Georgia Voters Sue to Inspect ‘Hidden’ Ballots

By Mark Anderson

Concerned Georgia voters, organized by the non-profit election integrity group VoterGA, have filed an emergency lawsuit against Fulton County’s Elections Director and Election Board members in an effort to inspect what the voters contend were “illegally scanned, hidden ballots” that were counted in the Nov. 3 presidential election. This Superior Court petition “outlines evidence of how a small group of election workers at State Farm Arena illegally scanned thousands of . . . hidden mail-in ballots,” noted a Dec. 24, 2020 VoterGA press release, adding: “Two affidavits show scanning started in violation of Georgia laws after monitors left when told scanning would cease for the evening.”

That press release added that once the scanning was completed in Fulton County, “there was an unprecedented vote spike that turned the election in favor of presidential candidate Joe Biden.” Furthermore, the lawsuit cites “four affidavits from experienced hand-count monitors who claim they handled potentially fraudulent mail-in ballots during the hand-count audit. They contend the ballots did not have creases from mailing, were not marked with a writing instrument, and were on ‘unusual’ ballot stock. Other affidavits include one from a recount monitor who saw unlocked ballot bags,” among other issues. As of Jan. 4, the lawsuit’s outcome was still pending in the Superior Court of Fulton County.

Garland Favorito of the Constitution Party of Georgia stated that it “supports the efforts of nonpartisan groups like VoterGA in advancing election-integrity efforts in our state.” Favorito also is the Constitution Party’s elections director, as he stated in a recorded online statement to the court on Jan. 2. For the Nov. 3 election, Favorito carried out the roles of State Farm Arena observer, Fulton County tabulation observer, audit monitor, and recount monitor, he told the court.

Given the above-noted apparent breaches of election laws, the petitioners are seeking an “immediate temporary injunction with an ‘expedited notice’ to inspect the Fulton County absentee ballots visually,” as Favorito’s press release pointed out. “They further seek to rescan those mail-in ballots for forensic evaluation. In addition, they seek electronic copies of the Dominion ballot images and election reports. Although ballots cast should be available to the public for inspection, Georgia law keeps them secretly under seal that cannot be broken without a court order.”

The release goes on to explain:

There are four additional petition counts which allege that voters within Fulton County and across the state had their votes diluted via illegal activity at the arena. Thus, Georgia voters were denied their due process and equal protection voting rights. Two counts allege failure to fulfill Open Records Requests for the ballots and interim result files. Two more counts allege Fulton County failed to count all write-in candidate votes. Although the Defendants failed to take any known remedial action for [these alleged] election illegalities at State Farm Arena, they then terminated two whistleblowers that raised security concerns. The petition further contends that such actions by the Defendants violate their oath of office to prevent fraud.

Notably, this lawsuit does not stem from an upstart movement that arose only due to the high stakes 2020 election and the problems surrounding it, such as the advent of widespread mail-in balloting. Favorito is a 40-year information technology professional who has been probing election fraud for about 20 years and co-founded Voters Organized for Trusted Elections Results in Georgia (VoterGA) back in 2006 as a “non-partisan, nonprofit, all volunteer, dues-free organization that has led the election integrity movement here,” according to an online PDF document dated Dec. 4, 2020, consisting of his mainly firsthand observations and criticisms of the election—which closely resemble the points he made in his online statement to the court, posted at the website “Rumble. com.”

In that document, he looked back a year and noted, “In 2019, the [Georgia] General Assembly decided to purchase a voting system even if it accumulates votes hidden in QR codes that the voter cannot read. Over the strenuous objections of hundreds of citizens, the legislature passed HB316, which legalized a new form of unverifiable voting.”

Interestingly, the now-infamous Dominion voting machine company, accused of helping “steal” the Nov. 3 U.S. election, is at the forefront of Favorito’s concerns. He noted that for the 2020 election, the Georgia secretary of state “purchased the Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5 Ballot Marking Device (BMD) system that had been rejected in Texas and banned in Colorado. The legislature and State Election Board also implemented new procedures that subverted audit and recount protections. It is under these conditions that I was monitoring Fulton County interim results for the Nov. 3, 2020 election and became concerned.”

Favorito claims, “On Nov. 5, I noticed [that] a Fulton County interim upload showed former Vice President Biden’s Fulton vote totals increased by approximately 20,000 votes while President Donald Trump’s totals appeared to decrease by approximately 1,000 votes.”

While these certainly are valid concerns that the court should seriously weigh, at press time there’s a looming question that no one has been asking: How can a reliable U.S. Senate runoff (having taken place Jan. 5 between Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue versus Democrats Rapahel Warnock and John Ossoff) be held in Georgia if those conditions haven’t been changed much, if at all, since Nov. 3, 2020?

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor. Email him at [email protected].