ATLANTA — After six lengthy hearings around the state last year, a special legislative committee studying the elections process has recommended incremental changes to Georgia’s voting system.

The study committee chaired by Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, who is running for Georgia secretary of state, recommended Monday that the state use hand-marked paper ballots during the general elections in November.

But there is a twist: the recommendation by the Republican-led panel says QR codes should be allowed to remain on ballots, which critics contend are a security risk because only the counting machines, not voters themselves, can read them.

“The legislation should require all ballots that contain a QR code of any kind to be hand-counted for the purposes of official tabulation,” the committee’s report says. “Scanner tabulation of QR code ballots is for unofficial results only.”

The committee also recommended that the General Assembly add money to the fiscal year 2027 budget to buy a new voting system.

The group also recommended that the legislature allow the committee to continue meeting through the end of this year.

That did not sit well with Kelvin King, another candidate for secretary of state whose wife, Janelle, is a member of the state election board.

The secretary of state oversees elections. The state election board sets election rules and investigates claims of fraud.

King asserted in statement Tuesday that the current voting machines are insecure. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has defended the system’s integrity. Dominion Voting Systems, the company that makes the machines, won hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements with media outlets, including Fox News, over false claims that the machines led to a rigged 2020 election.