Originally published on January 21st, 2022.
Non-partisan citizen group VoterGA revealed their recent analysis results and found the following:
- Georgia election integrity group finds 106,000 ballots with improper chain-of-custody.
- Several counties admit they have destroyed surveillance video of ballot drop boxes.
- Some Georgia counties have asked for as much as $15,000 in exchange for the surveillance footage.
- Findings exclude missing forms that have been estimated to be approximately 355,000.
”Our poll watching team recently found that SB202 did not solve the problem. Some poll workers will allow ballot harvesters to drop hundreds of ballots into drop boxes at polling locations. The law and SEB rules must still be changed further and enforced to ensure election integrity.“
After analysis of ballot transfer forms obtained via Open Records Requests, it was discovered by VoterGA in the November 2020 election that the state of Georgia had 106,000+ ballots with improper chain-of-custody.
These findings are expected to increase as more counties admit they have destroyed surveillance videos despite federal/state retention laws requiring election records to be retained for about 2 years.
Furthermore, counties have acknowledged they cannot produce oaths for collection team members.
These findings do not include missing forms that have previously been estimated to grow to some 355,000.
VoterGA, a non-partisan, citizen-created, 501c3 that advocates for independently verifiable, auditable, recount capable and transparent elections, discovered that most counties have no records of how many total ballots were collected from drop boxes. Consequently, there is no way to determine how many ballots were collected when several days' worth of forms are missing.
VoterGA also had quite a task in attempting to obtain drop box videos from counties, with some asking for as much as $15,000 for the recordings, even if only after failing to produce the correspondence until long after the election had been certified.
These findings by the group are preliminary in nature, the number of which is expected to increase as counties admit they have destroyed surveillance videos despite both federal and state retention laws requiring election records to be kept for about 2 years.
In the release, VoterGA co-founder Garland Favorito stated, ”Our poll watching team recently found that SB202 did not solve the problem. Some poll workers will allow ballot harvesters to drop hundreds of ballots into drop boxes at polling locations. The law and SEB rules must still be changed further and enforced to ensure election integrity.“
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