{"id":66342,"date":"2021-05-23T13:40:10","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T17:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=66342"},"modified":"2021-05-23T13:41:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T17:41:21","slug":"fulton-county-georgia-judge-rules-that-audit-of-absentee-ballots-will-proceed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=66342","title":{"rendered":"Fulton County, Georgia Judge Rules that Audit of Absentee Ballots Will Proceed"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><strong>Georgia Judge Orders Audit of 147K<br \/>\nFulton County Absentee Ballots<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_66343\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-66343\" class=\"wp-image-66343 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mailinballotdreamstime.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mailinballotdreamstime.jpg 600w, https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/mailinballotdreamstime-300x250.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-66343\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Dreamstime)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>By Charles Kim | NEWSMAX<\/p>\n<p>Following the lead of Arizona&#8217;s forensic audit of 2020 presidential election results,\u00a0147,000 Fulton County, Georgia,\u00a0absentee ballots are being unsealed for an audit.<\/p>\n<p>Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero ordered the unsealing of absentee ballots,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/regulation\/court-battles\/554875-judge-agrees-to-unseal-2020-ballots-in-georgia-county-for-audit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Hill<\/a>\u00a0reported, which will allow a group of Georgia voters and experts to review absentee ballots which Republicans\u00a0claim might be tainted by voter fraud.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The integrity of future elections is critical, and Judge Amero&#8217;s decision is a helpful step in restoring transparency, accountability, and voter confidence,&#8221; former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., told The Hill. &#8220;We look forward to the findings and their role in promoting transparency and rebuilding faith in our elections.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Former President Donald Trump lost the state&#8217;s most populated county in November to Democrat Joe Biden by a vote of 381,144 to 137,240, with a 65.57% voter turnout, according to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/results.enr.clarityelections.com\/GA\/Fulton\/105430\/web.264614\/#\/summary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fulton County&#8217;s official results<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Trump lost the state by around 13,000 total votes.<\/p>\n<p>Fulton County includes the city of Atlanta and has an estimated population of just over 1 million, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fultoncountyga.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">county<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In his one-page order, Amero&#8217;s order said the county election officials must allow plaintiff Garland Favorito and his group called Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia to review the ballots &#8220;at a time and place to be determined later,&#8221; according to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/georgia-judge-agrees-to-unseal-fulton-county-ballots-in-2020-election-11621633019\">The Wall Street Journal.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The county said in a statement it would comply with the order.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will continue to participate in the judicial process that will ultimately validate the integrity of the elections process within Fulton County,&#8221; the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Georgia now joins Arizona in having votes audited because of lawsuits following the election.<\/p>\n<p>An audit of the populous Maricopa County is currently underway by a private Florida firm called Cyber Ninjas, hired by Republicans for $150,000.<\/p>\n<p>Like Fulton County in Georgia, Maricopa County in Arizona is the state&#8217;s largest county by population and includes the city of Phoenix.<\/p>\n<p>Trump lost that county to Biden 1,040,774-995,665 with 80.5% turnout of its 2,595,272 registered voters, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/recorder.maricopa.gov\/electionarchives\/2020\/11-03-2020-1%20Final%20Official%20Summary%20Report%20NOV2020.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">county<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Early voting accounted for 73.81% of the total votes cast in November.<\/p>\n<p>Statewide, Trump lost the election by just over 10,000 votes, 1,672,143-1,661,686, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/results.arizona.vote\/#\/featured\/18\/0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">state<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The audit in Arizona is expected to last for another six weeks, as the firm reviews 2.1 million ballots.<\/p>\n<p>The Arizona audit created a firestorm when Cyber Ninjas initially accused the county of &#8220;deleting data,&#8221; that they later said they found through recovery efforts. Elections officials said the data was never deleted and accused the firm of incompetence if it was unable to find it.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsmax.com\/us\/georgia-arizona-audit-absentee-ballots\/2021\/05\/22\/id\/1022356\/\">https:\/\/www.newsmax.com\/us\/georgia-arizona-audit-absentee-ballots\/2021\/05\/22\/id\/1022356\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Georgia Judge Orders Audit of 147K Fulton County Absentee Ballots<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}