VoterGA’s Garland Favorito Slams Georgia Secretary of State’s Request for Funds to Audit Ballots

Georgia Voting Machines

VoterGA, a nonprofit election integrity organization, spoke out against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s request for more taxpayer funds from the Georgia Legislature to implement an audit of Georgia’s QR-coded Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5 voting system.

On Monday, Raffensperger called on the Georgia State Senate to “agree to funding for new technology approved by the House that would give election officials the ability to audit the text of every choice on every ballot, in every contest – without the use of QR codes.”

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Commentary: Post-Election Audits Should Be the Norm for Every State

I may be dating myself, but the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

We can get much more than an ounce’s worth of prevention by engaging in post-election process audits. It is much easier to fix process problems early before they blow up and become problems that require litigation and other nasty fixes. Ahead of the 2024 election, state legislatures should require full process audits to ensure transparency and build trust in our elections.

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Audit: King Center Spends State Money on Facility Repairs, Updates

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change has received roughly $2.2 million in state funds over the past six years and has spent about three-quarters of it.

That’s the finding of an audit the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts conducted at the request of the House Appropriations Committee. The center received the money — allocated through the Department of Economic Development’s tourism program — between fiscal 2017 and October, primarily for facility repairs and updates.

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Pentagon Fails Sixth Consecutive Audit

Pentagon

On Wednesday, the Department of Defense (DOD) failed its sixth consecutive financial audit, even after Pentagon officials vowed to make improvements from previous years’ performances.

As reported by the Daily Caller, auditors gave a clean audit to just 7 of the DOD’s 29 sub-agencies, essentially no different than the results of the 2022 audit. The DOD currently has assets of $3.8 trillion and liabilities of $4 trillion, which encompasses locations in all 50 states, and 4,500 sites globally.

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Florida Audit Finds Oversight Issues with Lee County School District

A recent follow-up audit from the Florida Auditor General’s office found several issues with the Lee County School District’s lack of oversight.

According to the audit, the school district had failed to properly investigate claims of alleged unemployment benefit fraud during the spring of 2020. The audit states that the district’s board and the superintendent were emailed about the alleged fraud but failed to produce evidence that the matter had been properly investigated externally and resolved. In response to the audit, the school district began an investigation in February 2023.

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The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Published an Audit Revealing that Tennessee State University Mishandled Five Years of Funding

The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury published an audit on Thursday revealing that Tennessee State University (TSU) management mishandled over five years of funding.

According to the audit, “Management’s failure to adequately implement a system of internal control increases the risk of TSU not achieving key objectives related to financial reporting. When management and staff do not take adequate care when preparing financial statements and the accompanying notes to the financial statements, the risk of errors in the financial statements increases. Providing inaccurate financial information can negatively impact the decision-making ability of users of the financial statements.”

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Reporting, Staff Turnover Contribute to Pennsylvania Audit Troubles

Recent audits show that poor accounting practices can cause Pennsylvania townships to lose out on thousands of dollars, either in interest from a pension fund or from state aid.

A September audit of Dunkard Township in Greene County, for example, found that administrative mistakes caused an overpayment from state aid, among other issues, and required the township to repay nearly $5,000. 

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Tennessee Investigation Found Madison County Commissioner Unlawfully Charged $115K in ‘Gratuities’ for Officiating Marriages

A Madison County commissioner was found to have collected more than $115,000 in fees from 1,970 marriages unlawfully, according to an investigation from the state of Tennessee’s Comptroller office.

The commissioner would charge a $60 fee for marriages even though commissioners “may not charge a fee or demand any other form of compensation.”

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CBO Says IRS Will Audit Americans Making Under $400K

Despite claims from Biden administration officials that new funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will not increase the auditing burden on individuals and small businesses, a Friday letter from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals new auditing activity targeting taxpayers who report less than $400,000 per year will be expected to contribute to about $4 billion in revenue.

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Audit: Unauthorized Benefit in Bucks County Pension Adds Cost to Local Taxpayers

In an audit for the Central Bucks Regional Police Pension Plan, the auditor general criticized officials for inconsistent and authorized pension benefits. Pension plans are governed by Act 205 and Act 600 in state law, which sets regulations and guidelines on allowable pension benefits.

