The Secretary of State shall create a pilot program for the auditing of paper ballot images using optical character recognition technology or other related technology which shall verify the human-readable text portion of the ballot. Such auditing program shall not be based on or tabulate any QR code, bar code, or similar machine coding that may be printed on such ballots. Such audits shall include all ballot types, and the audit findings shall be reported prior to final certification of the election.
OCGA § 21-2-498.1