Fulton County Georgia Election Official Admits Chain of Custody Docs Are Missing From 2020 Absentee Ballots

Fulton County Georgia Election Official Admits Chain of Custody Docs Are Missing From 2020 Absentee Ballots


An unbelievable admission marks the “first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of a significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election” reports The Georgia Star News.

A Fulton County official made the stunning remark Wednesday of last week, telling The Georgia Star News that “a few forms are missing” and that “some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.”

Star News reported:

The admission of missing chain of custody documents came as a response to The Star News follow-up to Fulton County’s incomplete responses to Open Records Requests for the transfer forms that document the chain of custody of absentee ballots placed by voters into 37 drop boxes installed through Fulton County over the 41-day November 2020 presidential election period that began on September 24 and ended on November 3, election day.

“As we review the documents provided to you and our daily log.  We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC, some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced,” Mariska Bodison  of Fulton County Registration & Elections told The Star News in a statement emailed on Wednesday, June 9…

…Seven months after the election, Fulton County has failed to provide the transfer forms for approximately 19,000 dropbox absentee ballots, The Star News has reported.

Star News conducted an analysis of dropbox ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes provided by Fulton County in response to an Open Records Request. It showed that 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms Fulton County said should have been provided are missing; a number “that is significantly greater than “a few” by any objective standard.”

As Star News notes:

The admission of missing chain of custody documents by a Fulton County official is important for several reasons that cut to the very core of public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election:

•   President Biden was certified as the winner of Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes in the 2020 election by the narrow margin of less than 12,000 votes over former President Donald Trump out of a total of 5 million votes cast statewide.

•   The total number of absentee ballots whose chain of custody was purportedly documented in these 385 missing Fulton County absentee ballot transfer forms was 18,901, more than 6,000 votes greater than the less than 12,000 vote margin of Biden’s certified victory in the state.

•   Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has taken no action in 156 of Georgia’s 159 counties to secure copies of any absentee ballot drop box transfer forms and review them for accuracy and consistency with reported absentee ballot vote counts. In April his office announced investigations into three small counties that “failed to do their absentee ballot transfer forms” in the November 2020 election in compliance with rules and regulations.

•   More than seven months after the November 3 election, 28 Georgia counties have failed to respond at all to The Star News Open Records Requests to produce absentee ballot drop box transfer forms. To date, The Star News has obtained absentee ballot drop box forms from 59 counties that provide chain of custody documentation for 266,492 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes during the November 3, 2020 election, which means that no chain of custody documentation has been produced for about 333,000 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes out of an estimated 600,000 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes during that election.

•   As The Star News reported on Sunday, “These absentee ballots are at the center of a lawsuit filed by Garland Favorito and eight other Georgia residents, who have sued Fulton County to produce these ballots for a forensic audit. Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero ruled in May that this audit could proceed, but allowed the plaintiffs to review only the digital images of these 145,000 absentee ballots. . .  An estimated 145,000 absentee ballots – between 75,000 and 78,000 of which were originally deposited in drop boxes and between 67,000 and 70,000 of which were sent via the United States Postal Service – were transferred from the centralized counting facility at the State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta to the EPC [the Election Preparation Center warehouse located at 1365 English St. NW, Atlanta]  at some point after the counting of votes for the November 3 election was completed. . . Fulton County subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and Judge Amero put the audit on hold. Judge Amero has scheduled a hearing later this month to consider Fulton County’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and stop the audit.”


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