Sen. Max Burns discusses his election bill in a House Committee June 23, 2026. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
Georgia lawmakers dialed back a controversial change that would have mandated hand recounts of the two top-ticket races in every election before local officials could certify the results.
The hand-count provision was added by Senate Republicans over the weekend to a measure extending the state’s self-imposed deadline to stop using ballot QR codes to tally votes, prompting outcry from Democrats, local election officials and other advocacy groups.
Bill extending Georgia’s ballot QR code deadline clears Senate in a Saturday vote
The revised measure, which passed out of both chambers Tuesday largely along party lines, limits the use of hand recounts to only the governor’s or lieutenant governor’s race, and implements them only when the leading candidate’s margin of victory falls within half a percent of the candidate in second place. The state will reimburse counties for the cost of conducting a hand recount.
The bill also allows the state to continue using QR codes to tally votes until 2028, meaning they will still be in place for this year’s midterms, and mandates additional post-election audits on certain statewide contests and establishes a special committee to help select the state’s next voting system.
An amendment added by Covington Rep. Tim Fleming, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, instructs the committee to narrow their focus to hand-marked paper ballot systems, which would represent a shift away from Georgia’s current system that uses voting machines to mark ballots.
Sen. Max Burns, a Sylvania Republican who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, told lawmakers the language “ensures that Georgia moves forward, that our elections are safe and secure, that we are prepared for not only 2026 elections but also for ’27 and ’28 and beyond.”
Speaking to reporters after the bill passed, Burns added that the hand count provision was aimed at boosting voter confidence in the machine-tallied election results, despite the fact that studies have shown hand-counts of ballots are less accurate than ballots counted by machines.
“We’re not using the hand count as the primary method of determining election results,” he said. “When the machine tabulation suggests that a race is very close, we then say ‘review it,’ take a second count, and evaluate it.”
But Democrats questioned the measure’s reliance on hand recounts, citing high labor costs and the potential for human error. They also pushed unsuccessfully to have the bill changed to guarantee that a member of the minority party would have a seat on the special committee that will help choose the state’s next election system.
Rep. Jasmine Clark, a Lilburn Democrat who is running for Congress, accused Republicans of acquiescing to a small but vocal group of conservative activists who have continuously cast doubt on Georgia’s election integrity in the years since President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.
“You just cannot build a healthy democracy by catering to people who will just never accept the results of an election if it does not favor them,” she said.
Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo echoed Clark’s sentiments, criticizing the use of ballot hand counts and arguing that Republicans were “giving conspiracy theorists outsized influence over how Georgia’s elections are run.”
Opponents of ballot QR codes had long hoped that Georgia might find a way to phase out voting machines this year and replace them with hand-marked paper ballots, which they say can be more easily verified by voters. Voter GA cofounder Garland Favorito, who has been one of the main proponents of switching to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots ahead of the midterm elections, said he had conflicting feelings about the version of the bill that crossed the finish line.
“It’s a mixed bag,” Favorito said, arguing that the bill takes “steps in the right direction, but it doesn’t ensure that the 2026 elections are going to be secure.”
The last-minute addition of the hand-counting provision also risked compromising the support of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, which had initially supported the bill but reversed its stance after mandatory hand counts for the top two races in every election were added to the legislation.
Joseph Kirk, the Bartow County elections director and president of the association, said he was glad to see the hand recount provision scaled back in the final version, arguing that small discrepancies in vote totals can easily undermine voter confidence.
“When you see small changes in results, the question is why,” he said. “And most of the time when you’re hand counting, that’s an issue with people that are doing the hand count.”
He added that local officials may still have to adapt to some new audit and recount procedures for the midterm election, but said the bill is ultimately a “clear path forward” for election administrators.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced the special session in May, calling lawmakers back to the Capitol to address the QR code issue and to redraw the state’s political maps. However, Republican lawmakers in both chambers ultimately backtracked on their plans to redistrict.
The bill now goes to the governor’s desk for his signature.
