Recount Server Crash and Complete Database Recreation – Fourth Full Rescan Required (GA)

During the court-ordered machine recount of Fulton County’s 2020 general election results, a failure by county staff to comply with approved technological protocols for backing up and uploading tabulation data caused a server crash on November 29, 2020. This catastrophic configuration failure destroyed the active recount tabulation database entirely, requiring Fulton County to completely rescan all ballots for a fourth time. The significance of this event extends beyond the operational disruption: (1) the specific cause of the server crash – whether hardware failure, software error, or user action – has not been forensically determined; (2) the destroyed database contained intermediate tabulation data from the recount that was never recovered; and (3) the requirement to conduct a fourth full rescan means that no single complete, uninterrupted tabulation of Fulton County’s ballots exists in the record without a mid-process disruption. A database recreated after a crash is not the same certified database that was deployed on Election Day.