Georgia Appeals Court reopens 2020 Fulton County fake ballot inspection case.

Georgia Court of Appeals Revives Lawsuit Alleging Fraudulent Ballots in Fulton County

The Georgia Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit alleging that fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were found in Fulton County during the 2020 general election. The appeals court issued an order remanding the ballot case back to the Superior Court, but only for petitioners who are residents of Fulton County.

Plaintiffs and Lawsuit Details

Nine plaintiffs, including Garland Favorito, founder of the group Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA), filed the lawsuit against members of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections in December 2020. As part of their lawsuit, the plaintiffs produced sworn affidavits from multiple senior poll managers who participated in the ballot counting process. They contended that they saw mail-in ballots that had no fold marks from being mailed, not marked with a writing instrument, and printed on different paper stock, leading them to believe there were additional absentee ballots added in a fraudulent manner.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had called for an inspection of all 147,000 absentee ballots cast in the state’s election. Superior Court Judge Brian Amero had previously dismissed the case in October 2021, stating that petitioners did not have proper standing to pursue their case.

Appeals Court Order

However, a state Supreme Court decision in December widened the definition of standing, concluding that Georgians can have standing to sue if they’re “community stakeholders” who suffer an injury when their local government “fails to follow the law,” paving the way for several of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit to pursue the case.

According to the order from the appeals court, five of the plaintiffs are not Fulton County residents, but are residents of other counties, and thus their claims lack standing. The four other plaintiffs in the suit have all asserted that they are residents of Fulton County.

“Accordingly, we vacate the dismissals of their claims and remand to the trial court for further consideration in the first instance of their standing,” presiding judge Christopher McFadden wrote. “We note our Supreme Court’s admonition regarding federal authority.”

Reaction from Garland Favorito

While the order does not automatically mean that a judge will grant the ballot inspection, the decision was welcomed by Garland Favorito. “The citizens of Georgia have been victimized for well over two years by false claims that there is no evidence of election fraud,” Favorito said of the 28-month legal battle in a press release.

“It is critical that Georgians quickly know how many counterfeit ballots were included in the 2020 Fulton election results so we can implement more fraud protection measures prior to the next election,” Favorito continued. He added that he and other eligible petitioners “fully expect the lower court to move expeditiously since it had already ordered a ballot inspection before Fulton County hired criminal defense attorneys to prevent us from looking at the ballots.”

If there is nothing to hide, all involved should be willing to comply with the inspection request, he said.