by Laura Baigert at Georgia Star News
All told, 43,907 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in DeKalb County (28,194 absentee ballots whose chain of custody was accounted for on ballot transfer forms that were signed as received by the registrar’s designee one day after election workers removed them from drop boxes plus 15,713 absentee ballots whose chain of custody was accounted for on ballot transfer forms for with there was no registrar’s designee signature for time or date of receipt) were counted in the certified results of the November 3, 2020 election despite being delivered to the registrar’s office in clear violation of the chain of custody documentation of the Georgia State Election Board’s July 2020 rule.
Another 24 percent – 14,925 absentee ballots collected from drop boxes – were documented as received by the elections official more than an hour after being collected by a two-person collection team, but on the same calendar day.
Arguably, these additional 14,925 absentee ballots could also be considered in violation of the election code rule that requires absentee ballots placed in drop boxes “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar.”
Less than 5 percent of the absentee ballots collected from drop boxes during the November 2020 election were recorded as being received by the elections official in an hour or less.
On November 20, 2020, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, certified Joe Biden as the winner of the state’s 16 electoral college votes over former President Donald Trump by a margin of 11,779 votes out of 5 million cast in the November 3, 2020 election.
News that in DeKalb County – just one of the state’s 159 counties – the number of absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in the November 2020 election that were in violation of the state’s emergency rule for chain of custody documentation exceeds by more than three times Biden’s certified margin of statewide victory (43,907 votes compared to 11,779 votes) calls into question the legitimacy of that November 20, 2020 statewide certification by Secretary of State Raffensperger.
Similar to DeKalb, issues surrounding the chain of custody of absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes in Cobb County and Fulton County have been reported by The Star News.
After Fulton County did not provide the chain of custody documents for 18,901 absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes, an election official there admitted that the records were missing. Additionally, 85 percent of the drop box absentee ballots were not “immediately transported” and 5 percent were recorded as being delivered before they were picked up from the drop boxes.
A review of Cobb County’s chain of custody documents revealed that 6 collections totaling more than 1,800 ballots were transferred one day later, one collection of 227 ballots was transferred 2 days later and one collection of 274 ballots was transferred 3 days later, in addition to a number of other irregularities.
However, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger declared in an April press release that 120 of 123 Georgia counties that utilized drop boxes during the November 2020 election “filled out and retained ballot transfer forms in accordance with Georgia rules.”
The other three small counties – Coffee, Grady and Taylor – accounting for 0.37 percent of the absentee ballots in the November 2020 election, Raffensperger said at the time, were referred for investigation after failing to do their absentee ballot transfer forms in accordance with Georgia Rules and Regulations.
Two months later, The Star News reported in June that eight months after the November 2020 election and seven months after The Star News first requested chain of custody documents from officials in all 159 counties in Georgia as well as Secretary of State Raffensperger, “Georgia County Officials Have Not Produced Chain of Custody Records for 316,000 Absentee Vote by Mail Ballots Deposited in Drop Boxes in 2020 Election.”
While more than two dozen counties have failed to comply with The Star News public records request for absentee ballot chain of custody document for the 2020 election, on Friday – more than nine months after the election and more than eight months after receiving the initial Star News public records request, the Secretary of State’s office forwarded files for 129 counties which it says contain the requested chain of custody documentation for each of those counties.
The Star News has just begun to analyze those documents.
DeKalb County, which is Georgia’s fourth most populous as of the 2020 census, has…
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