A divided Georgia Election Board voted Wednesday to reinvestigate Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 presidential recount, reviving an inquiry into allegations of double-counted ballots months before this year’s election.
The board, led by three Republicans lauded by Donald Trump at a rally last weekend, voted 3-2 to ask for an investigation by the attorney general’s office and report its progress in 30 days.
The high-profile case is one of the last remaining investigations of problems during Georgia’s tight 2020 election, centered on the county that includes most of the city of Atlanta and a bastion of voters for Democrat Joe Biden.
Since the appointment of a new right-wing Republican, the board’s majority has sought to renew the case because of evidence suggesting that over 3,000 ballots were counted twice during the recount. Prior investigations have blamed disorganization and human errors.
Claims of widespread fraud have never been proved despite numerous investigations and court cases, and the double-counted votes wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the race. Republicans, however, still want answers about Fulton’s mistakes. Three vote counts found that Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes.
“I’m just interested in the numbers. I’m not interested in who got more votes. That’s not the point of this investigation. It’s about the proper counting of votes,” said Janice Johnston, the Republican board member who pursued revisiting the case.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
The State Election Board previously voted to issue a reprimand against Fulton and require election monitors in May, but the board’s new majority said that action was inadequate.
Fulton’s government said in a statement Wednesday that the case has already been investigated and resolved.
Credit: Seeger Gray/AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray/AJC
“We will not engage in any further discussions, investigations or other action related to this case. To do so would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and time that is best spent preparing for the upcoming general election,” said the statement from the county on behalf of the board.
Board Chairman John Fervier, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, opposed the move to further investigate Fulton, saying it exposes the board to lawsuits over a case that he believes was already decided and closed.
The board rejected a proposal for Fulton election monitors Wednesday that the county had approved as a condition of the resolution of the case in May.
The board’s majority opposed members of the watchdog team, which would have included Carter Jones, an independent monitor of Fulton in 2020, and Ryan Germany, an attorney who previously worked for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“My position is that case has been adjudicated, that Fulton County has met its obligation,” Fervier said. “This board has failed to meet its portion of that obligation.”
Conservatives have long sought to find wrongdoing in the 2020 election, packing State Election Board meetings in an effort to push it to seek answers.
Joe Rossi, a Houston County voter whose complaint launched the investigation two years ago, said he doesn’t believe that Fulton’s actions were accidental. He said the county double-counted ballots to make the recount match the initial count in an effort to show the results were credible.
“We now know the duplication of ballots was not an administrative error. Rather, the duplication process was due to intentional human intervention,” Rossi told a crowd at the Capitol on Tuesday.
The double-counted ballots appeared to have been scanned once in one tabulator, then divided up and moved to various other tabulators, according to Republican researchers collaborating with Rossi.
But their research doesn’t indicate that the double-counting benefited Trump, which would appear to rule out a partisan motive in Fulton, where 73% of voters backed Biden. Among the double-counted ballots, Biden received votes at a lower rate, 56%, and overall in the recount, Trump gained 939 net votes in Fulton.
Previous investigations haven’t proved wrongdoing in Fulton, including allegations of illegal “ballot suitcases” at State Farm Arena, and two Fulton election workers won big defamation lawsuits against Trump supporters. A performance review confirmed disorganization and mistakes but said the county had made improvements since 2020.
The new State Election Board member who gave it the three-vote majority to revive the case, Janelle King, said she wasn’t afraid of potential litigation.
“The amount of times I’ve been told not to do something because we could be sued, if this were a drinking game, we’d all be drunk,” King said. “We need to not be scared to do things because it’s the right thing to do.”
Besides double-counted ballots, the board is also seeking a review of claims of violations about 17,852 missing digital ballot images and verification documents from 10 ballot scanners.
If the attorney general’s office is unable or unwilling to investigate Fulton further, outside attorneys and investigators should be hired under Johnston’s motion.
The effort to reinvestigate sets up a heated debate over election security and allegations of fraud in the weeks leading up to Election Day on Nov. 5, when Georgia is expected to again be a closely contested state.
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