All eyes are on Fulton County ahead of this year’s election, and county election officials say they are prepped and ready for November after a tumultuous presidential race in 2020.
This year, the county faces new challenges. Absentee and early voting ballots must be tabulated by around 8 p.m. on election night — an hour after polls close. The number of ballots cast during the election must be posted by 11:59 p.m. on Election Day. And all ballots will be tabulated in the election hub of more than 600,000 square feet that Fulton built last year.
”I believe that we are ready,” Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said Tuesday. “In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that this will be a very successful election for Fulton County.”
After the State Election Board reprimanded Fulton for likely double-scanning about 3,000 ballots in a recount, the board ordered the county to install a team to monitor the county’s performance during this year’s election. The team will monitor all aspects of the county’s presidential election, from poll worker training to hand-counting ballots on Election Day.
But a trio of Republicans on the board, praised by former President Donald Trump as “pit bulls,” attempted to push to add election skeptics to the monitoring team at Tuesday’s State Election Board meeting. The board also voted to subpoena Fulton’s 2020 presidential election records.
Despite years of criticism, Pitts said the county “excelled” in 2020. This year, Fulton and the state’s 158 other counties will juggle the slew of new election rules and laws that have drastically changed Georgia elections in the wake of Joe Biden’s narrow victory in 2020.
Nadine Williams, Fulton’s election director, said despite the time-consuming process of sorting out numerous new rules and training poll workers on those rules, such as hand-counting ballots, the county is ready for a streamlined election.
Fulton’s more than 2,000 poll workers are still training on the new rules ahead of the start of early voting next week.
”There is no such thing as a perfect election, but from the point of view of being ready, being prepared — once again, Fulton County, Georgia, is prepared,” Pitts said.
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