Georgia’s last major lawsuit over 2020 election dismissed

A superior court judge closed the door this past week on the last remaining major lawsuit concerning Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

The lead plaintiff will try to push that door ajar by appealing Judge Brian Amero’s dismissal of the suit, which sought the inspection of 147,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County to search for counterfeits.

Amero’s order was one in a series of decisions against supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump who asked the courts to help them pursue suspicions of fraud or reverse the results of the election.

State election officials have said there’s no indication of fraud after three ballot counts and multiple investigations. In last year’s presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by about 12,000 votes.

Amero based his decision on the legal principle of standing — he found that the plaintiffs hadn’t suffered a specific injury that would give them a right to sue — but he also reviewed the evidence before making his ruling.

State election investigators couldn’t find any fraudulent or counterfeit ballots within ballot batches cited by four Republican vote-counters who participated in a statewide audit in November, according to a court filing Tuesday on behalf of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The lawsuit is based on sworn statements by the four, who alleged they saw suspicious ballots — they described them as “pristine,” with perfectly filled-in ovals and no creases — during a statewide audit that recounted every ballot by hand in November.

Investigators said there were no such ballots, that all of them appeared to be authentic.

One of the Republican auditors, Suzi Voyles, told investigators that she reported suspicious-looking absentee ballots to Fulton election officials, but another auditor contradicted her. Barbara Hartman told investigators that she and Voyles did not report their concerns to officials “out of fear that they would then fold creases in the ballots.”

Garland Favorito of the group VoterGA, the lead plaintiff in the case, said an in-depth inspection of absentee ballots was necessary to search for the counterfeit ballots that state investigators couldn’t find. He plans to appeal Amero’s dismissal.