Georgia Senate Bill 568 fails — again, we wait

On March 6, 2026, the Georgia Senate failed to pass Senate Bill 568, which would have required the state to move to hand-marked paper ballots for in-person voting ahead of this November’s elections.

Disappointing, but not surprising.

I wrote about this last year when Senate Bill 214 — a nearly identical measure — failed to make it through the 2025 legislative session before crossover day. Here we are again. As Senator Greg Dolezal put it: “All we’ve heard is excuses. Here we sit after having promised that we would do it after the last election, and it’s still not done.”

I couldn’t agree more.

As I’ve written before, hand-marked paper ballots are the safest and most secure way to ensure that a voter’s intent is counted as intended and provide the cleanest method for post-election audits. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine support the use of hand-marked paper ballots in their 2018 report

The core problem with Georgia’s current system remains unchanged: when you vote on a touchscreen in Georgia, the paper ballot that prints out has a QR code on it. That QR code is what the tabulation machines actually count — not the human-readable text printed alongside it. As I’ve previously noted, there is no way for a voter to independently verify that the QR code accurately reflects their intent. You just have to trust it.

I want to be clear, as I have been before — there have been no recorded instances of QR codes being manipulated in any Georgia election. This isn’t about claims of fraud. It is about a fundamental principle of election security: voters should be able to independently verify that the system is working as intended. With QR codes, they cannot. With hand-marked paper ballots, they can.

The argument against Senate Bill 568 was primarily one of timing and implementation speed. Senator Kim Jackson called it “too hasty” and warned it would “fundamentally destabilize our electoral system.” I understand the operational concerns — switching voting systems before a major election is a non-trivial matter. But the state has known this transition was coming. The law prohibiting QR-coded ballots takes effect July 1, 2026. The primary is in May. The legislature has now spent two consecutive sessions failing to act on legislation it already agreed was necessary.

What does this mean for Georgia citizens? In the short term, it means the May primary will proceed on the same touchscreen-and-QR-code system we have been been using since 2020. It also means the legislature is now scrambling to figure out how to comply with its own anti-QR-code law before the November elections without a clear path forward. Senate Bill 214 from the 2025 session is reportedly a candidate for amendment and revival. We’ll see.

In the longer term, it means Georgia citizens who care about election security and voter transparency should keep the pressure on their state legislators. This issue has bipartisan support — Senate Bill 568 was backed by a mix of election security advocates and election skeptics. That unusual coalition reflects a simple truth: the case for hand-marked paper ballots isn’t a partisan one. It’s a security one.

For citizens who want to vote using a hand-marked paper ballot right now, absentee voting remains an option. I wrote about how to do that back in 2020, and the process is still largely the same.

Coverage of the SB 568 vote – https://capitol-beat.org/2026/03/hand-marked-paper-ballot-bill-fails-ahead-of-deadline-for-changing-georgias-voting-system/

My 2025 post on Senate Bill 214 – https://andygreen.phd/blog/2025/03/27/is-georgia-moving-to-hand-marked-paper-ballots-for-elections/

My 2020 post on how to vote using a hand-marked absentee ballot in Georgia – https://andygreen.phd/blog/2020/10/17/how-to-hack-the-vote-georgia-style/

Georgia Secretary of State Absentee Ballot website - https://georgia.gov/vote-absentee-ballot