Georgia lawmakers delay a major change to the state’s voting system

The Republican-controlled Legislature punted a self-imposed deadline to replace the battleground state’s QR code system for counting votes to 2028.

Georgia lawmakers voted Tuesday to extend a self-imposed deadline to implement a new voting system for this fall’s midterm elections days before it was set to fall out of compliance with state election code.

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Georgians voting in person typically use a digital ballot-marking device that prints out a marked ballot with a QR code and a written summary of the voter’s choices. The QR codes, which are indecipherable to the human eye, are used to tabulate votes, though the audit process includes a review of spelled-out choices when checking the results.

The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted in 2024 to stop using QR codes to count votes by July 1 of this year, fueled in large part by unfounded allegations of voter fraud and a yearslong federal lawsuit about the integrity of the state’s voter system.