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Georgia’s State Election Board has formally asked President Trump’s Justice Department to prohibit QR-code-based vote tabulation and establish a binding six-month deadline for the state to move to a different system.
The request is real, direct and now in the hands of federal officials. It is also a request—not a Justice Department ruling, a court order or an immediate change to how Georgians will vote in the midterms.
State Election Board Executive Director James Mills sent the September 30 letter to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin were copied.
The newest local reporting confirms that the request has now moved from a board dispute to a direct appeal to the Trump administration:
The Georgia State Election Board’s formal letter asks DOJ to prohibit what Mills described as unreadable and unverifiable QR-code-based vote tabulation. Mills argued that a system in which the voter cannot verify the machine-coded data that is actually counted conflicts with the Help America Vote Act.
The letter asks federal officials to give Georgia six months to transition to a system with voter-verifiable, hand-auditable paper records and no machine-coded tabulation that voters cannot read for themselves.
It separately asks DOJ to pursue relief requiring forensic backups of election-management servers and scanner hard drives before certified software updates are installed. Mills requested independent verification that documented security and ballot-secrecy concerns have been addressed.
Those are the board executive director’s legal arguments and requested remedies. DOJ has not announced in the material reviewed for this report that it agrees with them or that it has declared Georgia’s current system unlawful.
The letter followed a resolution adopted by the State Election Board three days before early October.
The Georgia State Election Board’s September 28 resolution urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to begin implementing recommended software updates and preserve forensic images of key election-system hard drives before making changes. The resolution also directed Mills to seek assistance from DOJ, DHS and other agencies.
The resolution says the board is concerned about uninstalled security updates, ballot-secrecy issues and other vulnerabilities. It identifies the platform as the Dominion Voting System, while noting that the company now calls itself Liberty Voting Systems.
Its requested steps include creating forensic backups before updating election-management servers and scanner hard drives. The board also sought an independent review of the updated system and a written report before the midterms, framing those measures as safeguards against losing evidence and as a way to verify whether the cited problems were fixed.
Local reporting captured the practical dispute surrounding that vote:
Georgia Recorder reported that Republican board member Carolyn Roddy introduced the resolution and that it passed 3-2. Board members Janelle King and Salleigh Grubbs joined Roddy in supporting it, while Chairman John Fervier and Democratic appointee Sara Tindall Ghazal opposed it.
Roddy and the other supporters argued that the state has not moved fast enough to install available fixes. Fervier objected to inviting federal involvement in a state election system, while Ghazal argued that replacing the software so close to the midterms could not be completed safely in time.
The same report says a spokesman for Raffensperger’s office pointed to earlier funding requests that state lawmakers did not approve. The office’s position is that replacing or overhauling the statewide system requires money, personnel, testing and time.
Georgia voters currently make selections on ballot-marking devices that print a paper ballot containing human-readable choices and a QR code. The scanner uses the QR code in tabulation, which is the heart of the board’s verification argument.
The controversy is not the same as proof that votes have been changed or that a past election result was wrong. The present dispute concerns whether voters can personally verify the machine-readable information counted as their vote, whether known software and privacy concerns have been sufficiently addressed, and what can responsibly be changed before voting begins.
The September 30 request quickly drew national attention:
BREAKING: Georgia’s Republican-controlled election board invited the Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday to declare the state’s voting system unlawful before the upcoming midterm elections. https://t.co/niNhjdJan6
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 1, 2026
The Gateway Pundit highlighted the six-month demand and the board’s frustration with Raffensperger’s office. Its report also notes that Mills asked federal officials to investigate allegations involving election records and the sharing of voter-registration and motor-vehicle data with outside organizations.
Those portions of the letter are requests for investigation. They should not be read as findings that Raffensperger or anyone in his office committed wrongdoing.
The letter asks DOJ to examine the allegations and determine whether any laws were violated.
The report places those requests alongside Mills’ separate demand for a binding six-month transition away from QR-code tabulation. It also emphasizes that Georgia is approaching the midterms with the existing statewide equipment still in place, making the requested timetable a demand for action after the election rather than a completed replacement before early voting.
The timing makes the fight especially consequential. Early in-person voting begins October 13, leaving little room for statewide technical changes before Election Day.
Georgia lawmakers have already delayed the statutory move away from QR-code tabulation until 2028 while a special committee studies replacement systems. That leaves the current equipment in place for the 2026 midterms unless lawful action changes the plan.
For now, the accurate bottom line is straightforward: Georgia election officials have formally asked the Trump Justice Department to intervene, prohibit the QR-code tabulation method and put the state on a six-month transition clock.
Federal officials have been asked to act. They have not yet issued the ruling the board requested.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
