Floyd County Board of Election Fires Director After Audit Found Uncounted Votes

An employee of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections processes ballots in Atlanta, Georgia, on Nov. 4, 2020. Brandon Bell/Reuters

Georgia’s Floyd County Board of Elections voted on Thursday to terminate its executive director after officials found over 2,600 uncounted ballots during the third day of a statewide audit.

Floyd Chief of Elections Clerk Robert Brady was fired following a special meeting of the board on Thursday, Fox5 Atlanta reports, with the outlet citing officials as saying that Brady receiving multiple reprimands in the past six months weighed on the dismissal.

“It really is a matter of human error not of some big fraud or conspiracy and people make mistakes, but unfortunately I think this one falls at the feet of our elections director who I’ve been critical of this entire elections cycle,” said Rome City Commissioner, Wendy Davis, in remarks to Fox5 Atlanta.

Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, earlier called for Brady’s resignation after officials found the uncounted ballots on Nov. 15, more than 1,600 of which were for President Donald Trump, and over 800 were for Democrat Joe Biden.

The ballots weren’t counted because officials in the county did not upload them on Election Night, Gabriel Sterling, who manages the state’s election system for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told reporters during a virtual press conference.

“This is why you do the audits. There’s no issues with any of the equipment or anything, they just didn’t scan these ballots, it looks like, or the card was not put through properly,” he said.

During the audit, officials also found uncounted ballots in two more Georgia counties—a batch of hundreds of votes in Walton County and another 2,800 in Fayette County.

The chairman of Fayette County’s Board of Elections told NTD News that the problem happened at a library during early voting—similar to what happened in Floyd County. Citing human error, he said that there was a memory card that was left in a machine and wasn’t uploaded.

Georgia has finished its statewide risk-limiting audit of the razor-thin presidential race, which involved a hand count that “upheld and reaffirmed the original outcome produced by the machine tally of votes cast,” according to Raffensperger’s office.

“The audit confirmed the original result of the election, namely that Joe Biden won the Presidential Contest in the State of Georgia,” the risk-limiting audit report states.

The audit report shows Biden with 2,475,141 votes and Trump with 2,462,857, a margin of 12,284 votes.

“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

The Trump campaign dismissed the report, arguing that the hand recount did not include a signature matching process and so “simply recounted all of its illegal ballots.”

“We continue to demand that Georgia conduct an honest recount, which includes signature matching. We intend to pursue all legal options to ensure that only legal ballots are counted,” said Jenna Ellis, senior legal advisor to the Trump campaign, in a statement.

“Headlines are already falsely reporting that Joe Biden is declared the winner in Georgia. Sorry, media, that’s not how it works,” Ellis added, and urged the state not to certify the results.

Biden’s campaign hailed the audit results, with Jaclyn Rothenberg, Georgia communications director for the campaign, saying “the recount process simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected Joe Biden to be their next president.”

“We are grateful to the election officials, volunteers and workers for working overtime and under unprecedented circumstances to complete this recount as the utmost form of public service,” she added.

Since the margin between the candidates remains less than 0.5 percentage points, the Trump campaign can request a recount after the results are certified, Raffensperger’s office said, noting that the recount would be conducted by rescanning all paper ballots.