Court hearing - Thursday Oct. 23, 2025
Joe Fried CPA Oct 22, 2025 @ Joe Fried CPA Election Central
In
September I wrote an article about a disturbing case of Democrat
lawlessness. Commissioners in Fulton County Georgia (Atlanta area) had
refused to allow two Republicans to sit on the Election Board despite
being ordered to do so by Judge David Emerson of Fulton County Superior
Court. The County is potentially subject to a fine of $10,000 per day
until the appointments are made. Democrats appealed the Court’s ruling,
and an appeal hearing is scheduled for sometime in January. I will let
you know when a specific date is set but in the meanwhile there are two
new developments:
2020 Paper Ballots May Finally Be Inspected
In that same September posting I mentioned another unresolved issue from the 2020 Georgia election:
“Perhaps
the biggest cause for concern is the unyielding refusal of Fulton Co.
to permit access to the [2020 paper] ballots. In December 2020, 6
witnesses independently testified
that many of the absentee ballots appeared to be fake: The ballots were
supposedly mailed but had none of the creases required in order for the
ballots to fit into envelopes. Also, they were on different paper
and/or they had suspicious ink that appeared to be toner. As a result, the head of VoterGA, Garland Favorito, filed a lawsuit to obtain ballot access. After
nearly 5 years of litigation, the ballots are no longer under court
seal and Favorito has a right to inspect the ballots via a standard open
records request. Without explanation, however, Fulton Co. refuses to give that access.”
That may change very soon.
There will be a “show me the ballots” hearing tomorrow
(Thursday) to question Fulton Co. election authorities regarding their
continued refusal to give Garland Favorito and VoterGA access to the
ballots. The hearing will be held by Judge Shakura Ingram in Fulton
County Supterior Court. It can be watched at 1PM tomorrow (Thursday
October 23, 2025) at this video link.
It should be very interesting, so I urge you to watch it if possible.
My Conversation With Garland Favorito
There
was another development after I posted the September article: I had the
honor of interviewing Garland Favorito, the man most knowledgeable
about Georgia election matters. We talked about Fulton Co. Democrats and
their defiance of a standing court order. We also discussed a range of
topics concerning Georgia election matters during and after the 2020
election. Here is an overview of our conversation, which took place on
October 9, 2025.
Garland
noted that the Democrat-controlled Board of Commissioners is still
defiant, will not seat Jason Frazier on the Fulton County Election
Board, and will not renew the appointment of Julie Adams, who has been
on the Board since 2024. Garland believes that the Board of
Commissioners is “willing to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to try to get out of following the law.”
The
Commissioners justified their decision by claiming that Frazier and
Adams are “election deniers,” a characterization that Garland strongly
disputes. In any event, he argues, being a so-called election denier is
not relevant because “the statute is clear.” Republicans have a right to appoint these individuals, and the Board as an obligation to seat them.
Fulton Co. provided low-resolution images of most 2020 mail-in ballots, but many were “impossible” — as in phony. Garland stated:
“We
did a study on March 7, 2022 that showed that the digital images were
electronically altered in Fulton County before the results were
certified.”
This issue was raised in legal
proceedings, but no response has ever been received from Fulton County
or from any court of law. Some of the specific “impossibilities” are
identified, below.
1. In Georgia, a ballot image must have 2
files: a tif image file and a SHA authentication file. They are always
produced at the exact same moment; however, 16,000 of Fulton’s ballot
images have SHA files dated hours or even days after the time stamps of
the respective tif files. How is that possible?
2. Another glaring
irregularity was found: 4,000 images have precisely the same timestamp —
to the identical microsecond. That is impossible because it takes time
to produce each image.
3. Contrary to Georgia legal requirements,
over 130,000 mail-in ballot image files were produced with no associated
SHA files, whatever.
In
an election decided by just 11,800 votes, Fulton will not or cannot
produce records to support almost 18,000 votes. There are no paper
ballots or images. Garland pointed out that, under Georgia law, the lack
of support for 18,000 votes “would trigger a re-do of the election automatically.”
Could
this explain why Fulton Co. seems desperate in its efforts to prevent
Garland Favorito from gaining access to the paper ballots? Would an
inspection of the ballots confirm that the election was not certifiable?
In
the 2020 election, Georgia had the lowest ballot rejection rate in the
nation, and Fulton Co. had the lowest ballot rejection rate of any major
county in Georgia. An explanation for the ultra-low rejection rate was
produced by a man named Mark Wingate, who served on the 2020 Election
Board. Wingate testified (under oath) that he was told by Fulton County
election personnel that Fulton did not do any signature matching. The
lack of signature matching, in violation of election law, might explain
why Garland found that “only 6 ballots were rejected [county wide] and it should have been in the thousands.” He also noted that the signature matching machine used by Fulton County was not even operational.
All
of these many election issues prompted me to ask if Fulton Co. was
deliberately concealing wrongdoing. This is the response from Garland:
“What they are hiding is that the results will not add up. The results that they certified do not match the ballot images.”
According to research performed by VoterGA, Georgia had 374,000 in-person ballots for which there are no images. That is a violation of “both federal and state law.” And in Fulton County there were more than 3,900 double-scanned and double-counted ballots.
The many items listed above do not comprise a complete list of the irregularities discovered. According to Garland Favorito...
“All in total there are a million electronic records missing from the 2020 election.”
In
2021, Georgia passed the “Election Integrity Act of 2021.” Garland
Favorito believes the new law strengthened election integrity greatly,
but more work is needed. Specifically, Garland would like Georgia to get
rid of voting machines, and go back to publicly-recorded hand-counted
paper ballots.
More About Garland Favorito and VoterGa
Garland
Favorito is a career Information Technology professional with over 40
years of experience. He devoted much of his career to computer
programming, business systems analysis, data administration, internet
systems design and architecture as well as systems development
methodology.
About 20 years ago, Garland co-founded Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA).
He has performed research into all aspects of Georgia elections,
including electronic voting systems. In addition, Garland has provided
expert testimony in legal cases and testimony before various
governmental bodies. He continues to work on election integrity issues.
VoterGA’s
staff, which is unpaid, includes highly skilled individuals dedicated
to ensuring that Georgia elections are fair and efficient. The
organization welcomes donations, which are tax deductible.