A Stunning Number of Absentee Ballots in DeKalb County, Georgia, Violated Chain-of-Custody Rules

A Stunning Number of Absentee Ballots in DeKalb County, Georgia, Violated Chain-of-Custody Rules

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

(Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

To preserve the integrity of ballots cast in an election, Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14 dictated that absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar and processed and stored in the same manner as absentee ballots returned by mail are processed and stored,” and that “The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team.” [Emphasis added]

This emergency rule was adopted during a July 2020 meeting of the Georgia State Election Board.

But according to an analysis of ballot transfer forms by The Georgia Star News, 43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots that were put in dropboxes by voters, a whopping 72 percent, violated this rule.

Based on their analysis, 28,194 absentee ballots (46 percent) “were not documented as being received by the elections registrar or the director’s designee until the day after they were collected from the drop box.”

Another 15,713 ballots (26 percent) had “no receipt time recorded at all by the elections office.”

All 43,907 of these ballots “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,” explains the Georgia Star News.

“The range in which absentee ballots were collected from drop boxes in DeKalb County and documented as received by the registrar the next day was between 13 and 22 hours, or nearly a full day later,” the report said.

Only around 5 percent of the absentee ballots were marked as received within an hour of being collected.

While this doesn’t prove fraud, it does raise a lot of questions about these ballots. Were any opened and altered or tossed out before being brought to the county registrar? In a state where the certified margin of victory for Joe Biden was less than 12,000 votes, this is absolutely a question that needs to be asked.

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