The Georgia State Election Board Ensures 2024 Will Be a 2020 Repeat

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During its quarterly meeting on May 7, 2024, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) refused to refer Election Complaint (SEB2023-025) to the Attorney General (AG) for investigation and prosecution per a motion from SEB member Dr. Janice Johnston. The case is possibly one of the most important election cases in Georgia's history. Sadly, board member Rick Jeffares, who had promised support for the case, was a day late and several dollars short. Jaffares failed to show up at the hearing. The moment was critical and would have allowed him to second Johnston's motion to refer the case. His vote would have forced Chairman Fervier to put his cards on the table and break (or not break) the tie.

On May 8, both board members Rick Jeffares and Johnston made reconsideration motions to refer Fulton County vote processing violations to the state AG. Ultimately, Chairman John Fervier ruled the motions out of order. Jeffares motioned to "investigate and review the failure to provide or retain 173 required documents associated with the 10 named Advanced Voting Scanners from the Nov. 3, 2020, General election." Johnston followed with a motion to review the issue of missing ballot images associated with SEB2023-025. "I move to review the case 2023-025." Johnston continued, "It suggests there's sufficient evidence that multiple violations occurred when Fulton County failed to retain ballot images for 17,852 counted votes from the Nov. 3, 2020 election recount. I move that the State Election Board initiate an independent investigation of the authenticity of votes associated with 17,852 missing ballot images from the Nov. 3, 2020 election recount."

Notably, the SEB has never required motions to be placed on the agenda before they are made. Moreover, it is standard practice for the SEB to refer even just one violation of law to the AG when there is no reasonable explanation.

According to VoterGA, on May 7, "The SEB heard over 140 violations of law and rules allegedly committed by Fulton County in processing electronic results during the 2020 election." Founder Garland Favorito founded the nonprofit, non-partisan organization known as VoterGA to ensure Georgia elections are conducted with fairness and transparency and to restore trust in the state's elections. To summarize 2023-025's findings, Moncla and Rossi allegedly identified "up to 58,924 ballots cast and counted that had no source justification."

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