A new bipartisan panel of both Democrats and Republicans have been approved to move forward with investigations into the management of the election process in Fulton County, Georgia. This comes days after the election registration chief of Fulton County Ralph Jones decided to resign from his job, who was present at the State Farm Arena there for the 2020 election. The panel has been approved in a new law set by the state after the election, which aims to allow audits of management in any county at the request of lawmakers, and is the first of its kind to happen here.
The Georgia State Election Board voted to approve the measure on August 18th. In reporting from the Epoch Times, the panel set includes Stephen Day, a Democrat on the Gwinnett County election board, Ricky Kittle, a Republican on the Catoosa County election board, and Ryan Germany, general counsel for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
According to a report from The Atlanta Journal Constitution, after the panel finishes its investigation, it has the power to potentially replace the election board in Fulton County with a temporary superintendent who would have authority over vote counting, future polling and establishing staff who works during election processes.
While the move is being painted by the media as a “takeover” of the election process, both Democrats and Republicans have spoken out in support and in resistance to the establishment of the new panel focused on auditing election management.
Democrat Sara Tindall Ghazal says, “the narrative driving this pressure has been influenced by disinformation surrounding the 2020 election. But the fact remains that Fulton County voters have reported numerous problems for far longer than November 2020, particularly surrounding registration and absentee ballots.”
Republican Governor Brian Kemp supports the efforts, saying that, “Fulton County has a long history of mismanagement, incompetence and a lack of transparency when it comes to running elections, including the 2020 election.”
Cody Hall, a spokesperson for Brian Kemp added that, “The State Election Board now has the ability to hold chronically underperforming counties accountable.”
Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts disagrees with the establishment of the new panel, saying that, “This is the result of a cynical ploy to undermine faith in our elections process and democracy itself – it is shameful partisan politics at its worst.”
Pitts again referred to the previous recounts which seemingly showed Biden to win the State, but questions still remain about the election process, management and if the ballots in the counts and recounts were from actual single voters and without fraud. If the possibility that fraudulent ballots prove true at all and exist still, recounts of those ballots would be pointless without further verification.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who months ago called for the removal of Ralph Jones before he quit on his own, says, “I have been saying for a long time that the state needs the authority to step in when counties have consistently failed their voters. I’m confident that the performance review team will do a good job, and I hope Fulton will cooperate with this process.”
There is currently no timeline as to when the new audit report will be released.
Biden is said to have won the state of Georgia by a narrow margin of 12,670 votes.
