State Election Board seeks DOJ, DHS intervention in election equipment update

Caption

The State Election Board debated a resolution dealing with a software update to voting machines during a meeting Sept. 28, 2026, in Suwannee, Ga.

Credit: Screenshot from State Election Board YouTube

The Georgia State Election Board sent letters to the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, asking them to declare Georgia’s voting system illegal and compel the secretary of state to install a software update to address a privacy concern.

James Mills, the executive director of the board, sent the letter after a vote Monday urging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to implement the update. The board says the changes would address a privacy flaw that could allow cybercriminals see how people voted by matching voting records and ballot images. 

The letters, dated Sept. 30, asked the organizations to declare the system non-compliant, create a six-month deadline for a new system, and compel an immediate software update for the system ahead of the election. 

Some experts have warned that software updates close to the start of voting are risky. The secretary of state's office has asked for funding for updates before, but those requests have not been approved. 

"People who are serious about election security don't inject chaos in the 11th hour," a spokesperson for the secretary of state's office said about the letter. 

The software update itself is free, but personnel will be needed to install the updates on the machines. 

A software update isn't the only measure the board considered to address the privacy flaw. On Thursday, board members heard a proposal that would ask precincts to have workers shuffle ballots before tabulating to make it harder to establish the order in which they were cast.  

Ben Adita, the executive director of Voting Works, a nonprofit that sells open-source voting systems, testified in front of the board Thursday. During the meeting, he told the committee that Raffensperger has already taken steps to mitigate the privacy flaw, and warned about changes close to the election.

"The proposal to upgrade software with two weeks to go is really fraught and risky," Adita said. "The proposal to alter the vote casting process statewide is fraught whether you have two weeks — or two or six months, frankly — of lead time."

The board did not take action on the ballot shuffling measure. Early voting starts Oct. 13.