Fulton County, under fire from Georgia officials, defends 'A-plus' handling of election in hearing

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The chairman of Georgia's Fulton County Board of Commissioners insisted the county deserves an "A-plus" for its handling of the general election during a Georgia Senate Government Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday.

Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chair Rob Pitts objected to criticism of the county from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger earlier in the week.

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"I would give ourselves, Fulton County, an A-plus for the work we did with respect to the Nov. 3 election," Pitts said on Thursday.

Georgia's largest county, home to approximately 1 million people, has spent "an excess of $35 million" to ensure a fair election, he said.

Workers scan ballots as the Fulton County presidential recount gets under way Wednesday morning, Nov. 25, 2020 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)

"I can tell you that beyond a shadow of a doubt there's been no instance of any unusual activity within Fulton County," he continued. "Has there been a situation from time to time where there's an issue with technology? Yes. Has there been a situation from time to time where there may be human error? But as far as an orchestrated effort to manipulate votes in Fulton County, that's not the case. I have challenged anyone who has made those allegations to come forward."

Fulton County has made headlines for issues counting votes during a recount, including a newly purchased Dominion Voting Systems mobile server crashing and a reporting issue requiring officials to rescan more than 300,000 ballots.

Those problems drew criticism from Raffensberger on Tuesday

"The real issue is a Fulton County employee made several compounding errors," Raffensperger said. "Instead of following the procedures that my office and the vendor laid out, Fulton County once again cut corners. The biggest one being [the employee] backed up the election project on the server itself instead of on an external backup. Because of that decision, they lost the ability to upload hundreds of thousands of scanned ballots."

Raffensperger slammed Fulton County, home to Atlanta, for "dysfunction" amid a statewide recount requested by the Trump campaign after the state certified its results for President-elect Joe Biden.

"Us and our office, and I think the rest of the state, is getting a little tired of always having to wait on Fulton County and always having to put up with their dysfunction," Raffensperger said on Tuesday. "They can still make it by our midnight Wednesday deadline, but they seem to want to make it a dramatic finish."

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Meanwhile, Georgia is due to recertify its election results this week after the Trump campaign requested a recount in addition to an earlier hand recount.