The Carter Center will provide nonpartisan observers to monitor midterm elections in Fulton County, Georgia, a Democratic bastion at the heart of metro Atlanta and at the core of former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
The Center, co-founded in 1982 by former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, announced Thursday it agreed to observe Fulton voting and vote-counting at the request of a bipartisan group of Georgia elections officials. The move is seemingly intended to ease partisan tensions over how elections are conducted in the state and boost public confidence in the final tallies. But it also comes as part of a new state law that Georgia Republicans could use to take over elections management in the heavily Democratic county that is home to Atlanta.
Elections monitoring internationally has been part of The Carter Center’s operations for decades, but it has more recently turned its attention to U.S. elections, as distrust in democratic processes has accelerated in recent years. After the 2020 election, Carter Center officials monitored the audit of the state’s 5 million presidential ballots that affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.
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