Election complaint filed in Spalding County – WSB-TV Channel 2

SPALDING COUNTY, Ga — A grievance has been filed with the Georgia Lawyer Common’s workplace alleging attainable election wrongdoing in Spalding County.

The grievance was filed with the lawyer normal’s election fraud division by William Perry of Georgia Ethics Watchdogs. Perry is asking for an investigation into the truth that Spalding Election Board Chairperson Ben Johnson additionally holds the info expertise contract with the county, together with the elections division, by his enterprise.

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“This can be a unhealthy authorities determination by way of the contracting, and it’s potential election fraud on the opposite finish of it,” Perry stated.

Johnson’s firm, Liberty Expertise, has had an IT contract with Spalding County since 2015. A take a look at public data exhibits Liberty has made greater than $3 million from that contract.

The grievance filed with the lawyer normal alleges that: “Due to Mr. Johnson’s skill to entry and carry out work on the gear with out oversight, voters have no idea if the gear has been improperly tampered with.”

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The grievance additionally consists of social media posts by Johnson calling himself an “insurrectionist” and calling the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol a “hoax.”

An inside county e-mail exhibits that when election methods at a polling place couldn’t hook up with the web final yr, leaving voters unable to solid a poll, it was Liberty Expertise that was known as in to handle the issue.

“That is the chairman of the election board who then troubleshoots when there are issues on the polling locations as a result of he has the IT contract,” Perry stated.

Spalding County supervisor Steve Ledbetter informed Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Grey that the county is re-bidding for all its service contracts, together with IT, to ensure they’re all correctly and brazenly bid on. He expects that to be accomplished by January.

This isn’t the one election controversy Spalding is dealing with. Final week the state election board launched an investigation into Spalding County, based on State Elections Board chair William Duffey. Duffey stated on the Sept. 28 board assembly that the identical tech firm that copied election information in Espresso County was additionally thought-about for work in Spalding County. The settlement was not finalized with Spalding, and Duffey says he doesn’t suppose information was copied in Spalding.

We reached out to Johnson by his county e-mail addresses and thru his enterprise however haven’t acquired a response.

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