South Atlanta News

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has recently called on the General Assembly to allocate funds for technology that would facilitate comprehensive text-based audits of election races, excluding QR codes. Raffensperger believes that these text-based audits could strengthen election security and foster greater confidence in the electoral process.

In a press release issued by his office, Raffensperger said: "We want all Georgians to have full confidence in their elections. That is why my office has been working with multiple companies to develop an auditing tool that would read and tally, not the QR code, but the text of the ballot summary. To deploy this tool, that would be able to verify every contest on the ballot, we need the General Assembly to fund the final development and deployment."

The same press release explained that the audit tool, which was developed in partnership with several companies, would utilize optical recognition technology to read and tally the text of the ballot summary. This technology would be implemented post-election, in line with mandatory risk-limiting audits and using ballot images uploaded by counties. Georgia aims to become the first state to conduct a post-election audit using optical recognition technology, reviewing every ballot and contest.

According to another press release from Raffensperger's office, Georgia's Election Integrity Act (SB202) requires all counties within the state to upload scanned images of each vote cast. Raffensperger also pointed out suggestions made to address concerns about voting machines and QR codes by eliminating QR codes from ballots. However, his office asserted that such a modification would require six to nine months of work to adjust operating systems and software across numerous machines. Moreover, it is estimated that these necessary changes would cost taxpayers approximately $25 million.