Fulton County Allegedly Skipped Key Election Check

Fulton County failed to follow the legal requirement to compare the total number of votes recorded with the total number of people who cast ballots, according to Fulton County Board of Elections member Julie Adams and another person who requested anonymity.

Georgia has three weeks of early voting. Each early voting polling location has what is known as a Daily Ballot Recap Sheet. This records the number of voters that check in, the number of voters that went to a Ballot Marking Device and printed a ballot, and the number of ballots that were scanned into the scanner. It also has the scanner seal numbers.

After advanced voting ends, the scanners are sent to election headquarters either the Friday or Saturday before Election Day and sit in a warehouse. On Election Day, the election superintendent is supposed to compare the seal number from the Daily Ballot Recap sheet to the seal on the scanner to ensure they are the same.

The comparison would help ensure proper chain of custody, according to Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections (FCBRE) member Julie Adams.

“Comparing the seal number that the poll manager puts on the Daily Ballot Recap Sheet after it is delivered and held in the election office, right at the time of opening to removing the memory card, ensures that the chain of custody of that scanner is in tact,” Adams told The Federalist. “It is a way to ensure that the scanner has not been tampered with.”

The election superintendent is also supposed to compare the numbered list of voters (which is a list of unique voters that has their names, addresses, voting precinct and vote method) to the scanner. This would help identify a scenario in which the scanner shows 5,000 votes but the numbered list shows just 4,500 people cast a ballot.

The process is defined in Georgia law.

According to Georgia Code 183-1-14 (13) “At the end of the advance voting period, the registrars shall record the election counter number from each ballot scanner on the daily recap sheet. The ballot scanners shall be shut down and sealed. The registrars shall record the seal numbers on the daily recap sheet.”

Code 183-1-14 (14) adds that verifying the seal numbers on each ballot scanners with the daily recap sheet is done on Election Day to “verify that there is no evidence of tampering with the unit.” Code 183-1-13 (15) further states that the “election superintendent or tabulating center personnel shall then compare the numbers shown on the election counters of the ballot scanners with the numbered list of absentee electors and the absentee ballot recap form to verify that there are no discrepancies.”

Once this process is completed, the votes on the scanners are then tabulated.

Except Fulton County never did any of this, according to Adams and another source familiar with the matter who requested anonymity. Nonetheless, FCBRE members were forced to rubber-stamp the results of the election even though the law to ensure the tallies were accurate was allegedly not followed. That’s because a judge ruled in October that election superintendents may not “refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”

Adams told The Federalist that she asked the Fulton County election director, Nadine Williams, “about this several times, including in BRE meetings and her response is that the Poll Managers reconcile on a daily basis and that they compare the seal numbers.”

“From what I have been told and seen myself, the step we miss is using the Daily Ballot Recap Sheet to compare to the original chain of custody documents, which breaks the chain of custody. And there has never — from what I can tell — been a comparison to the Numbered List of Voters.”

Williams never responded to an inquiry from The Federalist.

With runoff elections slated for next Tuesday, Adams tells The Federalist she hopes “the department will be following the law and comparing the seal numbers with the Daily Ballot Recap sheets to open the scanners and the Numbered List of Voters to compare to the number of ballots cast on the scanners.”

“This would ensure following the law and provide transparency to the process,” Adams said.