Criminal charges against Rome businessman are dismissed
The 2020 election didn’t turn out the way most in Floyd County expected. That included Mark Swanson.
“The election caught everybody by surprise,” Swanson said, adding that he just wanted to know the truth. “I was figuring out what went wrong.”
His probing and questions led to his arrest at a Floyd County Commissioner’s meeting. The initial charge was unclear and, according to Swanson, illegal. Another questionable charge was added later. That part of his nightmare ended Monday morning at the Floyd County Courthouse. For more on the original story and his court battle, click here.
Floyd County Superior Court Judge G. Grant Brantley signed a nolle prose que order, meaning charges are dismissed and Swanson will not be prosecuted. His case was dismissed without an apology or admittance of guilt from Swanson, as he and his attorney maintain his arrest during a Floyd County Commission meeting while issuing public comments was unlawful. Swanson has a pending federal lawsuit against the commission and each Floyd County commissioner, along with others. The lawsuit was on hold for his criminal case outcome but can now go forward. For background on his lawsuit, click here.
Swanson said after his court hearing that now it is time to reopen his federal civil rights suit and include more evidence.
He told those who came to support him at the courthouse that their sharing his story helped him in his court victory.
“I really believe having a lot of light and visibility on this whole topic helps keep the whole system healthy and clean and operating according to law,” he said.
Swanson’s three-year legal battle started with his digging for election information. He said what he found was not just with one precinct or one machine. Problems corrupt the whole voting system in Georgia, he said.
Swanson reviewed elections for 2020, the 2021 Senate runoff, 2022, and 2024. Swanson said election integrity hasn’t improved. It was worse in 2024 because he said problems weren’t just local but are part of the state election system.
His conclusion is that Georgia elections are unconstitutional.
Swanson said part of the problem is that many of those working elections don’t understand election laws.
“They are just doing it how they are taught,” he said.
Swanson has been calling for a full investigation in Floyd County elections for years. He had hoped the state would do that under Senate Bill (S.B.) 202, an election integrity bill sponsored by state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler. It was on a commission meeting agenda. However, the board chair said at the meeting that Hufstetler gave them a way to avoid a state investigation by initiating a peer review. Hufstetler was asked about the switch.
Swanson started by looking into the 2020 presidential election rules. Laws state vote counting can’t be stopped for the night, which happened in 2020. It can’t be done by people working alone. That happened too.
The biggest problem is that official voting counts don’t exist in their entirety. He had an opportunity to look at the tabulations for Floyd County’s official returns and said many are missing. These are papers that are supposed to be safeguarded and protected for 22 months.
So far, he’s found 186 law violations over the past three elections.
Swanson analyzed 12 counties in Georgia to compare with Floyd County and found several had serious violations with Paulding County being the worst offender. Some of the other counties Swanson looked at are Athens-Clarke and Polk Counties.
Among some of the things Swanson found in Floyd County:
A Dominion employee, Aric Thompson, adjudicated votes even though he wasn’t an election office employee. Adjudication is when an election worker takes ballots the machine doesn’t accept and manually inputs them.
A tabulator in one of the county’s largest precincts, Garden Lakes, jammed after a voter crumpled her ballot before putting it into the scanner. That precinct carries 5,000 to 6,000 votes.
State law mandates the Clerk of Superior Court keep all the election material post-election but Floyd’s clerk, Barbara Pinson, never knew that was her responsibility. County attorney Virginia Harmon told Swanson that Pinson designated the County Clerk Ellen Elrod to do it. Yet, a letter he obtained through the Open Records Act addressed from Harmon to Pinson said “we decided” Elrod would keep election records.
Pinson never signed off on the May 2022 letter or acknowledged she made the decision. State law mandates the decision about designating someone else to keep election documents is hers alone to make. It was this discovery and obtaining a copy of Harmon’s letter to Pinson that prompted him to go before the Floyd County Commission on Jan. 10, 2023 to ask the commission to hold off on renewing the county’s contract with the law firm of McRae, Smith, Peek, Harman & Monroe.
Election records were kept in an unsecured room at the county morgue. It was damp and rat infested. The space where the boxes of election materials were kept is now empty with no one knowing where the material is, according to Swanson.
There were five drop boxes in Floyd County in 2020. Rules were strict with drop boxes. Two people had picked up the ballots and signed off on the number of ballots. Election officials count them again. All these is documented. Swanson said the county is missing many of these documents. Three dop boxes were signed off by a convicted felon arrested in Operation Tennessee Waltz. He was a courier arrested and faced a racketeering charge.
Swanson enlisted three other people to ask for the same open records for elections that he requested. He received 20 forms, even though he knew there were 74. The others on his team, who didn’t know each other and had no collaboration, received 83 forms.
Swanson said he learned to use election law to enforce his rights as a citizen and everyone should know about the way they can legally challenge an election.
A Superior Court judge must be available from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on election day for any citizen inquiry. Swanson has made several inquiries about election issues on past election days.
Swanson said election fraud reaches beyond Floyd County, beyond Georgia, to the rest of the U.S.
Those who want to know more about Swanson’s investigation and what they can do to improve election integrity can click here to join his Facebook page. A full interview on this subject and more details are available by clicking on YouTube here.
Melody Dareing is a writer working for publications in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Germany. She is a former news director of Adelphia Channel 4 and WBHF Radio.