Peach Tree Times

The ballot-marking devices used in Georgia’s elections were noted as problematic as far back as last year.  

Critics pointed to a QR code, which must be read by a scanner, as being unreadable by humans.

Douglas W. Jones, associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa, told the Peach Tree Times, the QR code is problematic because it can only be read by a computer. 

Jones said Georgia should do better going forward. 

“I am not impressed by ballot-marking devices such as the ones Georgia purchased for two reasons: First, they record the vote on paper in two separate forms: Human readable text and a bar code or QR code,” he said. “I can't read those codes by eyeball, and I don't know anyone who can, yet Georgia's rules state that a machine count of those codes is the legally meaningful recount.

“This time around, Georgia's post-election audit of the presidential race verified that the human readable text on that paper gives the same election result as we got from the bar codes, but why put the bar codes there? We can certainly do better with today's technology.” 

Voters also previously expressed their dissatisfaction with the technology. 

 "You're forcing a voter to cast a vote that he can’t read," Marilyn Marks told 11 Alive. 

Gov. Brian Kemp certified the election last week  

Among the items being investigated post-election are the state’s voting systems. 

“I would like to see some minimal national standards on the conduct of Federal elections.  COVID and the widespread use of the postal system in this election shows that many states have deficient standards for handling of mailed ballots,” Jones said. “Rejection rates vary significantly from state to state, and there are best practices in some states that other states seem to have never considered.”