Georgia voting irregularities: The curious case of Biden’s 20,000-vote surge

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A curious thing happened as Fulton County, Ga., election officials counted mail-in ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena in the days after the election.


By PAUL SPERRY

RealClearInvestigations

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appeared Nov. 13, 2020 on the news and opinion aggregation site Real Clear Politics. It is reprinted with permission.]


In the early hours of Nov. 5, a surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes suddenly appeared for Joe Biden, while approximately 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared from his own totals in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead.

A poll watcher noticed the suspicious shift in votes while monitoring the interim election results on the Georgia secretary of state website.

“I concluded from looking at these results that this was an irregularity, since there was no obvious reason for President Trump’s totals to have decreased while former Vice President Biden’s totals increased dramatically,” Voter GA co-founder Garland Favorito swore in an affidavit he filed [last] week with the secretary of state’s office.

Favorito suspects a variety of factors, including that votes were “artificially inflated” for Biden while using the same Dominion Voting system used by Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Last year, Georgia contracted with Dominion to automate vote tabulations in all 159 of its counties.

“The software appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he said in a RealClearInvestigations interview. “Or Biden ballots were manufactured.”

The large disparity of gains between the two candidates “was something I had never witnessed before in my years of election monitoring,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who has been a leading advocate for election integrity in the state over the past two decades. He says he is not a Republican or Trump supporter.

On Nov. 10, Favorito sent his affidavit to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recommending a full, by-hand ballot recount. The next day, his office announced it will conduct such an audit for the presidential race. Biden currently leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes in the state.

“It’s a good first step,” Favorito said. “A recount will be able to determine if there was electronic vote fraud.”

In addition to helping certify the presidential race, he said it’s imperative investigators identify the source of the irregularities before the state holds its two U.S. Senate run-off elections on Jan. 5 so they don’t repeat themselves.

Georgia is now Ground Zero in the battle for control of the Senate. Republicans currently hold a 50-48 edge, but if they lose both Georgia seats, presumptive Vice President-elect Kamala Harris could cast tie-breaking votes to carry out the Democratic agenda.

On Dominion Voting’s website, a page titled “Election 2020: Setting the Record Straight” says “claims about Dominion switching or deleting votes are 100% false.”

While noting that “no election is without isolated issues,” Dominion states: “Election safeguards — from testing and certification of voting systems, to canvassing and auditing — prevent malicious actors from tampering with vote counts and ensure that final vote tallies are accurate.”

But Favorito, who lives in the Atlanta area, said the Fulton County shift was so dramatic it seemed as if someone had “dumped” a huge batch of mail-in ballots for Biden into the system overnight.

“One candidate could not go up by 20,000 and the other do nothing — in Fulton County or any county in Georgia,” he asserted. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Added Favorito: “I think they’re going to find the root cause of the irregularity was something electronic, and I think it’s going to change the results substantially.”

He suggested it may have been the result of a software or equipment malfunction or possibly even vote-swapping “malware” infecting the system. Of greatest concern, however, is the possibility of intentional misconduct by an election official or worker.

“There’s always the chance it was an inside job,” Favorito said, though both Republican and Democratic officials in the state say they have found no credible evidence of election fraud.

He said he also sent his affidavit to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections for investigation, but has not heard back. The board did not respond to requests for comment.

Precincts across the state reported problems with the Dominion system during this summer’s primary elections, including malfunctioning machines. Even before June’s voting meltdown, Favorito said, he and his nonprofit, Voter GA — which stands for Voters Organized for Trusted Elections Results in Georgia — warned Raffensperger and his staff not to buy the pricey equipment and software from the Canadian company.

“They knew good and well they should never have bought this system in the first place,” he said. “We explained that Dominion was rejected in Texas for failing to meet basic security standards before they bought it.”

Favorito suspects similar surges in Biden ballots may have taken place during the counting of mail-in ballots on other nights, including Election Night. On Nov. 3, Fulton County elections officials informed observers that they were shutting down the tabulation center before midnight, only to continue counting throughout the night while no one was watching.

