Fulton County Fails to Meet Their Own Deadline to Provide Absentee Ballot Chain of Custody Documents From November 2020 Election, Delays Response for a Third Time
Georgia | August 3, 2021
Fulton County election officials have failed to meet a second response date they set to provide The Georgia Star News with complete chain of custody documents for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes during the November 3, 2020, general election. For a third time, Fulton County has extended its response date, this time to August 6, 2021.
Fulton County’s communication about the third extension comes more than eight months and five follow-up requests after The Star News filed an initial open records request on December 1, 2020, for the drop box transfer forms that document the critical chain of custody of absentee ballots deposited in 37 drop boxes installed throughout Fulton County for the 41 days of the November 2020 election period.
On August 2, at 11:36:42 A.M. Fulton County Legal Assistant Shana Eatmon emailed The Star News, “Please allow an extension to Friday, August 6, as we continue ot [sic] to work with Registration & elections for response.”
The August 2 email from Eatmon follows one from 9:45:54 A.M. on Wednesday, July 21, in which she extended the response date to The Star News request for a second time. At the time, Eatmon said, “This request has been extended to Friday (July 23), as Registration and Elections continue to review this request.”
The second extension of July 21, The Star News reported, came after Fulton County failed to meet their previously set response date of July 15.
On July 12, Eatmon responded to a June 22 open records request with a system-assigned tracking number of R004378-062221, apologizing that the request was not responded to and extending the response date to July 15 for processing through Registration & Elections.
The only reason that The Star News submitted an open records request on June 22 was because Fulton County failed to respond to an open records request of June 18.
The Star News’s request of June 18 simply asked for the same documents that the taxpayer-funded Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) News said they received from Fulton County in a story with now conflicting publication dates and times of June 16 at 2:46 p.m. and June 17 at 3:11 p.m., declaring that Fulton County is not missing ballots or hundreds of drop box custody forms… (Excerpts from the Tennessee Star)