The State Election Board reprimanded Fulton County and ordered an independent election monitor Tuesday, finding that the county likely scanned over 3,000 ballots twice during the recount of the 2020 presidential election.
The decision, on a 2-1 vote, resolves one of the last remaining investigations of the 2020 election, drawing jeers from a crowd of Republican voters who wanted more severe punishment against the Democratic county.
The case exposed errors in Fulton’s 2020 recount but didn’t indicate any fraud in the election, which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 11,779-vote margin in Georgia over Republican Donald Trump. Three vote counts — two by machine and one by hand — each showed similar results.
Election investigators said they were unable to confirm that the double-scanned ballots were actually counted twice in the recount, which was the official result of the election. During the recount, Trump gained 939 net votes against Biden in Fulton County, where Biden received 73% support, according to the results.
The Houston County voter who brought the complaint, Joe Rossi, said the investigation shows that the 2020 election was flawed, both during the recount and the hand audit of all 5 million votes cast. The State Election Board last year found that thousands of votes were double-counted or misallocated during an audit in Fulton.