On Monday, Aug. 19, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) — which has a majority of Republican members — will have a final opportunity to vote on a proposal to move the state to hand-marked ballots. It’s a proposal that some bipartisan activists say could save the state’s election from high risk and potentially avoid some of the issues that plagued the 2020 election.
Other election integrity activists say the law doesn’t give the SEB the authority to require paper ballots, while it does already allow local election supervisors to adopt them. In addition, the pending Curling v. Raffensperger case could result in the court declaring the state’s election system constitutionally deficient, forcing the key swing state to use hand-marked paper ballots.
Moving to paper ballots is the type of proposal that former President Donald Trump has expressed support for on numerous occasions, including at a recent Atlanta rally in which he said moving to “paper ballots” would be ideal. He reiterated his support for hand-marked ballots during an event on Thursday at his Bedminster golf club, where he said, “We should have one-day voting paper ballots.”
The Federalist inquired with the Trump campaign as to whether the former president supports this particular proposal in a state in which he narrowly lost a race that was fraught with irregularities and miscounts. We did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Georgia voters currently cast their vote on a touchscreen, which then prints out a paper summary that
