Up To 44,000 Georgia Drop-Box Ballots Not Delivered Until Day After Election

The latest revelations of irregularities in the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia will give new ammunition to former president Donald Trump's insistence that he was the victim of massive ballot fraud by Democrats.

Up to 44,000 election ballots from public drop-boxes in the US state of Georgia went missing for a day or more before authorities received them.

More than 70 per cent of the absentee ballots left in the controversial ballot drops in DeKalb county, which covers roughly half of the state capital Atlanta, are either recorded as delivered to the county registrar a say or more after pick-up, or with no date recorded on the official transfer forms.

A trove of 725 transfer forms obtained by The Georgia Star News shows that 'chain of custody' rules set out in emergency election regulations adopted by the Georgia State Election Board in July 2020 were not followed in the county of over 750,000 residents.

The new rules, ostensibly a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state that votes left in drop-boxes "shall be immediately transported to the county registrar", who "shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team".

Of the 61,731 ballots detailed in the forms, 28,194 — 46 per cent — were not signed for by the elections office until the day after they were collected. Another 15,713 or 26 per cent have no receipt time recorded at all, potentially meaning they could have been delivered hours, days or even weeks after they were collected.

Disputed Result

Democratic candidate Joe Biden bagged Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes by a wafer-thin margin of less than 13,000 votes over Republican incumbent Donald in the Peach State — less than a third the number of ballots potentially rendered invalid by the new evidence.

A run-off election for Georgia's two Senate seats also saw Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win a surprise victory over Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. That tied the senate 50 seats to 50 between the two parties, with Biden's Vice-President Kamala Harris wielding the casting vote.

Trump continues to insist he was cheated of victory in the November 3 election due to a number of suspicious circumstances — including the abnormally high number of absentee ballots, the unprecedented delay in counting the votes and reports of obstruction of Republican election observers.

Anger over Biden's disastrous handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan — that left 13 US troops and hundreds of Afghans dead — has reaffirmed many Americans' scepticism of his legitimacy.

Official Equivocation

Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — the highest state election official — certified the election results with the backing of fellow Republican governor Brian Kemp.

In June Raffensperger finally condemned authorities in Fulton county — also covering 1 million Atlanta residents — for failing to produce any chain-of-custody documents for absentee ballots. Days earier he had urged some 100,000 people from Georgia's electoral rolls, mostly identified as no longer resident in the state or deceased.

Earlier that month Biden claimed a new law passed by the Georgia state legislature requiring citizens to produce identification when they vote was "racist" — but confusingly referred to "Jim Eagle" instead of the segregation-era Jim Crow laws.