How Fulton County's election is monitored as Georgia early voting is underway

Fulton County’s problematic election performance in 2020 looms large as independent monitors observe how it conducts this year’s election, but the team’s latest report shows progress.

The county’s election procedures so far have been “organized” and “orderly,” wrote Carter Jones, a team member. That’s a stark contrast from the election in 2020, when Jones called the county’s work “sloppy” and disorganized. In both elections, Jones reported no indication of fraud.

“Fulton County Elections staff has been cooperative in providing the access, information, and answers needed in order to conduct a thorough, credible observation,” Jones wrote last week. “To date, the processes and procedures we have observed have been organized, orderly, and consistent.”

The State Election Board reprimanded Fulton for double-scanning over 3,000 ballots in the recount of the 2020 election. It also mandated that the county hire independent monitors to scrutinize all processes, including poll worker training, early voting and ballot tabulation.

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Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

The team consists of members of the Carter Center, which does election monitoring around the world; Ryan Germany, a former general counsel to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; Jones, who independently monitored procedures in Fulton’s 2020 election; and Matt Mashburn, a former State Election Board member.

In 2020, Jones documented each hour from Nov. 2 to Nov. 7 in a report, chronicling shortcomings throughout the county and at State Farm Arena, where poll workers processed an unprecedented number of absentee ballots — over 140,000. The high number was in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“(Jones) is basically the only person who can say, ‘Here’s how it worked in 2020, and here’s how it works now,’ ” Germany said.

So far, the team has monitored preelection processes and early voting. Its work continues through Election Day and after the election. The team is also slated to deploy at least 70 observers across the county’s early voting sites and at least 150 across polling sites on Nov. 5, Jonathan Stonestreet, associate director at the Carter Center, said at Fulton’s October election board meeting.

“Georgia elections are pretty closely monitored already by partisan poll watchers — that’s a long-standing tradition,” Stonestreet said. “Fulton County — this is a rather unique circumstance to have nonpartisan observers in voting locations. That usually does not happen in Georgia, and so it’s extra eyes on the process.”

At the end of the election cycle, the team agreed to provide Fulton with a report as well as guidance on how to improve election operations. The team and report are expected to cost county taxpayers about $100,000.

But the 2024 monitoring team led by Germany may not be enough to satisfy a Republican trio of State Election Board members who were praised by former President Donald Trump. They’ve already objected to the team favored by the county and the secretary of state’s office, saying its members were too closely involved in the 2020 election.

On Oct. 7, a day before the State Election Board’s October meeting, Fulton County filed a lawsuit to prevent the board from adding election skeptics to its 2024 monitoring team.

The lawsuit said Janice Johnston, a Republican State Election Board member, proposed eight additions to the team via email, including former Pennsylvania state Rep. Frank Ryan and Heather Honey, a subcontractor for the Cyber Ninjas audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona.

A day after the lawsuit was filed, the State Election Board’s Republican majority responded with a subpoena seeking a trove of county documents from the 2020 election.

“This State Election Board will not support that team and will not consider their findings valid when they present them,” said Johnston, who objected to the team favored by Fulton.