Fulton County audit can proceed, judge rules

FPI / June 27, 2021

Democrats' attempts to derail the audit of Fulton County, Georgia's 2020 election ballots were turned away as a judge on Thursday allowed the audit to proceed.

The lawsuit which calls for the Fulton County audit says there is evidence of fraudulent ballots and improper ballot counting.

The county, county elections board and county courts clerk had filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit. They argued, among other things, that the lawsuit was barred by sovereign immunity, a principle that says state and local governments and can only be sued if they agree to it.

Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero, who was specially appointed to preside over the case, agreed. He ruled that the constitutional claims against those three entities are barred by sovereign immunity and dismissed them.

However the judge also granted a request by the petitioners to add the individual members of the county election board as respondents in the lawsuit. He wrote in a footnote that the claims against the individual board members “may be barred by official immunity” but that “the record is not sufficiently developed to warrant such a conclusion.”

The lawsuit was originally filed in December by nine Georgia voters. Garland Favorito, who is leading the lawsuit, is a longtime critic of Georgia’s election systems.

As part of the suit, the petitioners are seeking to inspect some 147,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County, which includes metro Atlanta, to determine whether there are illegitimate ballots among them.

Several election workers and volunteers have signed sworn affidavits saying they witnessed absentee ballots that appeared to be marked by a machine rather than by hand and were printed on different paper. The lawsuit also repeats the claim of fraud based on security video that shows cases of ballots being pulled from under a table and counted while observers and the news media weren’t present.

Favorito hailed Thursday’s ruling and the naming of the individual election board members as respondents as continuing a “string of victories,” including the order to unseal the ballots.

Bob Cheeley, an Atlanta-area lawyer serving as the lead attorney for two of the petitioners, told Just the News that the filing will help the complainants "get an audit and get to the truth" and that the audit will move forward following the decision.

“This is a huge victory for everyone who wants to get to the truth about the way in which Fulton County mishandled the absentee ballot count,” Cheeley said.

Free Press International