Is Georgia moving to hand-marked paper ballots for elections?
The Georgia Assembly is considering a bill to return the state to hand-marked paper ballots as the default, with touchscreen voting devices available for people with disabilities.
The bill won’t make it through the 2025 legislative session as it was not passed by the Senate before crossover day. Hopefully, it will survive the session and be ready for next year.
I believe this is a very good move for the state, and I hope it passes next year and is signed into law by the governor. A 2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study recommended the use of hand-marked paper ballots for voting, as did Dr. Wenke Lee, the sole security member of a 2019 Georgia panel created to examine election security.
hand-marked paper ballots are the safest and most secure way to ensure that a voter’s intent is counted as intended and provide a clean method for post-election audits (hopefully using the risk-limiting audit method).
Senate Bill 214 text – https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20252026/233014?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR21Ov5iwZLFeefwyNWpl7o8Qz_o4tICq-Z7uinQ_avlkocS4dYUcc3Kw6U_aem_V2FpMdWycNEFdSkRxUeJCQ
2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study on election security – https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25120/chapter/1
LinkedIn post from Dr. Wenke Lee on why he supports the use of hand-marked paper ballots – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-computer-scientists-prefer-paper-ballots-wenke-lee/
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