A Georgia judge indicated he could move to unseal Fulton County’s absentee ballots for an investigation over alleged fraud during the November general election.
Voting integrity advocate Garland Favorito filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court alleging fraudulent ballots were cast and other irregularities happened while ballots were counted at State Farm Arena on Nov. 3, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Although state officials have dismissed those claims, Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero, who is overseeing the case, signaled on Monday that he might order the absentee ballots to be unsealed and reviewed by a team hired by Favorito, the co-founder of the conservative Voter GA group that filed suit in December.
Amero said at the hearing he is seeking a concise plan for maintaining the security of the ballots if a decision is made permitting an audit to commence.
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“We want to do this in such a way that dispels rumors and disinformation and sheds light,” Amero said at the hearing. “The devil’s in the details.”
Under state law, ballots are sealed in the Fulton County Superior Court Clerk’s Office. Official data shows there are approximately 822,600 active voters across the county.
Several election-related lawsuits were filed in Georgia after the 2020 election, raising concerns about possible voter fraud or taking issue with changes to election rules prior to the January U.S. Senate runoffs that have been roundly dismissed by the courts.
Former President Donald Trump and his allies have voiced skepticism of the election outcome in Fulton County, where much of Atlanta is located, after making unsubstantiated claims of fraud surrounding mail-in ballots, calling for an investigation into the county’s general election.
On Monday, the former president repeated his accusations of voter fraud in the county in a statement, highlighting the Washington Post’s correction to a story in which the outlet misquoted him during a recorded call with an investigator in the office of Georgia’s secretary of state.
“Fulton County has never been properly audited for vote or signature verification. They only looked at areas of the State where there most likely would be a few problems,” Trump said, in part.
Prior to Georgia’s certification deadline in November, a statewide risk-limiting audit upheld President Biden’s win in the state’s general election. The audit helped find mistakes from some counties that mistakenly neglected to upload all memory cards from voting machines.
After a hand recount performed in Floyd County in November revealed 2,600 uncounted votes, the board of elections fired election chief Robert Brady.
In December, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called for an audit of ballot signatures. A signature audit conducted in Cobb County followed the statewide audit and found “a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures.”
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the Fulton County Board of Elections but did not immediately receive a response.
