Peach Tree Times

VoterGA alleges that its analysis of ballot images of the November 2020 general election determined that statewide results were electronically manipulated.

“This tampering and destruction is proof positive why Georgians cannot trust the 2020 election results,” Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, said at a Monday news conference announcing the results of the analysis. “We desperately need an independent multicounty audit immediately to secure our elections before 2022 primaries.”

Fulton County spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt, told the Peach Tree Times that “the 2020 election results were not electronically manipulated and that results were further validated by two separate recounts.” 

Favorito said that volunteers from their group spent a year studying ballot images, which are currently public under a sweeping election reform law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, in March 2021.

VoterGA focused most of its attention on Fulton County, home to the Atlanta metro area, which President Joe Biden carried with nearly 73% of the vote on route to becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Georgia since 1992.

A partial list of the findings noted all 374,128 in-person ballot images for the original count are missing; 132,284 mail-in ballot images are missing their authentication files, more than 4,000 tabulator images have impossible duplicate time stamps, and 104,994 image files in 1,096 batches have impossible, duplicate time stamps.

“In fairness to Fulton County, they did preserve enough of their ballot images to make some of our research possible,” Favorito said. “Other counties, like Cobb, destroyed most or all of their original November 2020 images despite federal and state law.”

In early December 2020, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified the results of the presidential election after two recounts.

The close voter tally between Donald Trump and Biden triggered the first recount, which was done by hand. A second recount was done by machine. Both supported the original statewide outcome that Biden won the state by approximately 12,000 votes.

Favorito said that the recounts were based on an unreliable system.

"The original electronic vote count and electronic recount were produced by a system that is unverifiable to the voter and in violation of state laws according to the U.S. District Court,” he wrote in an email. “We previously found in our July 13 press conference that the hand count audit contained a 60% error rate, seven falsified tally sheets and over 4,000 duplicate reported votes.” 

“Gov. Kemp used those findings to make up nearly all of his 36-point report to the state election board asking them to take action,” Favorito said.

Cobb County did not reply to a request for comment.

Trump has argued, without proof, that he lost Georgia due to voter fraud. In early January 2021 he pressured Raffensperger to change the state's vote totals, noting "I just want to find 11,770 votes," the total that would have given Trump the state.