all ear­ly vot­ing and mail-in bal­lots received pri­or to Elec­tion Day to be tab­u­lat­ed by 8pm on Elec­tion Night. The bill also con­tainsaddi­tion­al sign off and seal­ing pro­ce­duresthat coun­ties must imple­ment no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 1, 2025. It fur­ther gives the Sec­re­tary of State two years toelim­i­nate the cur­rent vot­ing sys­temthat accu­mu­lates votes hid­den in QR codes. In addi­tion, it includes clar­i­fi­ca­tions for chal­lenges of invalid vot­er roll entries intend­ed toimprove vot­er roll accu­ra­cy.

HB974requiresvis­i­ble secu­ri­ty water­marksfor bal­lots socoun­ter­feit bal­lots can eas­i­ly be spot­tedby elec­tion work­ers. It also requires addi­tion­al Risk Lim­it­ing Audits (RLA) for each elec­tion with option­al tab­u­la­tion audits and a grad­u­al­ly reduced RLA risk tol­er­ance lim­it over the next few elec­tion cycles.

HB1207fur­therimproves elec­tion trans­paren­cywith mean­ing­ful access for poll watch­ers while pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic pro­tec­tions for both poll work­ers and watch­ers. It also requires elec­tion work­ers to be U.S. cit­i­zens since they han­dle bal­lots and elec­tron­ic images of bal­lots cast by Geor­gia vot­ers who are all U.S. cit­i­zens.

The bills were cham­pi­oned by Sen­ate Ethics Chair Max Burns and House Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs Chair John LaHood. They include lan­guage from bills offered by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Shaw Black­mon, Alan Pow­ell and Tim Flem­ing as well as Sen­a­tors Kay Kirk­patrick, Bran­don Beach, Mar­ty Harbin and Rick Williams.

SB189 and HB1207 passed onpar­ty line vot­ingwith most Repub­li­cans vot­ing for them and most Democ­rats vot­ing against them. Although Democ­rats have his­tor­i­cal­ly been strong advo­cates of elec­tion integri­ty that trend has changed since 2020. Oppo­si­tion to the elec­tion integri­ty mea­sures was led in the House by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Saira Drap­er, Ruwa Rom­man and Stacey Evans and in the Sen­ate by Sen. Derek Mal­low.