GEORGIA — A Georgia legislative committee advanced a bill to delay the state's replacement of voting machines until 2028, extending the original July 1, 2026 deadline by nearly two years. The measure came after lawmakers acknowledged they had not allocated funding to meet the existing requirement to remove barcodes from ballots.

Georgia voters are likely to cast ballots in November on machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which were acquired by Liberty Vote. Georgia legislators passed a law two years ago requiring the removal of barcodes from ballots by July 1, 2026, but no funding was provided to implement the barcode removal mandate.

The legislative action followed President Trump's executive order in March 2025 to mostly ban the use of barcodes in vote-counting and require voters to be able to read their recorded selections. A federal judge blocked the barcode provision of the executive order in a lawsuit brought by the State of Washington.

"It just wasn't going to happen," said Representative Victor Anderson of Cornelia, who chairs the House Governmental Affairs Committee. Republican legislators did not allocate any money for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to update the voting machine software after an examination found software vulnerabilities that could be exploited if someone gained physical access.

Paulding County election director Deidre Holden supported the extended timeline. "This is something that is setting us up for success and not failure. The timeline was my biggest concern," she said.

Trump supporters obtained the voting machine computer code from the elections office in Coffee County, Georgia, and the code has been published online. Dominion issued software patches to fix the identified vulnerabilities in the machines, which print paper ballots with QR codes that scanners use to tally votes and are not connected to the internet.

Conservative activists who have agitated for voting changes since the 2020 election now control Georgia's State Election Board, and board members provided claims cited by the FBI in its seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County.

Lawmakers pledged to allocate money to buy new voting equipment for Georgia's 159 counties and said during the committee hearing they hope to buy printers that produce ballots as needed rather than preprinting millions of ballots. Other proposals under consideration included hand-counting every ballot cast in person before Election Day and assigning voters to single early voting locations instead of allowing countywide early voting.