However, the latest collective bargaining agreement between police officers and the regional police commission “granted a length of service increment in excess of the plan’s governing document,” the report noted.

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Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee Member Calls on Chair and Treasurer to Resign over Party Finances

An Ohio Republican Party (ORP) Central Committeeman sent an email to party associates on Monday calling on ORP Chairman Bob Paduchik and Treasurer David Johnson to resign.

Mark Bainbridge, an accountant who represents ORP’s State Central Committee District 16 and who has led the committee’s reform caucus, wrote that the state party has suffered a decline in net worth that is “shrouded in secrecy.” Specifically, he stated, ORP reported a net gain of $147,259 through 2021 when it allegedly should have reported a loss of $162,088. He concluded that $309,347 in net expenses are absent from the organization’s profit and loss statement and that ORP had equity totaling $2,568,530 at the end of 2021 compared with $2,730,618 at the end of 2020.

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Audit Called for Environmental Protection Agency Response to Benton Harbor Water Contamination

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being audited over its response to lead-contaminated water lines in Benton Harbor.

The investment was announced in a memo from the Office of Inspector General Director Michael Davis, EPA Environmental Investment and Infrastructure. The letter says the audit aims “to determine the extent to which the EPA followed its 2016 elevation policy memorandum” to fix Benton Harbor’s drinking water.

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Analysis: Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Plan to Hire IRS Agents to Audit Citizens

Outside of IRS building

Included in the Democrats’ Build Back Better Act currently before the U.S. Senate is a proposal to allocate $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to hire nearly 87,000 additional agents – a plan opposed by a majority of voters recently polled.

The BBBA proposal also comes after numerous reports show years of examples of agency problems costing taxpayer money.

According to a new HarrisX poll, 58% of likely voters said they think increased enforcement would impact middle class taxpayers the most; 23% said it would only impact the wealthy.

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Wisconsin Elections Commission to Face Allegations of Potentially Illegal Behavior

The Wisconsin Elections Commission will soon answer the charges from an October audit that found dozens of instances when the commission didn’t follow the state’s election laws.

Commissioners are scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to provide an official response to the audit’s questions, and Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, is very interested to hear what the Commission has to say.

“The audit is damning,” Brandtjen told The Center Square on Tuesday. “It makes it very clear that WEC is not doing its job.”

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Influential Georgia State Senator Urges Audit of Surveillance Tapes at Ballot Drop Boxes

An influential Georgia state senator, who is running for lieutenant governor in 2022, says he believes states like his own that used drop boxes to collect absentee ballots last year should audit the surveillance video tapes that were installed at the voting locations to ensure no shenanigans occurred.

“All those drop boxes that were sent throughout Metro Atlanta, you can’t police them if you wanted to, so it just made it ripe for bad actors to game the system,” Republican state Sen. Burt Jones told Just the News in an interview this week.

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Wisconsin Election Commissioners to Respond to Audit in December

The head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is promising to answer what she says are “misconceptions and misunderstandings” from the state’s recent audit into the 2020 election.

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Thursday said she and the commission will address the finding of the Legislative Audit Bureau report at the commission’s December meeting.

“We’re pleased that overall, the LAB report confirmed the November 2020 general election was conducted accurately and fairly,” Wolfe said in a statement. “And while there’s always more to be done to ensure consistent election administration in Wisconsin, and we’re working on that every day, we also know there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings built into the LAB’s findings, and that record needs to be corrected.”

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Wisconsin State Rep. Janel Brandtjen: Gableman Investigation Does Not Speak for All

The top Republican on the Wisconsin Assembly’s election committee says the special investigator looking into last fall’s vote doesn’t speak for her.

Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) on Monday released a statement saying she opposes any deals with the mayors of the so-called Wisconsin Five, and is not a part of former Supreme Court Justice Mike Gableman’s investigation.

