Handel seeks probe of Fulton elections office

Secretary of State Karen Handel has called for an investigation into Fulton County’s long delay in tabulating absentee ballots this week.

In an interview Friday morning, Handel said she would talk with the Georgia attorney general’s office later in the day about the matter.

A full report from the secretary of state inspector general’s office will be presented to the State Elections Board, Handel said.

“It is clear that Fulton County has had a systemic breakdown in its county elections office,” Handel said. The State Elections Board makes decisions on whether there is probable cause to refer a case for sanctions and/or criminal prosecution, Handel said.

As for what the penalties could be, “it’s too early to speculate,” said Matt Carrothers, Handel’s spokesman.

Handel said the State Elections Board can levy fines of as much as $5,000 per violation of state election code.

Fulton County started tabulating about 31,000 absentee paper ballots the morning of Nov. 4.

Workers continued until about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, then went home because of exhaustion. Work resumed early Wednesday morning and again continued all night. On Thursday the tabulating finished about midnight.

Those who tabulate absentee ballots are supposed to remain sequestered in a room until the close of the polls on Election Day.

Furthermore, they are supposed to continue working until all the votes are counted unless the county consults with the secretary of state’s office first, according to State Election Board rules. That is to protect the security of the ballots and to prevent premature release of results.

Fulton County officials did call the secretary of state’s office on Election Night to ask if they could leave for the evening and return on Wednesday, said Carrothers.

They were told not to go, he said, but Fulton County decided to let them leave. A Fulton spokesman said the county was concerned that workers would make mistakes because they were exhausted.

Other counties kept their workers in place until they had tabulated all their absentee ballots, Carrothers said. Gwinnett County had to count about 30,000 absentee paper ballots — roughly the same as Fulton. It used 200 county workers to do the counting.

Gwinnett workers also had to hand-duplicate about 15,000 flawed paper ballots. Gwinnett had sent out thousands of non-machine-readable paper ballots by mistake in the weeks before the election and had to fix that problem on Election Day by transferring the votes by hand onto machine-readable ballots.

Gwinnett completed the hand-copying and tabulation by 10:30 Wednesday morning.

Fulton had markedly fewer paper ballots to transfer by hand.

“Fulton County should have had proper staffing and procedures in place,” Carrothers said. “They knew how many ballots had been issued and should have known how many had been returned up until Election Day,” he said.

April Pye, interim director of the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, acknowledged Thursday that the process was slow. In the future, she said, she will request a larger space, earlier on, to organize the absentee ballots and more manpower to process them.

“Looking ahead in the future, we need an army of people,” she said. “We need to plan on a much larger scale for early and absentee voting.”