“Fulton County elections officials falsely announced that the counting of ballots would stop at 10:30 p.m.,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer complained in a recent Tweet. “Officials unlawfully resumed the counting of ballots after our observers left the center.”

Favorito fears that what he observed on Nov. 5 was not an isolated incident. “There could have been multiple 20,000-batch irregularities,” he said, “but they never got reported because they cleared out the observers.”

He does not rule out “ballot harvesting” as the culprit behind the sudden surges of mail-in votes for Biden.

He said the hundreds of drop boxes Raffensperger agreed to distribute at shopping centers and other cities throughout the state may have encouraged third parties to collect ballots in the name of other voters and stuff them into the boxes, which is illegal.

“That’s just begging for fraud,” Favorito said.

Previously, voters who didn’t want to mail in their absentee ballots had to go to the county elections office and deliver their ballot in person while showing an ID to prove they were the individual who filled it out. But in this election, anybody could drop ballots into the otherwise unregulated boxes the state installed for the first time this year.

Fair Fight Action, a voting-rights group founded by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, helped convince Raffensperger to install hundreds of them across the state — including dozens in Fulton County — by arguing that the cost of a 55-cent stamp was a modern-day “poll tax” for many African-Americans who didn’t want to risk voting in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is evidence there was some type of ballot harvesting going on in Georgia,” Favorito said, “but we don’t know yet if it’s tied to the drop boxes.”

Favorito cited the disproportionately large number of “Biden-only” ballots cast, or ballots that had only the presidential vote marked and filled out for Biden, with no down-ballot races checked, indicating ballots may have been collected from voters and filled out for them — that is, “harvested” — and then delivered to the drop boxes.

Mail-in or drop-off ballots are notorious for creating opportunities for voter error and fraud. In a typical election, 1 in 20 mailed ballots are rejected, according to recent studies. More than 534,000 mail-in ballots were rejected during the Democratic primaries alone.

‘Curing Defects’ in Biden Ballots

“Curing” or fixing errors in rejected provisional ballots is another area ripe for potential fraud, election watchdogs warn.

Voters are required to cast provisional ballots if their name does not appear on the list of registered voters. Or if they lack proper ID. Or if there’s a problem with their signature. Or if they cast their ballots after polls close, among other reasons.

Provisional ballots are last to be counted and rarely factor into election outcomes — except in tight races such as this one in Georgia.

Democratic activists have scrambled to make these otherwise rejected votes for Biden count. They claim thousands of provisional ballots cast for Biden in Georgia have “curable defects,” and they’ve been deploying volunteers to go door-to-door to help voters in Fulton and surrounding counties fix their ballots so they will be counted.

The statewide Democratic operation is revealed in post-election court filings. In neighboring Forsyth County, for example, Democratic lawyers have sued to obtain the dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers of rejected voters so they can contact them and help fix their ballots.

The law firm representing the Democratic plaintiffs — Krevolin and Horst LLC — also represents Abram’s Fair Fight PAC, according to Federal Election Commission vendor reports. Her group, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Democrats, has sued the state of Georgia over allegations of “systemic suppression” of black voters.

In its lawsuit filed Nov. 5, the firm argued that Biden voters “will be “disenfranchised” if Forsyth County election officials do not provide the activists the personal information they seek to contact them and “cure” their deficient ballots.

County officials, however, refused to provide the information, and a judge ruled in their favor, dismissing the complaint in its entirety.

“Several other counties including some surrounding us like Fulton allowed the activity that our local judge prevented,” Forsyth County Commissioner Dennis Brown, a Republican, told RCI.

“It is my understanding that this has been successful for the Democratic Party in many jurisdictions throughout the state,” he said. “The end result is they were able to ‘cure’ many votes for Democrats up and down the ticket, including for Biden, that would not have been counted otherwise.”

Advised Favorito: “Provisional ballot-fixing is definitely another area for potential fraud.”