“The current subpoenas have not been approved by the Assembly’s Campaigns and Elections Committee,” Brandtjen wrote. “I do not approve of the current list of subpoenas to the five Wisconsin Mayors, as this provides immunity to them in any trial or criminal proceedings.”

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Pennsylvania GOP Senators’ Internal Battle Over Imperiled Forensic Election Audit Goes Public

An internal fight among legislators over a forensic election audit is spilling into public after Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, accused leaders in his own party of stonewalling his investigation.

The senator made the comments during a Thursday interview with One America News Network that he later doubled down on in a lengthy statement posted to his social media pages the following day.

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Vehement Anti-Trump Group Donated $85k to Atlanta Election Judges, Now Auditors Want Some Repaid

A liberal nonprofit that accused President Donald Trump of unleashing a “surge in white supremacy and hate” donated $85,000 last fall to election administrators in Georgia’s largest county as part of a campaign to turn out black votes in the 2020 election. Auditors now want some of that money returned.

The Fulton County Auditor declared this month that county election officials failed to spend all of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s grant for buying absentee ballot drop boxes and did not comply with one of the grant’s primary requirements to publicly disclose how many ballots were collected in the boxes.

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State Sen. Burt Jones Requests Senate Investigation into Numerous and Documented Failures of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Cited by 45th President Donald Trump

Burt Jones

Georgia State Senator Burt Jones (R-Jackson) on Thursday made a formal request for an investigation by the Senate Government Oversight Committee into the failures of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which he characterized as numerous and documented, catching the attention of 45th President Donald Trump.

In a statement issued by Trump Friday, which included a copy of Jones’ letter, he said:

The Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, together with Brad Raffensperger, allowed this Election in Georgia to be Rigged and Stolen. Why they ever agreed to Stacey Abram’s Consent Decree nobody will ever know. Thank you to Senator Burt Jones and all of the other Patriots for continuing the fight. Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger have done an absolutely terrible job of watching over Voter Integrity in Georgia. They must be held accountable!

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Lawsuit to Inspect Fulton County Mail-In Ballots Amended to Include New Evidence Hand Recount Audit ‘Was Riddled with Massive Errors and Provable Fraud’

Petitioners in a lawsuit to inspect Fulton County mail-in absentee ballots from the November 3, 2020, election have added new claims and provided new evidence that the hand recount audit was riddled wth massive errors and provable fraud.

VoterGA, organizers of the lawsuit, made the stunning announcement on Tuesday that revealed “a whopping 60%” error rate in Fulton County’s hand count audit held on November 14 and 15, 2020.

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Vernon Jones Commentary: Governor Kemp, Georgia Needs an Audit Now

For several months, I have demanded that Governor Brian Kemp carry out a full forensic audit of Georgia’s ballots from the election last year. Growing evidence indicates that either fraud or gross negligence occurred that potentially swayed the result of the presidential election. But for one reason or another, Governor Kemp refuses to act. It’s long overdue for him to perform the job that he was elected to do. We simply can’t wait any longer.

On June 17, I held a press conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta exposing irregularities that occurred when ballots were tabulated in the presidential election. As the investigative news outlet Just The News reported, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger received a report in November that his office commissioned with a private contractor. The report exposed the disaster of the election in Fulton County.

Just The News reported that the contractor “recorded troubling behavior like the mysterious removal of a suitcase of sensitive election data known as polls pads, used to authenticate voters.” This contractor “also observed that sensitive election materials were left on a dock at a warehouse without supervision.” The full report documents troubling and revealing events that occurred throughout the entire process of Fulton County officials tabulating votes. It’s a disaster that should never happen again and should have never happened in the first place.

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Georgia Audit Documents Expose Significant Election Failures in State’s Largest County

Documents that Georgia’s largest county submitted to state officials as part of a post-election audit highlight significant irregularities in the Atlanta area during last November’s voting, ranging from identical vote tallies repeated multiple times to large batches of absentee ballots that appear to be missing from the official ballot-scanning records.

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Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem in Tennessee: Our Elections Have Been Open to Manipulation and for Much Longer Than We Knew

FRANKLIN, Tennessee — Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-District 11) told a group of nearly 100 gathered in middle Tennessee that it has been revealed that our elections have been open to manipulation and for much longer than we knew, long before November 2020. 

