A Henry County Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to inspect 147,000 Fulton County absentee ballots from last November’s election for signs of fraud claimed by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Judge Brian Amero ruled that activist Garland Favorito of the group VoterGA and eight co-plaintiffs lacked standing to file the suit because they failed to claim a specific injury suffered as a result of alleged fake ballots counted among the Fulton absentees.
The court decision came a day after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office filed a brief concluding no evidence had been found to substantiate claims of fraud.
“There was no widespread fraud or illegal voting enough to overturn the election,” Raffensperger said Wednesday. “We’ve been saying since Day One the truth is on our side.”
Raffensperger’s office has been bombarded with a series of legal challenges since Democrat Joe Biden carried Georgia last November by nearly 12,000 votes.
During the aftermath of the election, then-President Trump urged Raffensperger in a phone call to “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to prevail in Georgia, a key state Biden flipped into the Democrats’ column on his way to victory.
“Today was a win for democracy,” Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, a Democrat, declared following Amero’s ruling.
“This lawsuit was the result of the Big Lie, which is nothing more than a meritless conspiracy theory being spread by people who simply cannot accept that their side lost. Its defeat here today should echo throughout the nation.”
This story available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
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