Miami-Dade County (Fla.) election officials test voting machines on Oct. 14.
Another election breach in Georgia broke out Thursday (17), with state officials admitting that at least 36 memory cards were removed early from ballot tabulators in the Atlanta area, raising new concerns about chain-of-custody security and ballot omissions.
Documents obtained by Just the News through an open records request show that Dominion Voting Systems warned Georgia officials ahead of the 2020 election that the cards may need to be removed from ballot tabulators before the end of the election due to vote count limits, the media outlet reported on 17 July.
Officials acknowledged Thursday that at least 36 memory cards were removed from the tabulators early in the state’s largest city, the Atlanta area, and said the cards were stored in a locked cabinet until the polls closed.
According to a “bulletin” obtained by Just the News and sent to county election officials by Chris Harvey, director of elections for the Joe Secretary of State’s office, Dominion issued a “customer advisory” on Oct. 26 stating that when ImageCast Precinct (ICP) tabulators reach 10,000 ballots cast in an election, a message will appear that “maximum ballot capacity has been reached.
One of the options Harvey instructed officials to implement was to remove the original memory card when the tabulator memory card reached 10,000 ballots and load the new memory card into it.
As part of the agreement, Domini instructed workers in its accompanying instructions to remove the original memory cards and, when appropriate, to store the tabulators, but those instructions did not mention anything about how secure storage would be ensured.
The Joe Secretary of State’s office declined to comment on the state’s implementation of Domini’s memory card instructions, saying instead that it has taken “numerous steps” to ensure the integrity of the entire election.
Meanwhile, a Domini official emailed a statement to Fulton County spokeswoman Regina Waller on Thursday night.
“Due to the sheer volume of ballots for the November 2020 General Election and the large number of early voting polling places we have in Fulton County, the memory of the Domini ICX scanner can hold images of approximately 5,000 ballots.” The official said, “After my staff and I did tests to confirm that the maximum was 5,000 ballots, we consulted with upper management and made the decision that the memory card could be replaced when it reached 3,000 ballots. During the early voting period, we changed 36 memory cards.”
Waller did not immediately respond when asked exactly who gave that statement and why the Fulton County machine had only half the storage capacity of the tabulator mentioned in Harvey’s memo.
This Joe State directive sheds new light on the multiple instances of stored cards in the state last month in which ballot data was not uploaded. For example, Floyd County found a memory card containing about 2,600 ballots that had not been uploaded, Fayette County found 2,755 ballots that had not been uploaded and Walton County found a memory card containing 224 ballots that had not been uploaded.
In addition to the protocol for removing memory cards, Dominy offered Joe County election officials the opportunity to add more tabulators to the election setup in a “client consultation,” a program that Joe County enjoys “preferential treatment,” according to Harvey’s memo.
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