Early voting in Fulton County begins amid election scrutiny

Fulton County elections scrutinized as early voting begins

A state performance review panel is investigating Fulton County's action during the 2020 election. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is calling on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation.

ATLANTA - Early voting is officially underway in Fulton County for the November 2 election, but there may be some voters who find they are not registered.

On Monday, Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron announced he had fired two election employees for allegedly shredding voter registration applications.

"We believe that these two employees may have checked out batches of applications for processing," explained Barron. "Instead of fully processing them, in some instances, the employees allegedly shredded some of the forms. Fellow employees reported this behavior to their supervisor on Friday morning and the employees were terminated the same day."

Fulton County election workers fired in response to voter application shredding allegations

Fulton County Registration & Elections Director Richard Barron announced the termination of two employees who allegedly shredded paper voter registration applications.

Barron said they notified the Georgia Secretary of State's Office about the incident and requested an investigation. Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts also alerted the Fulton County District Attorney's Office.

"Shock. We couldn't believe it," said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, R-Georgia. "This needs to obviously be taken as a serious matter, a serious infraction. We will in our office and we expect the United States Dept. of Justice to do the same thing, because after all, the Dept. of Justice has already sued the State of Georgia over SB 202. Well now we're calling on them to be even-handed and look into Fulton County."

Fulton Chairman Pitts reacts to elections employees being fired

Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts said he wants a full investigation into the indiscretions of two elections workers fired for shredding voter registration applications.

Fulton County officials said they believe about 300 applications were involved. Any Fulton voter who tries to cast their ballot, but is not registered will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot and the county will investigate.

Early voting begins in metro Atlanta

Tuesday is the first day of early voting for November's elections in Georgia. Some of the big races on the ballot this year center on leadership at the local level including a race to be Atlanta's next mayor.

Early voting runs every day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through October 29.

WATCH: FOX 5 NEWS LIVE COVERAGE

_____

GET BREAKING NEWS EMAIL ALERTS FROM FOX 5

DOWNLOAD THE FOX 5 ATLANTA APP FOR BREAKING NEWS AND WEATHER ALERTS