A judge has allowed a lawsuit alleging fraud in Georgia's most populous county during the November election and seeking a review of absentee ballots to move forward.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Originally filed in December, the lawsuit says there is evidence of fraudulent ballots and improper ballot counting in Fulton County.
The county, county elections board and county courts clerk had filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit. They argued, among other things that the 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.
After holding a hearing on those motions on Monday, Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero, who was specially appointed to preside over the case, agreed.
He ruled on Thursday that the constitutional claims against those three entities are barred by sovereign immunity and dismissed them. But he also granted a request by the petitioners to add the individual members of the county election board as respondents in the lawsuit instead.
The suit was filed by nine Georgia voters and is spearheaded by Garland Favorito, a longtime critic of Georgia's election systems. As part of the suit, they are seeking to inspect some 147,000 absentee ballots to determine whether there are illegitimate ballots among them.
Several election workers and volunteers have signed sworn statements saying they saw absentee ballots during the audit that weren't creased from being mailed, appeared to be marked by a machine rather than by hand and were printed on different paper.
The lawsuit also repeats a widely circulated claim of fraud based on security video that shows cases of ballots being pulled from under a skirted table and counted while observers and the news media weren't present.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud stemming from the November 2020 US election.
Australian Associated Press
