Peach Tree Times

A nonpartisan voter integrity group is challenging the primary election results of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who certified himself as defeating Trump-back challenger Rep. Jody Hice in the May 24 Republican primary by 52% to 34%.

In a June 23 press conference, Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, cited that polls just before the election showed Raffensperger trailing in the race, and that the group’s monitoring of the elections showed vastly different numbers than those reported statewide by the Dominion Voting System.

“Brad Raffensperger certified unlawful results when he declared himself the winner of the primary,” Favorito said.

“Unresolved issues from the 2020 General Elections were still evident in the 2022 primary elections,” he added.

Filed in Spalding County Superior Court, the petition seeks to unseal ballots to determine the accuracy of the results. The petition also alleges that all 159 Georgia counties violated Open Records Request (ORR) law by failing to honor VoterGA’s ORR for an electronic copy of the actual ballots.

Raffensperger’s office did not return a request for comment on the group’s petition.

In a press conference held a week earlier on local election irregularities, Favorito cited a Fulton County School Board election where one candidate, Republican Phil Chen, running in District 7, was recorded as receiving zero votes late on election night even though he actually received 49.7% of the votes in the race. The voting system, moreover, also showed that a Linda Arnold, who was not on the ballot, received 3,317 votes.

Favorito and Chen have petitioned Fulton County Superior Court to declare the election invalid, and set a date for another election.

“Linda dropped out of the race in March before the ballots were even printed,” Chen told Peach Tree Times. “They (the Board of Elections and Registrations) have conducted three certifications of the results and we still don’t know what the real results are.”

Chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections and Registrations Cathy Woolard did not respond to a request for comment on the election.

In a DeKalb County Board of Commissioners race one candidate, Michelle Long Spears, a Democrat, was initially cheated out 3,792 votes, according to the New York Times.

She alerted election authorities as soon as she discovered the discrepancies, she told the Times.

“When I visited several precincts (including my own) after Election Day and saw ZERO votes reported for myself, I was shocked and knew that wasn’t accurate,” Spears said.

A hand recount showed that she was actually the top vote getter.

On June 6, DeKalb County released a statement saying that “after initially delaying certification of primary election results following technical issues related to the Commissioner District 2 contest, DeKalb Board of Registration and Elections voted 4-to-1 to certify the election during a special called meeting on June 3.”

Favorito said that election officials attributed  the discrepancies to ballot alignment mismatches, but said other factors had to be at play; he placed some blame on the Dominion Voting Systems used in the races.

VoterGA has filed Open Records Act (ORA) requests in all Georgia counties to get copies of the ballots – which he says are not exempt from the Act – but has so far been rebuffed.

“We need a full investigation here,” Favorito said. “We still don’t know the true primary results.”