Mary Norwood is Here to Remind You 2017 is Still Under Investigation
(APN) ATLANTA — On December 04, 2020, former City of Atlanta Mayoral candidate Mary Norwood filed an affidavit primarily regarding her personal knowledge of elections integrity issues stemming from her 2017 campaign for Mayor.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the Secretary of State has conducted dozens of interviews regarding apparent irregularities in the 2017 Mayoral Election and Runoff. However, no report has been publicly released to date.
She submitted the affidavit in a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit case challenging the U.S. Presidential Election in Georgia filed by supporters of President Donald J. Trump, Coreco Ja’Qan Peason et al. v. Governor of the State of Georgia et al.
The case was dismissed, as have numerous others across the country including dismissals by the Supreme Court of the U.S.; and by all accounts Trump appears to have lost the election.
Norwood did not take a position in the case, but instead submitted a two page statement regarding relevant facts of which she had personal knowledge.
Yet, the revelation of the filing set social media astorm, especially after Stephen Deere of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an article with a technically true, but misleading title, “Ex-Atlanta mayoral hopeful Mary Norwood aids Trump’s bid to overturn Georgia election results.”
Several Democratic voters posted angry comments on Facebook; and at least two people said that they supported her in 2017, but would not support her again in 2021.
“Everybody’s made up their minds about what they think. Stephen wrote it up the way they wrote it up. I’ve been dealing with dozens and dozens of people for days,” Norwood told Atlanta Progressive News.
“I sent out over two dozen declarations. I sent copies to twenty-five people. I was not responding to one person,” Norwood said regarding her affidavit.
APN asked Norwood if she would be willing to provide an affidavit for a progressive organization like Fair Fight or New Georgia Project if they were to request similar information for one of their lawsuits. Norwood said yes.
“Absolutely. This is about a fair and accurate election. If Stacey’s people wanted to come to me and wanted all the information, I would gladly give it to ‘em,” Norwood said, referring to former Democratic nominee for Governor Stacey Abrams, who has been connected with both organizations.
“I want elections to be fair, and they can only be fair when they work on both sides of the aisle. I understand the need for confidence in the elections. It’s the backbone of our country,” Norwood said.
Norwood’s affidavit attested to the fact that the Secretary of State of Georgia has been investigating the results of the 2017 Mayoral Election for nearly three years now; and, according to Norwood, the office refuses to release the report.
“In 2018, one of my supporters… a Professional Engineer and a Certified Public Accountant, analyzed the election and filed a complaint with the Georgia Secretary of State. The Secretary of State launched an investigation into the 2017 Atlanta Mayoral Race and Runoff in May 2018,” Norwood wrote.
“During 2018 and 2019, I met several times with members of the Secretary of State’s Office’s staff, giving them additional information and asking for their findings… To date, I have not received any report or conclusions about what they found — two and a half years later,” Norwood wrote.
The 2018 complaint filed by Justin H. Wiedeman, a copy of which was obtained by APN, is devastating.
“I have stayed absolutely quiet about not getting an answer. But right now… I want the world to know I wanted an answer, I wanted a conclusion, and I wanted a report,” Norwood told APN.
“When you run, after the election, seven days out, you get a list of people who voted, although maybe not in each race. Two months later, you get a list from the Secretary of State’s office,” Norwood said.
“Those two should be pretty similar. In my case, hundreds of people were off the list and hundreds of people were added to the list. They don’t match,” Norwood said.
“I handed it to the Secretary of State in 2019… here’s the two lists. Who voted for me?” Norwood asked.
“The margin of difference in the two lists is bigger than the margin of loss of the Election,” she said.
Wiedeman spent over one thousand hours analyzing 2017 data from Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections (FCBRE) because the data were produced in formats that he called “archaic.”
“While the FCBRE has a duty to be transparent, the FCBRE Director has been evasive and non-responsive as well as the Fulton County Attorney’s Office. Hundreds of critical and required election documents remain missing. As a Forensic Accountant, critical missing and required documents and evasive responses raise a ‘red-flag,’” he wrote.
Wiedeman found errors in the list of official voters credited as having voted (“MVP” or “MyVoterPage” data) from Dec. 2017, and its April 2018 update.
He wrote that the Dec. 2017 list included two inactive precincts and excluded two active precincts.
“The April 2018 MVP continues to omit a substantial Atlanta Voter Precinct and includes an Ineligible Precinct from the City of Hapeville…” Wiedeman wrote.
He further alleges that “A total of at least 913 Persons remain unaccounted for in the December 2017 Certified MVPR. On a Precinct level basis, 110 of the 159 (70%) of Voting Precincts reported a total of more ballots cast than Persons identified as having voted.”
“[T]he broad scope of missing Persons from the voter file is certainly a substantial and material irregularity that should have triggered investigation by the Director,” he wrote.
But then Wiedeman writes that similar problems exist in the specific race of Mayor of Atlanta.
In “46 of 159 Voting Precincts (29%)… there were more ballots cast for Atlanta Mayor than Persons identified as voters in the December 2017 Certified MVPR,” he wrote, adding this was a violation of the Elections Code of the State of Georgia.
He refers to this apparent violation as a “palpable error.”
He alleges that provisional votes do not reconcile, adding, “40 ballots were accepted from non-Atlanta jurisdiction voters that cast a vote in Atlanta Voting Precincts.”
He further alleges the April 2018 update of the Dec. 2017 voter list raises further questions.
“Analysis of the April 2018 Update shows that Ballots cast in the election now exceed Persons identified as voting by 1,550 Persons or 1.8% of all ballots cast. The updated file shows a net loss of 768 Persons identified as voting from the Certified MVPR of December 2017,” he wrote.
“The April 2018 Update includes over 1,414 changes to Registration numbers (1.7% of Ballots Cast in the Election) from the December 2017 Certified MVPR.”
In addition, he alleges “A Substantial Number of Ineligible Voters Cast Ballots in the Atlanta Election… The December 2017 Certified MVPR includes 78 ineligible voters based on the SOS Voter List… The April 2018 Update of Persons Identified as Voting includes 329 ineligible voters based on the SOS Voter List.”
He also alleges that the FCBRE has withheld records that they are required to retain.
“The FCBRE has not produced hundreds of required documents which are to be retained by law. This includes the DRE Recap Sheet, Express Poll Recap Sheet, Provisional/Challenged Recap Sheet, or the Daily Absentee Recap Sheet,” he wrote.
APN has submitted a records request to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office for any and all findings or reports of the office’s investigation into Wiedeman’s 2018 complaint.
(END / Copyright Atlanta Progressive News / 2020)