The Georgia House of Representatives held a hearing on Thursday to discuss claims of election fraud and voting irregularities. Career IT professional and nonpartisan voting integrity organization VOTERGA Co-Founder Garland Favorito testified before the House – he’d previously been called to testify before the Georgia Senate on his findings.
Favorito explained that he’d been challenging Georgia’s electronic voting systems since 2002 with the implementation of Diebold DRE system. For 17 years, Favorito alleged that the system was “not verifiable, auditable, and [not] recount capable,” and was ignored by the Secretary of State’s office and Georgia Supreme Court. Then, in 2019, Favorito explained that the U.S. District Court agreed that the Diebold systems were unconstitutional. That decision led to the Secretary of State’s office to purchase the Democracy Suite 5.5 BMD system from Dominion Voting Systems.
https://youtu.be/VuD-zlhwD0M?t=26346
Favorito said that he’d served as an observer at both the State Farm Arena and Fulton tabulation center, and a monitor for the audit and recount that occurred in Fulton and DeKalb counties.
After working election night at Fulton County, Favorito shared that he’d noticed an “abnormal” 20,000 vote spike for Democratic candidate Joe Biden. This observation is filed in an affidavit. Favorito claimed that Fulton County’s election board never responded to a November 5th open records request for interim results.
Additionally, Favorito remarked that there was poor visibility for the observation area at Fulton County, possibly violating election transparency laws. He reminded the House members that a water main break was falsely reported that delayed vote counting. Favorito called into question the compliance with election transparency laws of certain tables brought in later, showing a video still frame of the woman with blonde braids bringing a skirted table.
The same scene of the woman with blonde braids bringing tables into the processing room was circulated in a video presented by the Trump legal team during the Georgia Senate emergency hearing.
Then, Favorito showed a still frame the woman with blonde braids announcing that processing would stop on election night. Although fact-checkers have attempted to state otherwise, multiple reports from media and workers from the night in question corroborate with the purported order of events.
Favorito displayed subsequent stills of tables and equipment being cleared, and monitors leaving. The following still frame depicted the woman with blonde braids returning, and she and several other workers retrieved suitcases of ballots from underneath the skirted table. Favorito argued that the suitcase storage under skirted tables doesn’t align with normal ballot processing – rather, ballots are normally processed from the wall. He added that he only recalled absentee ballots stored in boxes, and not suitcases.
“These ballots do not appear to be in standard suitcases. Most of the absentee ballots I saw as an observer were in boxes, they were not in suitcases. In fact, all [were in boxes] that I can recall.”
Since those workers scanned for about two hours, Favorito estimated that the four or more scanners present were capable of processing 6,000 or more ballots altogether. In another still frame, Favorito asserted that the workers scanned approximately 15,000 to 20,000 or more ballots onto memory cards. Again, he asserted that transferring ballots onto memory cards without monitors present contradicted proper ballot processing. Favorito also alleged that there was a security flaw with the memory cards because they could be substituted.
Favorito shared an image of the election feed from 40 minutes after the remaining workers left, which reflected that votes for Biden spiked by over 100,000.
Favorito also stated that while working as an audit monitor, he noticed three boxes of Biden-only ballots. He cited the four auditors who’d detected ballots that looked pristine and unworn, and printed rather than marked by a writing instrument. In that instance, too, Favorito remarked that his open records request to view the ballots was ignored.
Additionally, Favorito refuted the claim that all ballots cast balanced with the number of voters who voted – he asserted that Fulton County was out of balance by over 300 votes. He also explained that the ballot processing supervisor was in charge of the absentee ballot tracking list. Favorito explained that this might be problematic because the supervisor could potentially manipulate the list.
“Our question really is: why of the secretary of state’s office in a cover-up over this? I’m going to avoid getting into the false history that the Secretary of State has issued over the last few years. You might remember that they said that these machines would cost less than hand-marked paper ballots. I think Fulton County can attest to the fact that was not true,” he said.
In a subsequent interview with The Georgia Star News, Favorito explained why the secretary of state’s office has disregarded alleged evidence of voter fraud or voting irregularities without any detailed explanations.
“That’s because they’re in massive cover-up. They don’t care what they say – they know the media and the legislators will buy it because they want to buy it,” he said. “They know the legislators and media won’t challenge them.”
Favorito told The Star News that Sterling has likely become more of a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office as of late because Raffensperger’s past remarks weren’t as successful in conveying their message.
“If you’ve ever listened to Brad, he’s not articulate and he’s easy to trap. Gabriel Sterling is trying to do more of the talking because he can BS his way through harder questions than Brad can,” Favorito said.
The Star News asked Favorito how his presentation fared with the House after the hearing ended. He shared that it impacted the members significantly.
“The legal team was very impressed. I think the House members were stunned. They were speechless,” stated Favorito. “These elected officials never had to deal with election fraud of this magnitude, and they don’t know what to do. When the President’s legal team dropped that video on Georgia, nobody knew how to handle it.”
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Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Garland Favorito” by Nydia Tisdale.
