GEORGIA, — Election officials say they're looking forward to using Georgia's newest election system in the 2024 presidential election after its success during its first elections on Tuesday.
GARViS, or Georgia's Registered Voting System, was launched in the Peach State in March.
Though voter turnout numbers didn't break records for Tuesday's local elections, the Office of the Secretary of State in Georgia and county election supervisors say they hold optimistic expectations for future elections.
"Nobody wants to have all the little malfunctions that may happen at the election," Peach County election supervisor Adrienne Ray said.
Ray has served as the elections supervisor and registrar for six years in Peach County.
She says she thinks GARViS minimizes the amount of time voters must stand in line to wait.
The system holds over 12 million voter records, according to the Secretary of State's Office. It includes records on 7 million active voters and hundreds of thousands inactive voters.
They say that GARViS will replace the state's previous system, ENet, and the department reached out to Salesforce, MTX and Transform to develop and implement the new software.
"I believe the voters will be able to see that for themselves, especially during early voting," Andy Holland at the Houston County Board of Elections agreed.
Georgia election officials say they faced few, if any, problems and/or errors during this fall's local elections.
"It was a great, easy day," Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Secretary of State's Office, said. "You kinda hold your breath when you do something new and, it worked out great."
However, they add that it's not exactly perfect because, "There's no such thing as a perfect election," according to Stellinger, "because people are involved, and people are inevitably fallible."
Ray said she likes how GARViS can provide more information to voters seeking demographic information but hopes the improvements continue to update as they have since its initial integration this year.
"Since this is a new system for us, it still has a little bit of kinks in it," she said.
Kinks like tech issues, because it's the nation's first voter registration system on the cloud, according to Stellinger.
The "iterative process" that the system is built based on allows for better and faster election integrity, he said, because it doesn't require a lot of coding to make changes.
Houston and Peach County election officials say that is because they're able to collaborate with the secretary of state's office, they can reduce how often they run into problems, or at least have help finding a solution.
The greatest benefit of GARViS, the officials say, is the reduced amount of time voters have to wait in line.
"The average check-in time before GARViS was about a minute and a half, and you had to operate two different systems," Sterling said. "With GARViS, now, we're averaging about 47 seconds to check people in. So, that leaves just shorter lines, a better voter experience and easier work for the counties to get through."
If you're a registered voter, you can enter your name, county and birthday into mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/ to access your voter registration information updated in real-time.
Holland said you can find all kinds of useful information, from your "registration information, address, polling places you're assigned to, sample ballots for upcoming elections, [and] early voting schedules for upcoming elections."
"It's just a better system overall for the counties, for the voters and for the taxpayers," Sterling said.