All eyes are on Georgia today as
voters head to the polls to vote in primaries across the state to select
who will appear on the general election ballot in November. While
today’s election focuses on the state’s future, Georgia remains
embroiled in controversy and discrepancies surrounding the 2020 general
election, which saw a scant 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million
separating Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the final tally for the 2020
presidential election. With an irregular recount and a “nothing to see
here” audit affirming Joe Biden as the winner in 2020’s critical race,
Fulton County
remains a focal point in the crucial swing state’s ongoing election
debacle. One area in need of attention is the county’s machine count.
Indeed,
significant deficiencies
persist in the recount of machine votes in Fulton County. With a
detailed report in Gov. Brian Kemp’s possession for the past two weeks,
the governor’s office has been verifying the data outlining the shocking
findings presented by
Kevin Moncla
and Mr. Joseph Rossi. As his office continues to review the
information, below is a summary of the Moncla and Rossi’s report sitting
on
Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.
Recount Deadline and Discrepancies
It is essential to point out that the deadline for the machine recount was Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, at midnight.
Following an Open Records Request
for “email correspondence” between Fulton County Election Director Rick
Barron and Ryan Macias of The Elections Group, the complainant received
an email on Dec. 3, 2020, at 12:13 PM from Mr. Barron. The email, which
included no subject, had an attachment named “Batches Loaded Report.xml” that
contained two separate PDF files. Immediately upon viewing the files,
it was determined that the Batches Loaded Report was ‘the Fulton
County’s reported results for the Machine Recount.”
Notably, a Batches Loaded Report
is generated
from the Dominion Election Management Server. The report
shows the batches loaded into the system, along with the status of each
one. In other words, the report contains official election results at
the batch level. For context, the Batches Loaded Report for the Nov. 3,
2020 count exactly matched the official results. The report notes, “The
votes for the Presidential contest totaled only 511,543, which is 16,382
less than that which was officially certified.”
A closer look by Moncla and Rossi
at the internal timestamp on the raw data of the email and attached
report revealed that the document itself (Batches Loaded Report)
contains the timestamp of Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, at 12:06:29. The data
confirmed the email timestamp to be Dec. 3, 2020, at 12:13:02 PM, which
indicates the email was sent approximately 6 minutes after the Batches
Loaded Report was saved. Moncla and Rossi note, “These separately
sourced timestamps are reasonably synchronized, thereby removing the
possibility that there was incorrect time set on any of the servers or
workstations involved.”
Still, as previously stated, the
deadline for the machine recount was midnight on Dec. 2, 2020, which was
nearly 12 hours before the email sent by Rick Barron. Moreover, a tweet
posted at 11:52 PM on Dec. 2, 2020—8 minutes before the official
deadline—declared, “Fulton County has completed the recount of the Nov. 3
Presidential Election. Results will be released by the Secretary of
State’s Office.” Moncla and Rossi point out:
ailed to Ryan “Simply put, the recount results that
the Fulton County Elections Director em Macias a few
minutes after noon on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020 (the day after the recount
deadline), showed only 511,543 votes. Significantly less than the
official results of 527,925.”
Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections meeting minutes during which the Recount results were officially certified.
What Caused the Ballot Count Difference?
To figure out what caused the difference between the Batches Loaded
Report and the certified election results, the complainant submitted an
open records request to Fulton County, explicitly asking for the Recount
Batches Loaded Report. In response, Fulton County returned the Batches
Loaded Report seen in the screenshot below, highlighting the report’s
relevant portion.
Screenshot of Batches Loaded Report presented by Fulton CountyIn looking at the two Batches Loaded Reports (the one from Rick Barron’s Dec. 3 email, which is referred to as
BLR 1; and the one referenced immediately above, which is referred to as
BLR 2), it is clear that BLR 2’s total includes 16,198 more votes than BLR 1.
The Fulton County Board of
Registration and Elections (BRE) held a meeting on Dec. 4, 2020, where
Mr. Barron provided a briefing on the recount results. Barron contends
the results were uploaded on Wednesday, Nov. 3, at which time they
discovered they were “short.” On Thursday morning, the Secretary of
State advised Fulton County to “reconcile” the results. That afternoon,
they determined that a scanner had two sets of 62 batches that were
named the same. Unsure of why this happened, the situation caused them
to re-scan the 62 batches of ballots on different scanners. Assessing
Barron’s summary of the recount, Moncla and Rossi stress:
“There are several problems with what Mr. Barron’s claims necessitated the “reconciliation” and the actions he said were taken.
