October 16, 2025 — South Georgia
Sam Carnline, co-founder of GeorgiansForTruth.org, delivered a petition today to the Georgia House Blue Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures calling for the state to adopt hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the precinct on Election Day. The petition, drawing on findings and testimony outlined in recent election-security presentations and filings, urges lawmakers to move away from barcode-based ballot marking devices and toward a fully auditable system grounded in voter-marked paper.
Carnline, a Grady County resident, thanked representatives for holding hearings across the state, noting the importance of bringing the process closer to affected communities. “Thank you, representatives, for holding this around the state. We really appreciate coming down here to South Georgia,” he said, adding with a local touch: “Down in Grady County, and like the rest of the world around here, we grow peanuts, cotton and pine trees. And you can do a lot of paper ballots from Georgia pine trees right here in the South, and we’d be glad to provide them.”
He emphasized that the petition summarizes expert assessments of security and auditability challenges in Georgia’s current voting system and makes a simple request: “It’s a petition to go to hand marked paper ballots and we’d love to see them counted at the precinct on Election Day.”
Carnline also voiced concern about ongoing vendor consolidation and branding changes in the election technology market, urging lawmakers not to mistake corporate reshuffling for substantive security reform. Using a pointed analogy, he said: “If I go out here in the parking lot and I get a Toyota and I pull the badge off of it and put it over on a Ford—does that make that Ford a Toyota? It does not. And that’s what we’re being asked to accept here.” He added, “I just don’t trust voting machines. We want to get rid of electronic voting in our state.”
Underscoring his skepticism about retrofitting current systems to resolve foundational vulnerabilities, Carnline cited the repeated warnings of experts who, he said, have testified that the system cannot be hardened to the necessary standard. “You’ve had expert after expert tell y’all that it can’t be modified to be a secure system,” he said, driving back to his core recommendation: “Hand marked paper ballots counted at the precinct.”
Carnline closed with a homespun turn of phrase to argue against patching the status quo: “My dad used to say… you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken scratch. And that’s what we’re being asked to do with Dominion.”
The petition calls for:
- Hand-marked paper ballots for all in-person voters, with accessible options maintained.
- Public, precinct-level hand counts on election night with immediate posting of results and robust reconciliation.
- A statutory bar on QR/barcode-based tabulation and other unverifiable ballot representations.
- Expanded transparency for ballot records and chain-of-custody documentation.
- Stronger, independent cybersecurity governance and controls beyond vendor assurances.
Committee members acknowledged receipt of the petition. As the statewide listening tour continues, Carnline’s remarks encapsulate a growing constituency pressing for election processes that are simple, observable, and locally auditable: “Hand marked paper ballots counted at the precinct. Thank you very much.”