Investigation blames human error for issues in Fulton election audit

Georgia election investigators have reported that human errors occurred during an unofficial hand recount of the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County.

The State Election Board voted to refer the case to the Attorney General’s office for further investigation.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, investigators reviewed the recount after concerns were raised by Governor Brian Kemp who had told the board that he vetted allegations of errors in the hand recount. Overall the results were similar to the two machine counts, which showed that Joe Biden had won Georgia by 12,000 votes. 

Some residents had alleged that there were Fulton ballots with 100% of votes for Biden, duplications, and incorrect data. The investigation did show that the allegations can be explained by mistakes by election workers during the statewide election audit.

Vincent Zagorin, an investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said, “What could have happened is, they took the batches and divided them by candidate. So somewhere in here we have the other candidate with numbers that would be 100-to-0 the other way.”

The hand recount was designed to manually verify that printed ballots generally matched the computer scans.

Nadine Williams, interim elections director for Fulton County, said, “Everything balanced out overall with the numbers. If it would have changed to different results, there would have been a concern… but the results did not change.”

After the Attorney General’s office reviews the case, Fulton could face fines or other sanctions from the State Election Board.