Workers in Georgia’s largest county on election night sealed ballots in boxes and shoved the boxes under a table that was brought into an absentee ballot counting room because they thought they were done for the evening, a top official disclosed Sunday.
Investigators with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office interviewed witnesses and reviewed security footage of State Farm Arena in Atlanta between Nov. 3 and Nov. 4. They found that observers and media “were not asked to leave,” Frances Watson, the office’s chief investigator, wrote in a court filing.
“They simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, whose job was only to open envelopes and who had completed that task, also leave,” Watson added.
The explanation doesn’t line up with what Regina Waller, Fulton County’s public affairs manager for elections, said on election night. She told ABC that the department sent the ballot counters at the arena home at 10:30 p.m. with no qualification.
“For clarification, I informed ABC News that some workers left but four remained,” Waller told The Epoch Times in an email last week.
A county spokeswoman told The Epoch Times on the day after the election that Registration & Elections Director Richard Barron told the Board of Commissioners that when he learned that counters were dismissed at 10:30 p.m., he advised that some workers needed to continue. It wasn’t clear what time that decision was made. The spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Poll observers say they were effectively told to leave because they heard a woman shout inside the absentee ballot counting room for workers to leave and not return until the next morning.