In a stunning admission about the critical chain of custody documents for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes in the November 3, 2020 election, a Fulton County election official told The Georgia Star News on Wednesday that “a few forms are missing” and that “some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.”
A Star News analysis of drop box ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes provided by Fulton County in response to an Open Records Request showed that 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms Fulton County said should have been provided are missing – a number that is significantly greater than “a few” by any objective standard.
On Sunday, The Star News published a story which included the files containing digital images of the 1,180 transfer forms that Fulton County did provide. Those digital images can be viewed here.
This is the first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election.
The admission of missing chain of custody documents by a Fulton County official is important for several reasons that cut to the very core of public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election:
- President Biden was certified as the winner of Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes in the 2020 election by the narrow margin of less than 12,000 votes over former President Donald Trump out of a total of 5 million votes cast statewide.
- The total number of absentee ballots whose chain of custody was purportedly documented in these 385 missing Fulton County absentee ballot transfer forms was 18,901, more than 6,000 votes greater than the less than 12,000 vote margin of Biden’s certified victory in the state.
