Fulton County, Georgia Election Board Votes to Fire Controversial Elections Director Richard Barron

The Fulton County (Georgia) Election Board voted to fire controversial elections director Richard Barron in a three to two vote Tuesday evening.

Fox 5 Atlanta reported:

Barron’s firing comes after a series of elections where the county was criticized by state elections officials and targeted over rumors about vote tampering.

In November, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office opened two investigations into Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election involving the “chain of custody” dealing with votes.

The county received regular criticism from the secretary of state’s office, with complaints about delays caused by technical problems and a lack of manpower due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the full Fulton County Board of Commissioners may review the vote to fire Barron by the Election Board on Wednesday:

In a text message after the vote, Barron said he’d hold off on commenting until after a Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting scheduled for Wednesday. “This vote could get rejected tomorrow,” he wrote. The chairman of the Board of Commissioners did not immediately return an email seeking clarification on whether the election board’s decision needs to be approved by the commissioners.

When asked whether the commissioners’ approval is necessary, county spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt replied, “That is our understanding.” She noted that the Board of Commissioners must sign off on the hiring of an elections director.

“The legal question is whether that applies in reverse,” she said in a text message to The Associated Press.

In December, Breitbart News reported:

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted to accept a $6.3 million grant from the Mark-Zuckerberg funded Center for Technology and Civic Life “Safe Elections” project at a September 2, 2020 board meeting. It proceeded without asking a single question about the name of the group providing the funding, the origin of the funding, or the details of what the funding would be used for.

As Breitbart News reported, a significant chain of custody security concerns surround absentee ballots deposited in the 300 drop boxes across the state approved by the Georgia State Election Board. . .

[At that September 2, 2020 board meeting] Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron told the Fulton County Board of Commissioners how he was able to secure the grant for the county, but failed to mention the name of the funding group–CTCL–or the fact they had only one day earlier, on September 1, received a $250 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, to fund the Fulton County grant.

“I went this summer and sought some grant funding, which the BOC approved today for over $6.3 million, and we’ve also received $5 million in COVID funding. And then with the $3.5 million soundings request today, that totals $14.5 million more in additional investments for we’re going to be — we were able to secure a lot of new polling places for, if we clean them afterwards, we got tech-support at all voting locations, postage and absentee ballots that we have to mail out,” Barron told the Fulton County Board of Commissioners at their September 2, 2020 board meeting.

Phill Kline, director of the Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project, said in a December press conference that the  controversial $419 million in donations this election cycle from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan–$350 million to CTCL and  $69 million to the Center for Election Research and Innovation–“improperly influence[d] the 2020 election.”

A report released by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society at a press conference on Wednesday alleged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife made $419.5 million in contributions to non-profit organizations during the 2020 election cycle–$350 million to the “Safe Elections” Project of the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and another $69.5 million to the Center for Election Innovation and Research–that, “improperly influence[d] the 2020 presidential election on behalf of one particular candidate and party.”

“The 2020 presidential election witnessed an unprecedented and coordinated public-private partnership to improperly influence the 2020 presidential election on behalf of one particular candidate and party. Funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other high-tech interests, activist organizations created a two-tiered election system that treated voters differently depending on whether they lived in Democrat or Republican strongholds,” Amistad Project Director Phill Kline wrote in the report’s executive summary.

The report identified three key actions that, taken together, “represent the beginning of the formation of a two-tier election system favoring one demographic while disadvantaging another demographic.”

• Private monies dictated city and county election management contrary to both federal law and state election plans endorsed and developed by state legislatures with authority granted by the United States Constitution.
• Executive officials in swing states facilitated, through unique and novel contracts, the sharing of private and sensitive information about citizens within those states with private interests, some whom actively promote leftist candidates and agendas.
• Swing state governors also started issuing emergency executive orders shutting down in-person voting while pouring new state resources into encouraging persons to vote in advance. Polling data revealed this coordinated assault on in-person voting generally favored Democrat Party voters who preferred to vote in advance, while placing Republicans, who preferred to vote in person, at a disadvantage. These actions represent the beginning of the formation of a two-tier election system favoring one demographic while disadvantaging another demographic.

“This evidence is present and available to all Americans,” Kline said at the press conference of the information included in the report.

In Georgia, Breitbart News reported:

During Georgia’s 2020 election, the CTCL donated more than $24 million to four counties–Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb–where Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton by more than 200,000 votes, and the CEIR donated an estimated $3 million to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office “for the purpose of educating voters about election rules and process.”

Barron has served as Fulton County’s election director for eight years.