Georgia
Georgia Recorder: Georgia election board’s right-wing faction revisits Fulton’s 2020 presidential election
Stanley Dunlap of the Georgia Recorder reports on the Georgia State Election Board’s decision to further investigate Fulton County’s 2020 presidential election law violations.
A trio of conservative members of the Georgia State Election Board agreed Wednesday to further investigate Fulton County’s 2020 presidential election law violations despite warnings from fellow board members that their decision was illegal.
In a 3-2 vote Wednesday, right-wing GOP Georgia election board members Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston and Janelle King voted to report findings from the Fulton investigation into allegations of double balloting, missing ballot images and a host of other violations tied to the controversial 2020 election highlighted by the presidential contest that saw Republican incumbent Donald Trump suffer defeat to the Democrat’s nominee Joe Biden.
The case is now referred to the Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is to report on its findings within 30 days and to notify the State Election Board immediately if the investigation cannot be conducted due to a conflict of interest with a case that has also been investigated by the Georgia Secretary of State. State agencies are considered clients of the Georgia Attorney General.
The vote Wednesday referred the Fulton case to the Attorney General’s office for investigation into 17,852 reported missing ballot images, the double-counting of more than 3,000 ballot vote images, and other election-related violations. In May, Georgia election officials with the secretary of state told the election board that mistakes made by Fulton election workers in 2020 would not have changed Trump’s narrow Georgia loss to Biden.
Wednesday’s state board vote followed a Tuesday meeting when the board set the stage for county election officials to delay certifying election results while demanding more information about how votes are tallied.