17,852 Ballot Images Missing from Official Recount – Recount Mathematically Unauditable (GA)

The official machine recount of the 2020 General Election in Fulton County was certified despite the documented absence of 17,852 ballot images. This finding was confirmed by two independent expert declarations filed in Curling v. Raffensperger: (1) Professor Philip B. Stark, a member of the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and inventor of risk-limiting audits, stated that “for the second machine count, Fulton County’s production included images of ballots and printout cards for 510,073 of the 527,925 cast vote records – 17,852 image files are missing”; and (2) Professor Duncan Buell independently confirmed that approximately 17,800 images and the same number of .sha files are missing from the presidential count. Professor Stark further stated that the electronic records of the election are “not intact” and that Fulton County’s lack of basic accounting controls makes it “impossible to determine who really won in 2020.” EOG further documented that thousands of ballots are unique to each count – present in the original count and absent from the recount, or vice versa – a result that is “not possible by natural means or mistake,” indicating the ballot corpus itself was not stable between counts. The recount was nevertheless certified and publicly used to corroborate the original results.