Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says he is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Fulton County elections following recent allegations that Fulton County shredded 300 municipal election-related applications in violation of state law. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has already launched an investigation into the allegations.
“After 20 years of documented failure in Fulton County elections, Georgians are tired of waiting to see what the next embarrassing revelation will be,” said Raffensperger. “The Department of Justice needs to take a long look at what Fulton County is doing and how their leadership disenfranchises Fulton voters through incompetence and malfeasance. The voters of Georgia are sick of Fulton County’s failures.”
New allegations have come to light that Fulton County was seen shredding 300 applications related to Georgia’s municipal elections. State law requires election officials to preserve elections documents related to primary or general elections for 24 months after the election.
Raffensperger’s office is investigating the allegations.
After repeatedly calling for new leadership in Fulton’s elections, Raffensperger is also participating in a review under Georgia’s new election law that could lead to a replacement of the leadership of Fulton County’s elections.
Elections in Fulton County have been problematic for decades. As a result of election failures in 2020, Raffensperger was the first secretary of state to force Fulton County elections into a consent order, requiring them to accept a state appointed monitor to oversee their elections processes. The monitor, Carter Jones, found no fraud but significant mismanagement issues in Fulton County’s elections processes. Jones described Fulton’s election processes as “badly managed, sloppy and chaotic” after spending several months working closely with Fulton County’s elections.
After repeatedly calling on the General Assembly to provide the authority to the Secretary of State’s office to fix failing counties, SB202 has finally provided the means to do so. Beforehand, because counties ran elections, there were few avenues for accountability at the state level when counties repeatedly failed their voters. The State Election Board had only limited ability to help voters, such as those in Fulton County, who had been failed repeatedly by their county elections leadership.
sos.ga.gov
