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Judge weighs whether Georgia must switch to paper ballots
Voting machines.jpg
FILE - In this Sept. 22, 2016, file photo, employees of the Fulton County Election Preparation Center in Atlanta test electronic voting machines. A federal judge who's considering whether Georgia should have to switch from electronic voting machines to paper ballots for the November 2018 election said Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018, she hopes to have a decision in the next few days. (AP Photo/Alex Sanz, File) - photo by AP photo

ATLANTA — A federal judge who's considering whether Georgia should have to switch from electronic voting machines to paper ballots for the November election says she hopes to have a decision by the end of the week.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg heard arguments Wednesday from lawyers for voting integrity groups and lawyers for state and county election officials. She said the situation is difficult.

The voting integrity groups argue that Georgia's touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to hacking and provide no way to confirm that votes have been recorded correctly because they don't produce a paper trail.

Lawyers for the state argue that with early voting set to start in less than a month and the general election about eight weeks away, there's not enough time to switch to paper ballots.