37 COMMENTS

  1. The Citizen joining with the Trump cult crazy conspiracies…is true journalism dead? Where is the editorial review of this dubious opinion? Should talk to Kemp and other Republican officials committed to the truth.

  2. A couple of questions no one is asking because the answers may be uncomfortable:
    1. Why did Georgia buy this Dominion system that apparently has a setting to “correct” votes automatically or manually should one precinct need adjusting in the middle of the night? Why is such an adjustment needed in any American election?
    2. Who made the decision to buy this system? Who has access to the settings? What were the settings on Election Day?
    3. And then something really relevant – is someone going to monitor those settings and be open and honest about it on Jan. 5th?

    For those uncomfortable with those questions or think that it is time to move on, let’s just imagine Trump prevailed over Biden and all the same irregularities were unearthed. I will then ask the same questions and I suspect so would the national “journalists” (whatever that means anymore).

    Thanks for bring this to our attention Cal, you remain one of the good guys.

    • Here’s something to ponder as you propose these hypothetical questions on election machines and their software, knowing full well that any irregularities found in election audits are generally due to human error, and are of minor consequence, and that is …

      In his farewell address in 1796, our first President railed against regionalism and partisanship … against those “ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens” who open the door to foreign influence in order “to mislead public opinion.” He also warned against “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who “subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards” the very democratic systems that first put them into office. [Yep, “fools and their tools” GW]

      • Interesting words from George Washington. They could apply to Trump, Biden, Obama, Roosevelt and others. They would certainly apply to the Deep Staters who have their hands on the Dominion software settings.

        I had asked why an election tool for America needs settings that openly allow cheating. No answers from here, but on radio I heard the CIA actually developed this software to influence foreign elections. That’s why I used the term “Deep Staters” in the first paragraph. If that’s true, we gonna have a real interesting and active holiday season up to and including the GA runoff.

        • Indeed it does and should apply to all Presidents for it was written as an outline for his successors. It was written at a time when the European world was consumed by war and revolution. Most obvious, monarchical Great Britain and revolutionary France were locked into a conflict of competing ideologies as they sought to pull this young country into their respective alliance and trade systems.

          On these shores, domestic passions rose and split our political system (and the cabinet) into opposing camps of Federalists (sympathetic to GB) and the Democratic-Republicans (aligned with the new republic of France). This political divide was seen as an opportunity to “influence” our leaders and our elections, sourced here domestically and from abroad. In his speech, Washington was trying to place reason above passion and emotion however reason does not always prevail.

      • Mr. Muller – Your appeal to history is appreciated. Few Americans investigate historical events to provide perspective upon current ones. If in 2016 our populace had understood German history of the 1930s, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.

        It is very frustrating to be stuck with repetition of authoritarian leadership when widely available materials go unread and history repeats itself.

    • You do have a point with the electronic voting. Paper ballots are physical objects and can’t be changed by hackers on the other side of the world. I generally prefer paper over electronic and would like it if GA phased the machines out of use. There is no indication that anything like that happened in this election, although it’s just a matter of time before it does and it very well could be happening right now. I seen any evidence that there is fraud, but I’m inclined to believe it if you can show me some credible evidence.

      • Yes I have a point, Henry. Yes indeed, paper is better. Yes GA should phase out machines or software that encourages cheating.

        But, no indication , no evidence???? Are you kidding me? Wake up. Maybe just wait a couple of weeks and see what Sidney Powell brings forth. And then rejoice (as I will) that ACB is on the Supreme Court and watch that 5-4 or 6-3 vote that pulls Biden out of his presumptive role as President-elect. Can’t wait. Might get Gina Haspell involved as well.

  3. I appreciate that the Citizen published this. Please continue! I’d wager that about half of its readership appreciates that a local news outlet is dedicating space to the expanding list of incongruent election results.

    The mainstream corporate media is doing a disservice to all Americans for, at best, lacking journalistic curiosity, and, at worst, propagandizing.

