A monitoring team reported vast improvements in Fulton County since the contentious 2020 election, observing an “organized and orderly election process” last fall despite 32 bomb threats.
The monitors also cited several problems Thursday in a meeting with the county election board, including a lack of voter privacy in many precincts, discrepancies that were later corrected and miscommunications about in-person absentee return options the weekend before the election.
The 28-page report concludes another review of Fulton’s elections following errors in the 2020 election that led to debunked and unproven accusations of fraud. The monitoring team included election experts and consultants hired by the county for $100,000.
“The level of improvement I have personally seen in Fulton County elections is staggering‚” said Ryan Germany, a member of the team and former general counsel for the secretary of state’s office. “We did not observe a single instance of malfeasance or any intentional misconduct.”
Fulton, a heavily Democratic county that includes the city of Atlanta, attracted national attention during the 2020 election for a disorganized audit, late-night ballot counting and discredited claims of misconduct by President Donald Trump and his allies.
Since then, the county centralized election operations at a new warehouse, abandoning ballot-counting operations at makeshift facilities in State Farm Arena and the World Congress Center, according to the report.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Emailed bomb threats on Election Day briefly disrupted voting, causing evacuations and delays, but election workers were able to recover.
“Election workers persevered to perform their duties, undeterred by these attempts at intimidation,” the report said. “Although polling hours were extended by judicial decisions for polling stations affected by closures, observers at one impacted location observed a small number of voters leaving without voting when the location was closed temporarily due to a bomb threat.”
Before last year’s election, Republican members of the State Election Board attempted to install their own team of monitors, a group that included right-wing election skeptics who have cast doubt on the 2020 results.
Fulton rejected the board’s suggested team and moved forward with its own monitors, along with observers from the Carter Center’s Democracy Program. The monitors made over 700 visits to early voting and Election Day sites.
While state investigations of the 2020 election didn’t find intentional fraud, they did verify thousands of double-scanned ballots in both an audit and recount.
In all three vote counts, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump by about 12,000 votes in Georgia.
The report shows how much progress Fulton has made in elections in recent years, said Aaron Johnson, a Democratic member of the county election board.
“This is an indication that this staff is doing an exceptional job when it comes to working on elections, no matter what the perception is,” Johnson said. “Our staff has done a great job of making those processes better.”
A state takeover attempt of Fulton’s elections management failed after a performance review panel concluded the county showed significant progress.
Republican board member Michael Heekin withheld judgment on the monitoring team’s report.
“I thought it was good, but I need to read it,” Heekin said.
The Fulton election monitors listed several recommendations:
- Find ways to protect voter secrecy so no one else can see how people are voting on Georgia’s large touchscreens.
- Publicize the dates and locations for in-person absentee ballot return early in the election process.
- Allow more public access to observe voting machine testing.
- Resolve discrepancies more quickly after the election. In November, Fulton rescanned over 10,000 ballots right before the certifying the election to rectify discrepancies involving 10 ballots that were double-scanned after paper jams.
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