Fulton County election officials are asking for permission to rescan more than a thousand early ballots after two voting machines malfunctioned during early voting or its closeout, one of them reportedly after a wheelchair rolled over its power cable. The request, outlined in a memo dated Tuesday, covers ballots cast at the Mechanicsville Library and the Hugh C. Conley Recreation Center.
According to CBS News Atlanta, officials plan to ask the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to approve a different counting process for 1,069 early ballots. The memo was attributed to Nadine Williams, the county’s elections director, and the proposed procedures were discussed with the Georgia Secretary of State’s voting systems staff before being brought to the board. WSB-TV reported that the county was asking the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office for permission to rescan ballots cast at two early voting locations, citing two scanner issues.
Wheelchair Knocks Out Mechanicsville Scanner
At the Mechanicsville Library, a voter using a wheelchair accidentally rolled over the scanner’s power cable on October 21, shutting the machine down, per the CBS News Atlanta report. When officials restarted it, the scanner displayed an error and would no longer operate, after having already processed 361 ballots. WSB-TV similarly reported that a wheelchair ran over part of the voting machine at the Mechanicsville Library.
Georgia voting systems staff advised against uploading the Mechanicsville scanner’s memory cards, CBS News Atlanta reported, because of concerns about possible data corruption. That left officials proposing to rescan the paper ballots themselves rather than risk pulling results from the compromised cards. Fulton County election officials proposed rescanning those 361 ballots from Mechanicsville Library as part of the broader request.
Unexplained Paper Jam Error At Conley Recreation Center
The second machine, at the Hugh C. Conley Recreation Center, displayed a scanning error message on October 26, according to WSB-TV. The report from CBS News Atlanta describes the same scanner as repeatedly showing a paper jam error despite no apparent jam, prompting officials to stop using it after 708 ballots had already been cast.
Officials said they would first try moving the scanner’s memory cards to another machine to close out voting and produce results, and would only rescan the paper ballots from Conley Recreation Center if that effort failed. Fulton County election officials may rescan those 708 ballots if results cannot be retrieved from the scanner’s memory cards, per the same account.
Notably, the reporting on how many ballots are actually affected differs. WSB-TV said Fulton County did not say how many ballots need to be rescanned, while CBS News Atlanta’s own headline put the figure at more than 1,000 ballots. WSB-TV also reported that the station was waiting for responses from the Fulton County Elections Board and the Secretary of State’s Office on whether the rescan request had been approved.
Observation Area Will Stay Open To The Public
Officials estimated the rescan work would begin between 7 and 7:30 p.m. once polls closed, and said the process would be announced in the election hub and operations center’s public observation area. The rescan work would remain visible to the public, with authorized poll watchers and others permitted in the restricted area getting a closer view of the process, according to CBS News Atlanta.
Fulton County has run into scanner-related scrutiny before. The Georgia State Election Board reprimanded the county and ordered an independent election monitor in 2024 after finding it likely scanned more than 3,000 ballots twice during the 2020 presidential recount, as reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That case exposed errors in the county’s 2020 recount but did not indicate any fraud in the election, the outlet noted.
Rescans aren’t unusual for Fulton in the window between Election Day and certification. Fulton County Elections Board Director Richard Barron has said the county rescans ballots during that period to make sure, in his words, “we try to make sure that all of our numbers balance,” according to 11alive.com. In one earlier instance covered by that station, the county rescanned 342 provisional, military and UOCAVA ballots after reports that some ballots were not captured in Friday night’s results and a smaller number were not scanned.
Scanner breakdowns weren’t confined to Georgia Tuesday. In Westchester County, New York, ballot scanners malfunctioned at poll sites throughout the county and could not read voters’ paper ballots, according to the Times Union. Election officials there said completed ballots would be set aside in orange bags, monitored and tabulated later.
