Overview
- A 2024 law bans using QR or barcode data as the official vote tabulation after July 1, 2026, creating a hard deadline that has no funded or certified statewide replacement.
- Governor Brian Kemp has summoned a special legislative session starting June 17 to address the QR deadline and redraw congressional maps, with lawmakers able to extend or change the law.
- Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has issued preliminary guidance that would keep using ballot‑marking machines for election night totals and then use optical character recognition (OCR) on scanner images of the human‑readable text for the official count.
- The State Election Board voted a conflicting resolution instructing counties to switch to their emergency backup—hand‑marked paper ballots counted by optical scanners—and said the secretary of state's OCR plan is not authorized by law.
- County election officials warn the conflict raises real risk of confusion, logistical strain, and litigation ahead of early voting beginning July 6 and a special U.S. House election on July 28, and experts say statewide manual hand‑counts would be impractical and legally vulnerable.