NEWS PROVIDED BY
Righteous PR Agency
March 27, 2026
ATLANTA, March 27, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — Georgia State Senators are expected to vote Friday on HB960, a hand marked paper ballot bill that provides several features to help secure the 2026 Georgia General Election. The House bill carried by Senator Greg Dolezal, was repurposed in the Senate Ethics Committee after the original language was included in HB1215 and passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate version now specifies hand marked paper ballots to replace Quick Response (QR) coded ballots that are unverifiable to the voter and have been found to violate three Georgia statutes.
HB960 mandates post certification recounts of key federal and state races in all types of elections to ensure correct voting system results. It also mandates that recounts in contests with under a 1% victory margin are hand counted to ensure the election is awarded to the correct candidate. Current law offers no hand recounts to verify secret voting system counts and close races are recanvassed which simply reprints previous unverifiable results.
HB960 also mandates timely posting of current eligible voters lists before the election and prompt posting of current lists of voters who voted immediately after the election. These lists are essential to reconcile the number of voters who voted with the number of ballots cast.
HB960 mandates ballot batch identifiers for all election ballots and activates current infrared detection that can verify ballot security paper. The batch identifiers and infrared detection will help deter fraudulent duplication of ballots that can easily be inserted into election results.
Other provisions require post-election Open Records Requests for electronic copies of ballots to be provided within 30 days at no charge to the requestor. Yet another provision will transfer audit responsibilities to the State Election Board. Current law allows the Secretary of State to audit the elections it conducts. The bill eliminates that obvious conflict of interest.
A primary outstanding issue is how several large counties can best supply early voting locations with different ballot styles needed in an election. Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA stated: “The Georgia General Assembly is still working hard on security provisions for our elections. We are grateful to Senator Dolezal and the Georgia Senate leadership for their efforts to get these security improvements over to the House for potential final adjustments.” Based on a recent vote of SB568, a similar bill, most Senate Republicans are expected to vote for HB960 while nearly all Democrats are likely to oppose it.
VoterGA is a non-partisan, 501(c)3 registered non-profit organization created by a coalition of citizens working to restore election integrity in Georgia. We advocate for independently verifiable, auditable, recount capable, transparent and tamper proof elections.
SOURCE Righteous PR Agency
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