Report: Chain of custody missing for more than 168,000 ballots in Georgia’s Cobb County

“When the auditing team was examining the tabulator tapes for advanced voting, they noticed that some tapes were produced by the same machines with the same serial number, and the protective counter numbers stayed the same. Tapes, in some cases, were printed minutes apart. Each scanner should have produced its own tape, with its own counter number, with its own serial number on it, and with unique date and time stamps.

“When questioned about these data anomalies, the Election Director told the auditing team leader that she decided to make the decision to remove original memory cards that held vote ballots and totals from the scanners. She had these cards brought back to her location, and the cards inserted in different machines she had at the county office. The cards would be officially closed. She effectively cast the voters’ ballots in a different machine and in a different location than where the voter originally cast their vote. Then, her staff proceeded to break the seals on the machine, remove the memory cards, and bring the cards back to her station. In doing this, the vote was flawed and did not protect the chain of custody of the ballots. The cards, which contained the ballot information and your vote totals, were haphazardly and, without chain of custody, mishandled with no proof of security or time-stamp.