The Georgia State Election Board voted 2-1 on Tuesday to send a Letter of Reprimand to Fulton County for numerous violations of state law during the 2020 election and recount and direct the establishment of a monitor for the November 2024 general election, which, if not completed by July, would require referral to the Georgia Attorney General.
State Election Board (SEB) Member Edward Lindsey proposed the Letter of Reprimand due to the “clear evidence that in 2020 there were numerous violations of regulations and statutes” in Fulton County.
Calling the election conduct “unacceptable,” SEB Member Dr. Janice Johnston highlighted specific cases of violations to Georgia Secretary of State investigators, including Election Day problems regarding the security and documentation of the votes and their authenticity, particularly from advanced voting locations and ballot boxes.
According to Johnston, creating and retaining ballot images became mandatory as of February 2020, yet Fulton County purportedly failed to maintain 380,000 ballot images from the November election.
She explained that the recount, which showed “more than 16,000 electronically added votes,” did not remove those votes, prompting the SEB member to call for further investigation.
Johnston also cited a case involving advanced voting scanners that did not provide the documentation to confirm that “the votes attributed to the ten scanners were authentic” and that Fulton County allegedly disrupted the required audit trail to validate the legitimacy of the votes.
“If this is the way to conduct an election,” she commented, “then no election should be certified as true and accurate.”
She added, “And there’s no way that this election or recount should have been certified.”
Johnston motioned to request that the Georgia Secretary of State “invalidate 17,852 votes from the official certification” or conduct further investigations into the authenticity of the ballots and those of the 10 advanced voting scanners.
“With over 140 violations of election code laws and rules, it would be a travesty not to refer this to the Attorney General and let this ride,” Johnston said.
Her proposal to refer the case to the attorney general did not receive support from the board to move forward.
Election integrity group True the Vote applauded Dr. Johnston’s efforts in a post on X.
“Dr. Johnston motioned to amend official recount results and called for further investigation. To no great surprise, her motion didn’t pass. But let the record reflect, she spoke truth. Kudos, Dr. Johnston. You are on the right side of history.”
As previously reported by The Georgia Star News, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the results of the November 3, 2020, election “without having seen or reviewed the chain of custody documents associated with an estimated 600,000 absentee ballots deposited in 300 drop boxes around the state.”
To increase election integrity in Georgia, Governor Brian P. Kemp signed Senate Bill 189 into law on Wednesday. The bill removes the secretary of state from the SEB and adds conflict of interest provisions for statewide and local election officers.
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Debra McClure is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Debra on X / Twitter.
