A poll worker pulls a box of ballots from under a table in this Dec. 3, 2020 video of a green image at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Fulton County.
U.S. President Donald Trump (Trump) on Sunday (Jan. 3) again on the Joe State fraud video doubts, saying Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) could not answer questions about boxes of ballots being pushed out from under a table after Republican observers were told to leave on opening night.
Trump tweeted Sunday, “I spoke with (Joe) Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about voter fraud in Fulton County and Georgia.”
Trump said Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions about ‘under the table ballot’ fraud, ballot destruction, out-of-state ‘voters’, dead voters, etc. He simply doesn’t have a clue!”
Trump is referring in the article to video footage from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Fulton County, from the night of Nov. 3 to the early morning hours of Nov. 4. The video shows Fulton County election workers ostensibly telling poll watchers and other workers that the counting was over for the night.
Around 11 p.m. on Nov. 3, Fulton County officials, including spokeswoman Regina Waller, told Yahoo News and ABC that the night’s count was complete. However, other county officials later said the count went on until at least about 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer confirmed the count went on until that time. In a statement, Shafer determined that Fulton County workers “counted votes in secret until 1 a.m.”
Later, Fulton County officials said they did not specifically tell polling observers to go home for the night, saying the counting process was open to the public and observers. But that account apparently differs from the testimony of polling observers.
According to affidavits from Republican poll observers Mitchell Harrison and Michelle Branton, they were on duty in a mail-in ballot counting room at State Farm Ballpark in Atlanta around 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2020, when a woman shouted for everyone to stop working until 8:30 a.m. the next morning before returning to their posts.
Brandon wrote, “This lady showed up during the night and Mitchell and I believe she was in charge.”
On the evening of Nov. 3, 2020, after poll watchers had left, those who remained behind began pushing “suitcase-like” ballot boxes out from under the tables, according to video from the State Farm Arena, after which they appeared to be counting votes.
Trump’s lawyers claim the video is clear evidence of election fraud. But officials from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office said the video footage did not show anything out of the ordinary.
Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling said in a statement that the videos “show normal ballot processing,” but that Fulton County “cut corners” and showed “sloppy management” in its handling of the election and subsequent recount.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State said last December, “We have launched an investigation into why observers from the political parties left before the end of the scan. While they had the right to leave early, we want to make sure they weren’t misled into thinking the scanning had stopped that night when it hadn’t.”
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