The secretary of state’s office says the Nov. 7 municipal elections went smoothly across the state, thanks to Georgia’s new voter registration system.
Earlier this year, Georgia’s local election offices started using the Georgia Registered Voter Information System, also called GARViS. It’s a more streamlined system leading to faster check-in times for in-person voters and less cumbersome for counties to use, officials say.
122 counties had municipal elections on Tuesday and used the new system. State officials say there were shorter wait times and fewer reported errors.
Charlotte Sosebee, Director of Elections in Athens-Clarke County, noted the impact of GARViS on Tuesday’s election.
“One major improvement included the synching process of voter credit from the poll pads during advance voting, which happened almost instantaneously. This method made it possible for our poll workers to reconcile the total votes cast to the number of [voters] given credit in GARViS each day,” she explained.
That streamlined process allows for poll workers to spend less time running reports and checking for accuracy and more time directly serving their voters. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called the first major test of GARViS “a resounding success.”
“Shorter wait times mean less confusion at the polls, less errors, and increased voter confidence. We applaud our county election officials for getting the job done once again,” said Raffensperger in a news release following the election.
The new system has been deployed in all 159 Georgia counties and is one of the state’s major election security upgrades prior to the 2024 Presidential Election cycle.
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Dominion upgrades
In addition to GARViS, five counties piloted a new software update to the Dominion voting system election equipment that fixed potential vulnerabilities. That full upgrade is expected to occur after the 2024 election cycle.
Some voter watchdog groups have criticized Raffensperger’s decision not to deploy the full upgrade before the election.
Raffensperger has defended the Dominion voting system the state purchased in 2019 as being secure and battle-tested and said other measures are in place to protect the system during next year’s election cycle.
GPB’s Stephen Fowler and Georgia Recorder reporter Ross Williams contributed to this report
