ATLANTA –When Georgia lawmakers return to the Capitol this week for a special session, they are expected to try to clean upan election mess of their own making.<\/p>\n
The election system used throughout the political battleground state relies on a QR code printed on ballots to tally the votes. Legislatorspassed a law two years agobarring the use of that barcode for the official vote count beyond July 1 of this year, butno replacement methodof tabulating votes was ever implemented.<\/p>\n
One of the instructions Republican Gov. Brian Kemp laid out for lawmakers when hecalled the special sessionis to \u201caddress issues created\u201d by that law. Meanwhile, the secretary of state’s office and the State Election Board have further muddied the waters by issuing conflicting guidance for county election officials about how votes should be cast and counted.<\/p>\n
If the issues are not resolved soon, there is likely to be confusion and possibly litigation over the state’s elections after July 1. A special election to fill a U.S. House seat is scheduled for that month.<\/p>\n
Georgia’scurrent election systemwas first used statewide during the 2020 primary. After the general election that year, when Republican President Donald Trumpnarrowly lost the stateto Democrat Joe Biden, Trump and his supportersclaimed without evidencethat the machines had deleted or switched votes.<\/p>\n
Trump’s backers continued to complain about the touchscreen voting machines, with some loyalists espousingwild conspiracy theories. Election integrity advocates alsocriticized the machines, saying they arevulnerable to hackingand that voters cannot be sure their selections are accurately reflected because people can’t read QR codes.<\/p>\n
Republican lawmakers in 2024 tried to address those concerns by passing alaw banning barcodesfor the \u201cofficial tabulation count\u201d after July 1, 2026. But in the two years since, neither the secretary of state’s office nor the General Assembly has taken action to comply. Now, the deadline is fast approaching and a major midterm election looms.<\/p>\n
Trumpsingled out those machines, which are used in at least some counties in more than a dozen states, in hisfirst executive order on electionsshortly after he took office for his second term in January 2025. That order has been blocked by multiple courts and is not being enforced.<\/p>\n
Last month, Kemp announced a special legislative session, scheduled to start Wednesday, todraw new congressional mapsfor the 2028 elections and to address the QR code issue.<\/p>\n
\u0418\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0447\u043d\u0438\u043a: ABC News<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ATLANTA –When Georgia lawmakers return to the Capitol this week for a special session, they are expected to try to clean upan election mess of their own making. The election system used throughout the political battleground state relies on a QR code printed on ballots to tally the votes. Legislatorspassed a law two years agobarring […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}