Lawmakers consider how to protect voting access for people with disabilities, non-English speakers

Georgia Recorder · Maya Homan · September 3, 2026

A ballot-marking device displays accessibility options to allow voters with disabilities to independently select candidates of their choice. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder Accessibility advocates are urging state leaders to prioritize access for voters with disabilities and those who require language assistance as lawmakers prepare to overhaul Georgia’s election equipment ahead of 2028.

The 2026 midterms are heating up, but this election panel is focused on 2028

Thanks to a bill passed during the June special session, state leaders appear likely to select hand-marked paper ballots as the state’s primary voting method ahead of 2028. The shift away from the state’s current, machine-marked ballot system will likely come as a relief to some critics of the current voting equipment, who have repeatedly cited fears over machine tampering and called for ballots to be counted based on text that can be deciphered by humans.

But Georgia residents likely won’t see voting machines vanish completely. Under federal accessibility laws, every polling place is required to have at least one voting machine on hand for voters with disabilities, even in jurisdictions where most voters mark ballots by hand.

At a Thursday meeting of a special committee tasked with helping select Georgia’s next statewide election system, election officials and voting advocates gathered to map out what the next election system could look like — and what accessibility pitfalls state leaders should avoid.

Disability advocates call for preserved voter access

Headphones and hand-held tactile devices allow voters with disabilities to select candidates of their choice on ballot-marking devices. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder Jessica Mathis, a Savannah-based disability advocate with the nonpartisan organization REV UP Georgia, said her cerebral palsy makes it hard for her to fill out a hand-marked ballot. She urged lawmakers to ensure that the next voting equipment system maintains key accessibility features that she and other voters with disabilities say they rely on, such as options for audio and large-print formats of ballots, wheelchair access at polling places and priority access during peak hours.

“If I had to fill out a paper ballot by hand, my handwriting could be hard to read, and my ballot could be challenged or thrown out,” she said. “No one should lose that right because of how their hand moves a pen or whether they can get access to the voting equipment.”

Paul Lux, the Okaloosa County, Florida elections supervisor who was invited to present to the committee, added that voters should not be required to prove their disability when asking to use a ballot-marking device instead of a hand-marked ballot.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act does not allow you to look at a voter and determine their ability or disability,” Lux said. “So, if a voter asks to use the ADA equipment, we presume they are eligible to use it and we make it available to them.”

Groups like New Disabled South are also encouraging lawmakers to consider policies that allow curbside voting to give Georgians with disabilities more flexibility to cast their ballot, especially at polling locations that do not comply with federal accessibility requirements.

Immigrant voter advocates raise ballot translation issues

Georgia’s increasingly diverse electorate could also pose a new challenge for elected officials seeking to serve voters who lack proficiency in English.

Under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act , local jurisdictions are required to offer ballot access in an additional language whenever there are either 10,000 residents or more than 5% of the population that speaks that additional language and has low English proficiency.

Gwinnett County, where U.S. Census data shows more than 38% of residents speak a language other than English at home, has been required to distribute ballots in Spanish and English since 2016 , and has voluntarily translated sample ballots into languages like Korean, Mandarin and Vietnamese. DeKalb and Athens-Clarke counties also voluntarily translate certain elections materials.

Still, the act of translating a ballot is not always smooth sailing.

“When we send out for translation services, oftentimes the context of the question may be misinterpreted,” said Kelvin Williams, the acting elections supervisor of Gwinnett County. One vendor, he added, once “translated ‘Georgia House of Representatives’ as a dwelling and not a legislative body.”

Gwinnett County is the only jurisdiction in Georgia that’s currently required to provide ballots in languages other than English, but federal determinations around which communities meet the criteria are reevaluated every five years.

Anar Parik, the policy manager at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, speaks to lawmakers about language accessibility on Sept. 3, 2026. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder Anar Parik, the policy manager at the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said that other parts of Georgia with large multilingual populations, such as Whitfield County, could soon be added to the list, and that translation capabilities should be seen as a key feature of any new election equipment the state considers.

Whitfield County has a large Hispanic population, and according to Census data, more than 31% of people there speak a language other than English at home.

“The new system should be capable of adding additional languages through a programming or software configuration without purchasing replacement voting equipment,” Parik said.

Sen. Max Burns, a Sylvania Republican who co-chairs the committee, added that the state will likely need to begin thinking about ways to standardize ballot translation and additional language requirements on a statewide level.

“Georgia is becoming more and more diverse,” he said. “As our population of non-English language speakers grows, we have to be in position to accommodate those needs.”

Read the full story at Georgia Recorder