Fulton seeks to assure voters ahead of midterm elections

The raid has again put Fulton County’s voting under intense national scrutiny. State investigators have repeatedly found no evidence of malfeasance.

Pitts tried to bolster residents’ confidence Thursday, saying, “Every vote that’s cast, every legal vote that’s cast, will be counted.”

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

His remarks come two days after a judge unsealed an affidavit that outlined evidence the FBI used to justify the raid. It relied heavily on claims from election skeptics that state investigators have already investigated and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Amid the increased attention, the county’s external affairs staff presented a new communication strategy ahead of the midterms, including using email and text alerts for precinct changes and early voting reminders, as well as clarifying how complex election processes work.

“People want to make sure that their vote will be counted,” said Jessica Corbitt, a county spokesperson.

Meanwhile, the FBI raid has given renewed attention to previously addressed claims of widespread election fraud in 2020.

Kevin Muldowney, a vice chair of the Fulton Republican Party, accused the county of spending a “huge amount of money attempting to keep the 2020 election a secret.”

He said at the Fulton County Elections Board’s meeting on Thursday that the “truth seems to be seeping out.”

Muldowney cited administrative errors such as unsigned tabulator tapes as one of a number of problems in 2020.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

The tabulator tape error ricocheted across social media late last year in conservative circles after a county attorney admitted that poll workers neglected to sign tabulation tapes from voting machines that counted hundreds of thousands of votes during early voting. Some claimed it as evidence that more than 300,000 votes were illegally certified.

The state’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, called it a “clerical error” that did not invalidate votes cast.

FBI agents late last month seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election materials from the county and hauled them away in trucks. The ballots and other documents are part of a criminal investigation, but who the Trump administration is targeting is still unclear.

The unsealed search warrant affidavit revealed that Kurt Olsen, who has long pushed debunked claims of election fraud and worked closely with President Donald Trump to undermine the results of the 2020 election, referred the investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice. Trump appointed Olsen as the “director of election security and integrity.”

The president and his supporters have long claimed, without evidence, that a “rigged” vote cost him the election. In Georgia, at the center of Trump’s 2020 fixation is Fulton — Georgia’s most populous county.

Multiple vote counts, including a hand-counted audit of every ballot cast, upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory. And numerous lawsuits and investigations have found no evidence of widespread fraud.

While local election officials gear up for the midterms, Georgia First, a nonpartisan nonprofit, filed a legal brief Thursday in support of Fulton’s federal lawsuit seeking to retrieve its ballots from the Trump administration.

“Allowing broad federal access without appropriate judicial safeguards to voter information to which the government is not otherwise entitled, in connection with investigations concerning alleged election-related violations, raises significant federalism concerns and implicates the individual rights of voters,” the group said.

An evidentiary hearing for the case is scheduled in a federal district court in Atlanta for later this month.