    Sworn affidavits, by penalty of perjury, of 100s of witnesses, statistical improbabilities, voting system tabulation anomalies, insecure chain of custody, and equal protection violations are the evidence. All merit investigation. The President is within his Constitutional right to investigate.

    This story is developing, and isn’t going away any time soon.

  4. To put things into perspective, Garland Favorito is an old IT guy and is the co-founder of Voter Ga. In ’06, his organization filed suit against then Secretary of State Cathy Cox, the Georgia State Election Board, and Governor Sonny Perdue over the then current electronic voting system (Diebold Touch-Screen voting machines). It appears through my brief search that he has a two decade long history of “concerns” over electronic elections.

    The organization – VOTER GA … “is an all-volunteer coalition of citizens and organizations founded to advocate open and secure elections procedures and processes to ensure accurate and verifiable elections.” They are a registered 501(C)3 and some of their supporters are the Green Party of Georgia, Libertarian Party of Georgia, Southern Party of Georgia, Constitution Party of Georgia, Patriot Network, and so on. Again, just putting things out there and into a little perspective.

  5. wHaT dO yOu mEaN pEoPlE vOtEd BiDeN In A dEmOcRaTiC cOuNtY!!!!!!!!!
    Seriously, just deal with it. Biden won, Trump lost. Although they are the same neo-liberals and will never bring any change to America but Biden is SLIGHTLY a bit more left. Really, just deal with it. It’s not like Biden, a pretty liberal guy is going to establish communism and start raising taxes on the rich, giving healthcare to all, improving public transportation, starting a poverty alleviation program like in China. Plus, the GOP Senate is gonna oppose every single one of his policies.

  6. Is it any surprise that the mail in ballots were overwhelmingly in favor of Biden? Is it a surprise that Fulton County voted massively in favor for Biden? When you combine those two it’s no surprise that Biden had a big surge in votes when they started processing the mail ins. You can claim fraud all you want but so far nearly every single claim by the Trump campaign has failed to meet the minimum evidence requirement for the case to actually get decided on. Most claims of fraud rely on hearsay, someone says that they heard someone talking about fraud.

    • Kinda of like the fraudulent hearsay claims of Russia, Russia, Russia by Democrats and MSM for past 4 years?

      Or the evidence contained in Hunters laptop, but ignored MSM? Real corruption!

      Or the fact the Biden’s created a charity organization to pay themselves $3million in 2018 and not one cent goes to charity!

      We are just a few days into the election review with substantiated findings already found, there is a long way to go!

  7. Give up already! You lost Republicans. This is more garbage, using an unnamed “poll watcher” as your source. Instead of whining about his election loss, Trump should take some action on the pandemic which is out of control in the United States. He’s always pushed it on the states to control it. Great leadership from a pouting baby. It’s a good thing he lost.
    As for the Citizen, rerunning trash like this is the reason I don’t offer you monetary assistance, even though I’m a former reporter and am sympathetic to the industry. Running a story like this just furthers a case for fraud that has no credibility.

    • Give up like the Democrats gave up on Russia, Russia, Russia over 4 years?? This election vote garbage is a whole lot closer to a realistic problem then the fantasy made up in the minds of our democratic leaders and the main stream media the past 4 years!!

      As far as taking control of the pandemic, I’d suggest you pay attention to the news concerning the vaccine results, now 2 with greater than 90% success rates! In record time! It will be a VERY BAD thing for this country if TRUMP doesn’t get 4 more years!!

      As for The Citizen, I sent my donation months ago, keep up the great work! I’m a former reporter when Jimmy Booth was still around. Thanks Again!

    • what are you talking about??? he did so much to help with coronavirus. the news outlets that i bet you follow religiously were saying he didnt have a team for the coronavirus, but the vice pres is LITERALLY IN CHARGE OF IT. My god, i thought people knew what they were talking about these days. If you think he didnt do a good job, why didnt you step in yourself, or at least try to make a difference?