By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
APRIL 24, 2026 | When it comes to elections in our nation, we would want a new quality, reasonableness, to arrive. It often isn’t seen in politics.
But the way the Georgia legislature has left it, Georgia could be headed toward confusion and consternation in the way it will count ballots in the general election in November.
Two years ago, the legislature, with its Republican majority, voted to keep the state from counting ballots in voting machines that tallied the votes with a QR code. It banned such voting after July 1, 2026. That came from the Trump-inspired theory that there were many serious problems with counting votes in the presidential election of 2020. We doubt there was.
Meanwhile, no record of impropriety in using voting machines with QR codes has been reported. It’s all just bald-face theory that there might be some shenanigans when machines tally votes with the QR codes. Why would a manufacturer of voting machines build them without safeguards after safeguards?
That brings us now to consider what might happen in the 2026 election process. Georgians will trek to the polls in May for the general primary, to nominate candidates for the general election. But how we vote – paper ballots or machines – in November is still up in air.
Many think the quick and easy solution is for Gov. Brian Kemp to call the Legislature back into session to either simply nullify the banning of QR codes or come up with another solution. It’s obvious something must be done, or else we’ll find someone filing a lawsuit, and the courts will dictate how the election will be held in 2026. Why should the courts decide, when the people’s elected legislature should do that?
Ever see a hand-count of votes? Many veteran political observers have. They will tell you that the hand counting process is awkward, slow, and easily subject to errors.
It’s one thing to hand-count votes in deep south Georgia, such as in Quitman County, where 1,150 people voted in the 2024 presidential election. It’s entirely another thing to hand-count in Gwinnett County, where in 2024 there were 420,067 people voting. Throughout Georgia in 2024, over 5 million people cast votes in the presidential race. What if the whole state had to hand count?
Hand-counting takes so much time. It goes on and on sometimes through the wee hours, or into the next day, depending on the number of ballots cast. You have to look at each ballot and call out each vote….in every race on the ballot. And it takes lot of people to hand count an election.
Gwinnett will have what was once referred to as a ballot “big as a bedsheet” this spring in the primary. There will be 179 people for 53 offices. Imagine someone having to call aloud each vote for each office for every voter, and someone to tally every voter’s choice in each of these 53 offices. Put one way, the mind boggles.
Perhaps readers can see where it’s about time for something unknown generally in politics, something called reasonableness, to enter the arena.
Meanwhile, citizens should yell out as loud as they can to Gov. Brian Kemp, “Ball in your court, Governor!” Don’t drag us into confusion and consternation about this year’s general election!
Call the special session, Governor, and fix what the legislature should have done earlier this year.
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