In September, I wrote about a disturbing case of Democrat lawlessness. Commissioners in Fulton County, Georgia (the Atlanta area), had refused to allow two Republicans to serve on the Election Board, despite a court order from Judge David Emerson of Fulton County Superior Court. The County may be subject to a $10,000 fine per day until the appointments are made.
Image created using AI.
DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO BREAK THE LAW
Recently, I raised this issue in a conversation with Garland Favorito (Garland), a co-founder of the nonprofit organization VoterGA, and someone who knows more about Georgia election matters than anyone else.
Garland noted that the Democrat-controlled Board of Commissioners is still defiant, will not seat Jason Frazier on the Fulton County Election Board, and will not renew Julie Adams's appointment (she’s been on the Board since 2024). Garland believes that the Board of Commissioners is “willing to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to try to get out of following the law.”
The Commissioners justified their decision by claiming that Frazier and Adams are “election deniers,” a characterization that Garland strongly disputes. In any event, he argues, being a so-called election denier is not relevant because “the statute is clear.” Republicans have a right to appoint these individuals, and the Board has an obligation to seat them.
Garland and I also discussed other troubling issues pertaining to elections in Georgia generally, and in Fulton County in particular. He noted that many critical issues from the 2020 election remain unresolved. Here is a summary of some of the items discussed.
THE 2020 ELECTION
To this very day, “impossible” mail-in ballots have not been inspected.
Shortly after the 2020 election, Garland became aware of worrisome irregularities pertaining to Fulton County’s mail-in ballots. Six independent witnesses who observed the hand-count reported that several ballots appeared to be fake. Some of them lacked the folding creases required to put them into mailing envelopes; others seemed to be printed with toner; others were printed on a different type of paper. Almost all had failed to complete any of the down-ballot races.
To gain access to these mail-in ballots, Garland filed a series of lawsuits beginning in December 2020. Lower courts told him he lacked legal “standing,” but in 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed those rulings.
During the many legal proceedings spanning 2020 through 2024, the County maintained that it was preserving the paper ballots. However, when Garland recently sought access to the mail-in ballots via an open records request, the county said “no records met our request.” Despite Fulton County’s assertion, Garland believes it still has the ballots because it would be too risky (legally) for the County to destroy them. For this reason, he plans to keep fighting for ballot access.
Impossible ballot images
Fulton County did provide low-resolution images of most 2020 mail-in ballots, but many were “impossible”—as in phony. Garland stated:
We did a study on March 7, 2022, that showed that the digital images were electronically altered in Fulton County before the results were certified.
This issue was raised in legal proceedings, but neither Fulton County nor a court responded to the issue. Some of the specific “impossibilities” include:
1. In Georgia, a ballot image must have two files: a TIF image file and a SHA authentication file. They are always produced at the exact same moment; however, 16,000 of Fulton’s ballot images have SHA files dated hours or even days after the time stamps of the respective TIF files. How is that possible?
2. Another glaring irregularity was that 4,000 images have precisely the same timestamp, to the identical microsecond. That is impossible because it takes time to produce each image.
3. Contrary to Georgia’s legal requirements, over 130,000 mail-in ballot image files were produced with no associated SHA files whatsoever.
There were almost 18,000 more votes than the supporting records
In an election decided by just 11,800 votes, Fulton will not or cannot produce records to support almost 18,000 votes. There are no paper ballots or images. Garland pointed out that, under Georgia law, the lack of support for 18,000 votes “would trigger a re-do of the election automatically.”
Could this explain why Fulton County seems desperate in its efforts to prevent Garland Favorito from gaining access to the paper ballots? Would an inspection of the ballots confirm that the election was not certifiable?
In violation of the law, signatures were not matched
In the 2020 election, Georgia had the lowest ballot rejection rate in the nation, and Fulton County had the lowest ballot rejection rate of any major county in Georgia.
A man named Mark Wingate, who served on the 2020 Election Board, offered an explanation for the ultra-low rejection rate. He testified (under oath) that he was told by Fulton County election personnel that Fulton did not do any signature matching. The lack of signature matching, which violated election law, might explain why Garland found that “only six ballots were rejected [county-wide] and it should have been in the thousands.” He also noted that the signature-matching machine Fulton County uses was not even operational.
All these election issues prompted me to ask if Fulton County was deliberately concealing wrongdoing. This is Garland’s response: “What they are hiding is that the results will not add up. The results that they certified do not match the ballot images.”
Other anomalies
According to research VoterGA performed, Georgia had 374,000 in-person ballots for which there are no images. That violates “both federal and state law.” And in Fulton County, there were more than 3,900 double-scanned and double-counted ballots.
The many items listed above do not comprise a complete list of the irregularities discovered. According to Garland Favorito, “All in total, there are a million electronic records missing from the 2020 election.”
POST-2020 ELECTION DEVELOPMENTS
In 2021, Georgia passed the “Election Integrity Act of 2021.” Garland Favorito believes the new law has greatly strengthened election integrity, but more work is needed. Specifically, Garland would like Georgia to get rid of voting machines and return to publicly recorded, hand-counted paper ballots.
MORE ABOUT GARLAND FAVORITO AND VOTERGA
Garland Favorito is a career Information Technology professional with over 40 years of experience. He devoted much of his career to computer programming, business systems analysis, data administration, internet systems design and architecture, and systems development methodology.
About 20 years ago, Garland co-founded Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA). He has performed research into all aspects of Georgia elections, including electronic voting systems. In addition, Garland has provided expert testimony in legal cases and testimony before various governmental bodies. He continues to work on election integrity issues.
VoterGA’s unpaid staff includes highly skilled individuals dedicated to ensuring that Georgia elections are fair and efficient. The organization welcomes tax-deductible donations.
Joe Fried is an Ohio-based CPA and the author of Debunked? An auditor reviews the 2020 election — and the lessons learned. In that book, Joe argues that the 2020 election should not have been certified. In addition, Joe has assisted various attorneys representing January 6th defendants. His totally free substack account is found at joefriedcpa.substack.com.