The 2026 legislative session began on January 12. From now until the last legislative day, Sine Die (scheduled for April 2), legislators will be at your Capitol passing a budget, considering various legislation, and spotlighting issues of importance to Georgians. 

If you are new to the Draper Paper, welcome.  Now’s a great time to join. While the General Assembly is in session, I try to provide weekly(ish) updates that are candid and informative. My newsletter covers matters of importance to House District 90, politics, and policy, with a heavy emphasis on election and voting rights. Feel free to share the Draper Paper with a friend.

Life happens fast at the Capitol, so I also try to do more frequent updates on social media. You can follow me on IG here. 

Let’s get into it. In this edition of the Draper Paper, we’ll cover the following topics

• Feature: The Most important Election Issue No One is Talking About – until now.

• Implications of the Fulton County Election Hub Raid

• Protecting Georgians from ICE

• Apply to be a legislative page! (12 -18 year olds)

• Seeking: Social Media Intern

In 2024, the Georgia legislature passed SB 189 which significantly changed elections and voting in Georgia. I voted no along with most of my caucus. One of the many changes that SB 189 made is related to the QR codes on ballots. SB 189 said that by July 1, 2026, Georgia had to phase out the use of QR codes as the official vote tally.

Since 2020, when you go in to vote in person, you make your selections on a touchscreen called a BMD (Ballot Marking Device). Once your selections are made, you instruct the BMD to print your ballot. The QR code on your ballot saves your selections, but because a voter cannot read a QR code, the selections are also printed on the ballot. You can see an example of the QR code and the readable text on the ballot below, an image I’m borrowing from GPB. 

Currently, when the ballot is scanned and officially counted, the scanner reads the QR code, not the readable text. It’s the QR code that is the official vote for counting and tallying purposes.

As you may recall, Georgia switched to the BMD voting system with QR codes after the passage of HB 316 in 2019. HB 316 was a party line vote, with Democrats voting no and saying that a hand marked paper ballot system would be superior. But Republicans pushed through the BMD/QR code system. 

Almost immediately, some of them had buyer’s remorse.

After the 2020 election, a number of voters began to raise concerns about the QR codes. They argued how do they know what’s actually on there? It could be that I voted for Trump but the QR code coded Biden (and therefore my vote was officially cast for Biden)– and I’d never know the difference because what’s coded in the QR code isn’t readable to the human eye. 

To add fuel to the fire, a human coding error in 2022 led to inaccurate initial results in DeKalb Commissioner Michelle Long Spear’s race. The error was easily discovered because Commissioner Spears did not receive a single election day vote in 33 of the 40 precincts where she was on the ballot, a virtual impossibility. After the discovery of the error, a recount was performed using the human-readable text that revealed she was the first place finisher rather than the third place finisher. The checks and balances built into the system worked to catch the problem, which again, was caused by human error, but faith in the QR code system was eroded.

Proponents of the QR code say post election audits can be used to verify the data in the QR codes by comparing the QR code data and the human-readable text on the ballot for a match. However, the reliability of this kind of audit depends on whether the voter confirms that the human-readable text on her ballot is correct. If the voter doesn’t check to ensure the text is accurate, there’s no certainty that what the QR code says – even when it matches the text on the ballot– is the voter’s intention. That’s why voters should always verify their selections by reviewing the human readable text before casting their ballot.

So all that to say, even though the QR codes hadn’t been linked to any kind of fraud or manipulation, they presented a legitimate concern. SB 189 wasn’t wrong to address that concern. SB 189 recognized that if we abolished the QR codes, we’d need time to put another system in place. That’s why SB 189, signed by the governor in May 2024– permitted a 2+ year runway for selecting and rolling out a new system.

Tick tock. The July 2026 deadline to move away from QR codes is now around the corner. So what is the new plan, you may ask?

We don’t really have one. SB 189 passed, everyone packed their bags, and went home. We didn’t address rolling out a QR code replacement system during the 2025 session, which would have been the ideal time to pass legislation for (and fund!) a new system. And then counties could have practiced using the new system during the 2025 municipal election cycle, working out the kinks along the way. But now that we are approaching another major election cycle, our options are pretty limited - at least they should be if we are to approach this responsibly. 

The best option, in my view, is to pass legislation this session to rescind SB 189 OR push the effective date out to January 2027. If we push out to 2027, we can do the responsible things that we failed to do right after the passage of SB 189– evaluate options with input from stakeholders, pass necessary legislation in 2027, secure sufficient funding from the state (not pass these costs on to the counties with hardly any notice), go through a competitive bidding process with vendors to procure the necessary new equipment at the best price (rush orders for this kind of specialized equipment are grossly expensive), and roll out a new system during an odd year, so counties can acclimate to the new system during low turnout elections. We will rely on post election audits during the 2026 cycle to ensure the QR codes are correctly coded.

Another possibility would be to take a digital image of every ballot and use optical character recognition (OCR) so that the official count is based on the human-readable text rather than the QR code. Or we could use a separate OCR scanner to scan the original ballots. We could even do this at the state level, reducing the burden on our 159 counties.

The most irresponsible thing to do would be to try and roll out a completely new system in time for the 2026 elections. There simply isn’t enough time to research the best options, purchase the necessary equipment, ensure the new equipment integrates with our current infrastructure, and train our election officials. Rushing a major overhaul would cause chaos and dysfunction in our elections, and voters would be the losers. Voters shouldn’t have to pay for the General Assembly’s failure to follow through with the QR code prohibition in SB 189. It’s our fault, and we need to be held accountable. 

If we pass nothing, we will be out of compliance with SB 189 in July, and we’ll get sued. Also, if we pass something impracticable, and it gets vetoed, we will be out of compliance with SB 189 in July, and we will get sued. If we pass something poorly thought out, even if it doesn’t get vetoed, we are more likely to be successfully sued. These options will lead to lots of uncertainty before the November 2026 general election.

So yes, we need to do something. But we need to strike the balance of addressing the immediate problem and not going so far that we cause more problems than we are solving for. As leaders, we have an obligation to voters to make this change responsibly. The “crisis” we face now is a crisis of our own making. I only hope we see the wisdom is not making the voters pay for our mistakes. 

What direction will we go? I’m not sure. The House Government Affairs Committee is meeting TODAY (Monday, Feb 2) at 3 pm in 506 CLOB.  We may be considering a bill that deals with this important issue then. Join us in person or watch online. 

In recent weeks, we’ve seen deeply troubling examples of aggressive and unaccountable ICE tactics that undermine public safety and the rule of law. I share the concerns raised by my colleagues and so many of my constituents and strongly support the legislative efforts now underway to protect Georgians from intimidation and unlawful ICE enforcement actions.

Democrats in the Senate have introduced four important bills:

• SB 389 – Requires ICE agents operating in Georgia to wear visible identification and prohibits the use of masks except for legitimate safety or medical reasons.

• SB 390 – Ensures the National Guard cannot be deployed in Georgia without clear justification and the governor’s consent.

• SB 391 – Requires a judicial warrant for immigration enforcement at sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals, places of worship, colleges, family violence shelters, and public libraries.

• SB 397 – Allows Georgians to bring civil actions against federal officials who violate their constitutional rights.

I plan to support these measures; Georgians deserve safety, transparency, and freedom from fear in their own communities, and I remain committed to defending those values.

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Yours in service,