Special to The Beacon ATLANTA — Lawmakers who want to overhaul the way Georgians vote heard a consistent message Thursday from election chiefs.
Hurry up! And give us money. A law backed by Republicans in the General Assembly outlaws the Quick Response (QR) codes that the state’s voting machines use to transfer voter intent into each polling place’s database.
Poll workers will have to use a different method starting July 1, and the legislature has yet to identify it — or pay for it.
Local election chiefs and poll workers told a House study committee that convened at Savannah Technical College September 18 they will need months to train workers.
“It cannot be rushed,” said Billy Wooten, the election supervisor in Chatham County, where the fourth hearing of the House study committee on election procedures was being held.
There is significant momentum in the state Republican party to use paper ballots.
Such a change could be expensive for a small place like Irwin County, said Ethan Compton, the election supervisor there.
“Property taxes will have to go up if we have to pre-print all of our ballots,” he said. “That is a cost that is going to be unacceptable to the people that I work for.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who announced he is running for governor, has consistently said the state’s voting machines work well and that elections have been accurate.
But a statistician from the University of California at Berkeley who was invited to speak, said Georgia’s system can be hacked. Professor Philip Stark also said the system lacks a paper trail that is trustworthy enough for reliable audits.
He recommended that the state use hand-marked ballots like most voters in the country.
The next hearing will be Oct. 2 at the Georgia Piedmont Technical College campus in Covington.