Finchem said that “While many might think it’s a curse, America has been given a gift.”

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Governor Kemp Breaks Silence Again, Says He’s Always Asked for a Complete Audit

Governor Brian Kemp called for a complete audit of absentee ballot signatures late Thursday evening. The governor appeared on Fox News to express concern with the findings presented during Thursday’s Georgia Senate hearing.

“I called early on for a signature audit. Obviously, the Secretary of State per the laws and the Constitution would have to order that – he has not done that. I think it should be done. I think, especially from what we saw today, it [the evidence presented] raises more questions. There needs to be transparency on that. I would, again, call for that.”

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Bombshell: Trump Legal Team Witness Alleged That Ware County Audit Results Revealed Dominion Machine Flipped Ballots from Trump to Biden

An elections expert alleged that the Dominion tabulating machine flipped votes from President Donald Trump to Democratic candidate Joe Biden in Ware County. It was estimated that the percentage of mis-applied votes, if distributed across the rest of the state, would be slightly greater than Biden’s lead over Trump.

Constitution Party of Georgia Elections Director and Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VOTERGA) Co-Founder Garland Favorito was called to testify this information during the State Senate hearing this week.

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Georgia Secretary of State’s General Counsel Confirms During State Senate Hearing that Dominion Voting Machines Were Updated Before the Election

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s General Counsel Ryan Germany confirmed during the Georgia State Senate hearing that the state’s voting machines received a system update before the election. Germany shared that the updates had occurred weeks prior to Election Day. 

Vice Chairman, Senator Marty Harbin (R-GA-Tyrone) asked Germany whether Dominion’s voting machines were updated.

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Georgia Secretary of State Says Trump Should Give Up and ‘Leave Quietly’

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stated that President Donald Trump should give up and “leave quietly” from the White House. The secretary of state made these comments in an interview with Atlanta Journal-Constitution published Saturday.

“When you lose an election, you should leave quietly. It’s the will of the people that has been expressed,” stated Raffensperger.

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Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger and Gov. Kemp Certify Election Results, Leave it to Trump Campaign to Contest Results

ATLANTA, Georgia – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the election results on Friday afternoon officially, following completion of the statewide vote audit. Raffensperger held a brief press conference in which he validated the results of the recount and indicated that election integrity could be improved upon.

“Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that: ‘Numbers don’t lie.’ As Secretary of State, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.”

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Tax, Legal Experts Agree Leaker of Trump’s Tax Returns Could Face Prison Time

Tax and legal experts say the leaker or leakers who took President Trump’s personal tax returns and gave them to The New York Times, committed a felony punishable by prison.

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who has advised Trump on some legal matters, told Just the News that the leaking was “definitely” a crime that could be liable for both criminal and civil legal actions.

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Ohio Lawmakers Propose Protecting Elections with Civilian Cyber Militia

The Ohio State Senate’s Committee on Government Oversight and Reform took up a bill Wednesday with a unique solution to protect the ballot box in the next election. Senate Bill 52 (SB 52) will authorize the creation of the “Ohio Cyber Reserve,” a new division of the Ohio National Guard that will focus on cybersecurity. Uniquely the division will be largely comprised of an all-volunteer force of various cybersecurity and technology experts.  Though they will serve with the Guard, the bill, under sections; 5922.04. 5922.02 to 5922.08 of the Revised Code, explicitly does “not authorize the Ohio cyber reserve, or any part thereof, to be called or ordered into the military service of the United States. The reserve may become a civilian component of the Ohio National Guard.” According to Republican State Senator Theresa Gavarone of District 2, the bills Primary Sponsor: The new force which Senate Bill 52 creates within the Ohio National Guard, consists of qualified civilians who are cyber security experts. The Ohio Cyber Reserve will maintain regional Cyber Response Teams (CRT) capable of deterring, mitigating, and remedying cyber-attacks against our local governments, local agencies, election systems and community partners. The clear utility of this approach is to…

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