atlanta — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without Plan for new equipment to overhaul the state’s voting system by a July deadline, casting doubt on the future of elections in the political battleground.
Lawmakers’ failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of the inaction of Republicans who control the Legislature: “They have abdicated their responsibility.”
Currently, voters make their selections on Dominion voting machines, which then print ballots using a QR code that scanners read to count the votes. President Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted these machines after his loss in the 2020 election, and Trump supporters in Georgia responded with Enact a law In 2024, the use of barcodes to count votes is prohibited.
But state law still requires districts to use the machines. No money was allocated for reprogramming, and lawmakers failed to agree on an alternative.
“We will have an irresolvable legal conflict by July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Republican from Cornelia who has backed a proposal to continue using the machines in 2026, which Senate Republicans have refused to consider.
House Republicans and Democrats supported Anderson’s plan, which would have required Georgia to choose a voting process that does not use QR codes by 2028. Election officials favored that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they are not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Bert Jones, a Republican supported by Trump and running for governor, seemed more concerned with maintaining Trump’s support than “doing what is right by voters in Georgia.”
A spokesman for Jones did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County Supervisor of Elections and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he would look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumed a judge would rule on directing election officials on how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he added.
Robert Sinners, a spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “willing to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Republican House Speaker John Burns told reporters that his chamber is seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the river,” Burns said.
Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” about the possibility of holding a special session. Kemp’s spokesman did not answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do.
Without action, the state could be required to use ballots that were hand-marked and hand-counted in November, Anderson said.
Election officials say switching to a new system in just a few months, as some Republicans have called for, would be nearly impossible.
“They haven’t made room for that to happen except to set a deadline for it,” Cherokee County Elections Director Anne Dover said of the shift away from bar codes. One problem with some plans is that too many ballots have to be printed, Dover said.
Deidre Holden, Paulding County’s supervisor of elections, said lawmakers seem more interested in scoring political points than making practical plans.
“If anyone is flexible and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we’re doing before they start making laws that can’t be done for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked ballots say voters are more likely to trust an accurate count if they can see what the scanner reads.
Right-wing election activists pressed lawmakers to immediately switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House rejected a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he’s not sure if the special session can weather those political headwinds, but he said Georgia lawmakers must resolve the issue.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”