Georgia voting system review begins at Capitol

As Brad Raffensperger prepares to leave office, Georgia's outgoing secretary of state is looking back on a historic stretch for elections in Georgia. The state rolled out new voting machines just as the COVID pandemic was about to upend the 2020 election cycle. Fox 5's Deidre Dukes is live at the state capitol where she talked with Secretary Raffensperger. I'm sure he had a lot to look back on during his tenure. Deidre. Yeah, he certainly did, Courtney. When he first took office, he said his top priority was getting Georgians a paper ballot, and he tells me the clock was ticking ahead of the 2020 presidential primary. Georgia's been so good to me, and I'm just very excited and humbled that I'm going to be your next Secretary of State. Outgoing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is wrapping up a high-profile tenure defined by licensing reforms and historic election overhaul. We had this old electronic voting system without a paper ballot. Raffensperger reflected on the massive effort required to roll out Georgia's current system after he took office in 2019. It was the largest and the fastest implementation. That's ever been accomplished in America, and we had to get them ready for the presidential primary of 2020, and we did. We have two confirmed cases. Then COVID hit. Georgia had to get through its first election cycle with the new equipment in the middle of a global pandemic. The state sent absentee ballot applications to every active voter and kept in-person voting available. Raffensperger says the new system's paper trail gave Georgia a way to verify the results by hand. The advantage of what we have now is you can do 100% hand audits. You can do a recount. You have actually paper to count and say, who did you vote for? Now, as Secretary-elect Penny Brown Reynolds prepares to take office, state legislative committees are set to review specifications for Georgia's next voting system. Raffensperger says lawmakers already have a starting point. I think what we have right now lays down a really good marker. And lawmakers are set to approve a new voting system when the state legislature reconvenes in January. At the state capitol, Deidre Dukes, Fox 5 News. All right, Deidre, thanks.