Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org.

When Georgia voters complete their ballots this year, one of the people they select will be the next person in charge of overseeing elections.

The Georgia Secretary of State handles business registration, professional licensing and regulation of charities and securities, all essential to the economy.

But that elected official also serves a role that is vital to the operation of democracy: voter registration, ballot preparation and certification of election results.

The upheaval that followed President Donald Trump’s assertion that he won the 2020 election is the main wedge between candidates running for secretary of state this year.

All but one Republican said at a debate last week that the 2020 outcome was still in question and that the electronic voting system in use in Georgia then and now is deeply flawed.

“I think 2020 is still in question to be frank with you,” said Kelvin King, whose wife, Janelle King, is a Republican appointee to the State Election Board. “The things that I’ve learned studying our elections have been just startling. The bottom line is this: we haven’t had a clean election over the last several elections.”

Ted Metz, who described himself as an inventor, said “it is clear to anyone that has a brain” that the voting system is plagued by “irregularities” in vote counting and in administrative and procedural functions. “There are so many botched things,” he said.

Former DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones, who was a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party, said defenders of the current system say there was no “widespread” fraud. “Well, people want to know how wide was the wide,” he said.

Only Gabe Sterling, a former chief operating officer for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said voters trust the outcomes produced by the current system. He pointed to record turnout for early voting for the May 19 primary, which had started by the time of the April 28 debate. “We have the best and safest elections in America,” he said.

The tone among Democrats, who debated later that afternoon, indicated faith in election integrity and wariness of naysayers.

Penny Brown Reynolds, a former Fulton County State Court judge, lashed out at Republican state lawmakers for stripping Raffensperger, also a Republican, of his voting powers on the State Election Board. Lawmakers did that after Raffensperger clashed with Trump over the outcome of the 2020 election.

Courts found no fraud, and Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, backed the outcome, she noted, yet Raffensperger was still sidelined by “the MAGA, Donald Trump and others,” she said. “They want to do everything they can to try to control our elections.”

Dana Barrett, a Fulton County commissioner, pointed to the FBI seizure of Fulton ballots from 2020, saying the January raid “was aimed at setting us up for a state takeover of our elections, which is extremely dangerous.” She said the Republican-majority state election board “is completely MAGA-controlled and they pose the biggest threat to our votes in the state of Georgia. If the state elections board tries to take over the elections in Fulton County, the largest county with the largest concentration of Democrats, we will be in bad shape,” she said.

Adrian Consonery Jr. said Georgia could increase confidence by explaining to the public how its system of voting works “in the form of a Schoolhouse Rock video or something of that nature,” adding, “We definitely need a way to educate our Georgians on how the process works to avoid any McCarthyism in the future.”

It was a reference to U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who led a campaign in the 1950s against Americans he accused of being communists or communist sympathizers.

Cam Ashling, a financial planner, suggested making election day a state holiday to increase voter turnout.

The Republican candidates, except for Sterling, advocated for a swift shift to hand-marked paper ballots.

That appears unlikely after the election board on Friday rejected a petition to require regular use of the backup voting system. The backup system uses pre-printed and hand-marked paper ballots that are fed into a scanner for tabulation. It is intended for power outages and other emergencies, and local election officials have been testifying at hearings for months that they do not have time to implement the system at scale.

The Georgia General Assembly banned the use of machine code to tabulate results effective July 1. Georgia’s current system uses touchscreens in kiosks that print voter choices on paper, along with a “Quick Response,” or QR code, used to tabulate votes.

Despite passing the ban in 2024, state lawmakers have neither authorized nor paid for a new system. They blame Raffensperger, and he blames them.

State Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, a Republican candidate for secretary of state, led a legislative study committee of the voting system last year. The committee recommended hand-counting ballots with QR codes this November before buying a new voting system in fiscal year 2027. Fleming did not appear for the GOP debate.

Watch the Democrats for secretary of state debate at https://www.gpb.org/events/news/2026/04/28/georgia-secretary-of-state-democrats-atlanta-press-club-debate

Watch the Republicans for secretary of state debate at https://www.gpb.org/events/news/2026/04/28/georgia-secretary-of-state-republicans-atlanta-press-club-debate