ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation into law Thursday that delays the July 1 ban on the use of QR codes in Georgia’s voting machines.
His signature postpones the prohibition until Jan. 1, 2028, giving lawmakers more time to adopt new election procedures.
Senate Bill 3EX, which passed Tuesday, the last day of the special session, removes Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from the planning, instead putting lawmakers in charge of recommending a new voting system.
Raffensperger, a Republican who stood firm against President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, had become a target of GOP lawmakers. They blamed him for sticking with QR codes, and he blamed them for failing to select and pay for an alternative system.
The new law also mandates hand recounts of the top two statewide races on the ballot when the results are within a 0.5% margin.
That requirement entered the bill through a late amendment. Critics contend the wording was rushed and flawed. The amendment, in describing the necessary margin for a recount, declares that the number of votes for the winner of one of those top two races “shall be not more than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes which were cast in such qualified contest.”
The Coalition for Good Governance, an organization that has long pressured the state to stop using QR codes in elections, wrote in a summary of SB 3EX that it literally “outlawed” race results with margins greater than 0.5%.
“While the drafting error will almost certainly be corrected in a future legislative session,” the group wrote, “it serves as a cautionary example of what happens when complicated election legislation is drafted, negotiated, generally behind closed doors, and passed at breakneck speed, with the public and Democrats not permitted to see bill drafts until moments before votes were taken.”
Although Democrats largely opposed the measure, Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, voted for it, saying he trusted the Georgia Supreme Court to discern the intent of that language should a losing candidate sue.
McLaurin is the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. Three Senate Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones, II, D-Augusta, voted with him in favor of the bill.
Another 16 Democrats opposed it, including Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, who said he doubted the courts would rule in favor of a Democrat, such as the party’s nominee for governor.
“What happens if Keisha Lance Bottoms comes up on top and it’s by 0.2%?” Kemp said. “I cannot support a bill that we already know has incorrect language in it.”
McLaurin alleged that his opponent for lieutenant governor, Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, had secretly worked to sabotage the legislation on behalf of QR code opponents who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. McLaurin said the final version of the bill was “a little clunky” but that it needed to pass to avoid pandemonium during the November midterms.
McLaurin said there were “election deniers in the hallway who are all saying the same thing: don’t fix the problem. … But dear God, we have to fix this problem.”
Dolezal did not stand to rebut McLaurin’s allegation about sabotage, but Senate President Pro Tem Larry Walker, III, R-Perry, did.
He said Dolezal had been an “honest broker” in support of the bill and that McLaurin’s allegation that Dolezal had tried to whip up votes against it were “patently false.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat, an initiative of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
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