Metro Atlanta
Metro Atlanta

Fulton elections board to meet with new chair for first time since failed firing of director

Alex Wan (file photo)
Alex Wan (file photo)
By Ben Brasch
March 10, 2021

The Fulton County elections board will meet Thursday at 10 a.m. online, and a lot has happened since they last met.

The board has a new chair in Atlanta City Councilman Alex Wan after former chair Mary Carole Cooney resigned due to a prolonged illness. And the last time the board met, they fired elections director Richard Barron only for his job to be saved by the Fulton County Commission on March 3.

ExploreFulton leaders reject firing of elections director, appoint new elections chair

The elections board voted 3-2 to fire Barron on Feb. 16 at hastily scheduled meeting after the board days earlier made a closed-door vote to fire Barron in an apparent violation of Georgia’s open meetings law.

Cooney was one of the votes to save Barron. Wan has not spoken publicly about his appointment or all the work facing him as leader of the elections board in Georgia’s most populated county.

The agenda, uploaded online Wednesday afternoon, includes a monthly operations report from Barron and a “post-election assessment review.”

The meeting can be viewed on YouTube or FGTV.

Credit: WSBTV Videos

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About the Author

Ben Brasch is the reporter tasked with keeping Fulton County government accountable. The Florida native moved to Atlanta for a job with The AJC. If there's something important to you going on in Fulton, he wants to know about it. Help him better metro Atlanta by dropping a line, anonymously or otherwise.

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