First, Mr. Barron claims there
was no way to know the recount results before they were uploaded to the
Secretary of State. A point which [Mr. Wingate] was right to question as
such a process defies logic. The same also defies fact as the Dominion
Voting System manual defines several steps of verification before
results can be submitted or “published.”
Second,
Mr. Barron attributes the cause for the results being “short” as two
sets of 62 batches which were scanned on the same machine and both
numbered the same, thereby requiring one set to be re-scanned.”
Elaborating further on his explanation of why the results were “short,” Barron stated:
“Once
that occurs [two sets of batches scanned on the same machine], there
are only 2 ways you can do it, either you have to append those batches
at the end, or you can scan them on different scanners. So we used
different scanners rather than appending them on the end.”
Nonetheless, as pointed out by
Moncla and Rossi, the Dominion manual provides instructions for the very
situation described by Mr. Barron, as referenced below.
According to Barron’s statement to the BRE, he chose to re-scan the
outstanding batches instead of appending them to the end. However,
tabulator records dispute that claim. Records show that multiple
additional batches were added along with the 62 batches added during the
reconciliation. In fact, these batches were “appended” to the end of
not one but seven tabulators “in an obvious attempt to spread the
16,000+ votes amongst many machines.”
Moncla and Rossi report that on the evening of Dec. 3, 2020, Barron
added seven batches (see below) to the results of several tabulators. As
an example, the batches added to the end of Tabulator 793 are also
highlighted below.
Fulton County Board was Unaware of Size of Recount Discrepancy
A conversation towards the end of the Dec. 4, 2020 BRE meeting with board member Mr. Mark Wingate reveals that the Fulton County Board “was completely unaware” of the size of the discrepancy that triggered the reconciliation:
(59:14) Mr. Wingate:
“We have counted 3 different times
and you have gotten 3 different results. When you did the hand recount
you were at 742 less than what we certified on 11/13 and now we are
recertifying 852 less than what was originally certified on 11/13. It’s
hard for people to understand buckets and why they become unreconcilable
and they why you have to go back, like this time, to try and come up
with some reconciliation because if you wouldn’t have done that you
would have been what, some 3 or 4 thousand votes even less?”
(1:00:16) Mr. Barron:
“Yeah. Essentially.”
Mr. Barron disclosed during the
meeting that they realized they were “short” after the recount was
uploaded to the SoS, prompting the SoS to order Fulton County to conduct
a “reconciliation.” Barron then offers several excuses for why the
submitted results were deficient and more excuses about his actions to
remedy the deficiencies. Yet, Moncla and Rossi explain that every excuse
is refuted in detail by the facts and record at hand. They proclaim:
“Votes
were not added for the reasons Barron explained, derived from the
source Barron described, nor distributed the way Barron stated.
No
matter the reason, 16,198 votes were in fact added to the recount
between the time of Rick Barron’s email to Ryan Macias (not an employee
or contractor of Fulton County) at noon on Dec. 3 and the time of the
BRE meeting the following morning.”
Missing Ballot Images: What Wasn’t Included in the Recount
Moncla and Rossi uncovered through analysis by “WarTornTrump” that the official recount included 17,852 votes with missing ballot images.
Recent filings in a pending lawsuit verify that Fulton County has
confirmed it does not have the disappeared ballot images. There are also
3,125 duplicate ballot images included in the official recount results,
as recorded by Seeforyourself. Together, these two additions total 20,977 ballots for which there are votes but no ballot images. Moncla and Rossi reiterate:
“There are 20,977 unsubstantiated votes, which were in fact counted and included in the official results for the recount.”
Remarkably, Moncla and Rossi
report that “original election-night [Nov. 3] count included 10 Advance
Voting tabulator results for which we have no record.” Specifically,
this means “no poll open tapes, no daily status tapes, and poll closing
tapes.” An Open Records Request to Fulton County seeking the ten
tabulator tapes resulted in a reply stating, “No such records.”
Likewise, in an attempt to clarify
if the records were missing or didn’t exist, they sent two emails to
Fulton County. Upon reply, they were told, “The records do not exist.”
The ten tabulator results with no backup total 20,713 ballots.
Undoubtedly, the realization Fulton County has no record for the
tabulators and no record of the 20,713 ballot images from the allegedly
scanned ballots is significant.
Summarizing the unsettling circumstances in their detailed report sitting on Governor Kemp’s desk for the past two weeks, Moncla and Rossi explain:
“It would be far more than incredible
to believe the 20,713 ballot scanning/ballot image deficiency of the
original count, and the 20,977 ballot image deficiency of the recount,
are not one in the same.”
