After digital images of paperwork publicized by Georgia’s new voting law exposed the fact that almost 200 absentee ballots were double-counted in the state during the 2020 presidential election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanded Thursday that two high-profile election officials in Fulton County, Georgia, be fired.
“Fulton County’s continued failures have gone on long enough with no accountability,” Raffensperger said before placing the blame on Rick Barron, the Fulton elections director, and Ralph Jones, the registration chief.
“Rick Barron and Ralph Jones, Fulton’s registration chief, must be fired and removed from Fulton’s elections leadership immediately,” he said.
Fulton County’s continued failures have gone on long enough with no accountability. Rick Barron and Ralph Jones, Fulton’s registration chief, must be fired and removed from Fulton’s elections leadership immediately. Fulton’s voters and the people of Georgia deserve better.
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) July 15, 2021
Nothing gets past this guy! https://t.co/x5Lt46xzaZ
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 15, 2021
“Every time we think we’ve reached the peak of Fulton’s elections mismanagement issues, more comes to light,” Raffensperger lamented. “I’ve been calling for change in Fulton since day one. Maintaining public confidence in our elections begins in Fulton County.”
Raffensperger said Georgia’s new voting law has given the State Election Board the authority to start cleaning house. However, “If Fulton County doesn’t take action to clean their own house,” he said, “then [he] reiterate[s] [his] call that the State Election Board should use their new authority to clean it for them.”
If the double-counted votes were tabulated, they would have unlawfully given President Joe Biden 27 unearned votes. Those votes alone wouldn’t have swayed the election, but the fact that Georgia continues to uncover election mismanagement is concerning to those who care about the integrity of the democratic process.
VoterGa recently organized a lawsuit seeking more scans of ballots and an in-person review of 147,000 unsealed absentee ballots. VoterGa argues that double-counted ballots are just one of many forms of evidence that fraud occurred in the 2020 election.
“If we’re finding this in Fulton County, we’re probably going to find it throughout the state. The question is, why did it happen?” VoterGa member David Cross told the Washington Examiner.
Trump lost Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes. However, Margot Cleveland recently reported in The Federalist that, “New evidence indicates that more than 10,300 illegal votes were cast in Georgia in the November 2020 general election — a number that will continue to rise over the next several months, potentially exceeding the 12,670 votes that separated Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”
The Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway noted in mid-March that, “According to the media narrative, the Georgia presidential election was as perfectly run as any election in history, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. To push that narrative, the media steadfastly downplayed, ignored, or prejudiciously dismissed legitimate concerns with how Georgia had run its November 2020 election and complaints about it.”
Raffensperger, who claims he now wants to “clean house,” voluntarily agreed to dramatically change voting rules in Georgia without input from either the Republican Party of Georgia or the Republican National Committee. And he mailed out millions of absentee ballot applications during the 2020 presidential election because of the pandemic.
Following the infamous phone call between Raffensperger and former President Donald Trump (after which the media fabricated fake quotes that made it into the Democrats’ article of impeachment), “[Raffensperger] and his team kept asserting that Trump’s figures were wrong. Trump’s legal team kept asking Raffensperger to provide the state data and information that would enable them to see for themselves. For some reason, Raffensperger and his team [were unwilling] to share their data or reports.”
Despite his former comments, however, Raffensperger has now initiated an investigation “into the handling of paperwork in Fulton County related to the use of drop boxes for the 2020 election.” It’s unclear whether he’ll also take time to reevaluate his former statements about Georgia’s handling of the 2020 presidential election.
