Georgia Election Board Orders Review of Fulton County Elections

Democrats say the new laws are an effort to restrict Democratic votes, and the Biden administration is suing the state over the new law.

At the request of Republican state lawmakers, the State Election Board appointed a panel to investigate Fulton County’s elections. The bipartisan panel is composed of two local election officials and one official from the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

The State Election Board has three Republican-nominated members and one Democratic member.

The panel is charged with investigating matters including Fulton County’s handling of election equipment and voter registrations. It will then issue a report on its findings.

State officials subsequently could move closer to removing and replacing the local elections board with an administrator of their choosing, though additional steps would have to take place before any takeover. The entire process would take at least several months.

Cody Hall, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said the governor strongly supported the board appointing a panel to investigate Fulton County.

“Fulton County has a long history of mismanagement, incompetence and a lack of transparency when it comes to running elections—including during the 2020 election,” he said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Fair Fight Action, a Democratic voting-rights group in the state, was quick to criticize the move.

“It is not surprising that the Republican-controlled General Assembly has targeted Fulton County, Georgia’s largest county and home to the greatest number of voters of color in the state,” the group said. “This takeover process may be just the first step in the General Assembly’s anti-democratic attempts to impose partisan control of elections in certain jurisdictions.”

In November, former President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden. Mr. Trump was the first Republican to lose a presidential contest in Georgia since 1992. Then in January, Georgia’s sitting Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost to Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Those losses gave control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.

The losses sparked consternation and infighting within the Georgia GOP, and Mr. Trump pressed state officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who oversees elections, to investigate and overturn the results.

Mr. Trump and his supporters have long claimed that Fulton County, which votes heavily Democratic, was rife with fraud. An independent monitor said he found no illegality by Fulton County election officials but did identify sloppy processes and disorganization that he said should be addressed to make the county’s elections smoother.

Georgia election officials conducted two recounts, which confirmed that Mr. Biden won the state in November. No court or election authority has found evidence of widespread fraud in the presidential election.

A Fulton County spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. County officials have defended their handling of elections and said they have been targeted with false claims of widespread election fraud.

Write to Cameron McWhirter at cameron.mcwhirter@wsj.com and Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com