Whistleblower Reveals Suspected Widespread Ballot Harvesting In Georgia, Raffensperger Opens Investigation

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Georgia authorities have launched an investigation into  seemingly systematic ballot harvesting which occurred during the state’s 2020 general election and the runoff election for the U.S. senate on Jan.5 2021, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed Tuesday.

Georgia law strictly prohibits third-party activists from picking up and delivering ballots on behalf of voters, a tactic called “harvesting” that liberal organizers have tried to get legalized in many battleground states without success. The U.S. Supreme Court this summer rejected Democrat efforts to overturn an Arizona law that outlawed harvesting in the battleground state.

Raffensperger, who in the past rejected claims by former President Donald Trump of widespread fraud during the 2020 election in Georgia, received a detailed complaint from conservative voter integrity group True the Vote on Nov. 30 saying it had assembled evidence that scores of activists worked with nonprofit groups to collect and deliver thousands of absentee ballots, between 2 and 5 AM on election nights, to temporary voting drop boxes distributed around the state during the pandemic.

The group informed the secretary its evidence included video footage from surveillance cameras placed by counties outside the drop boxes as well as geolocation data for the cell phones of more than 200 activists seen on the tapes purportedly showing the dates and times of ballot drop-offs, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

The group also said it interviewed a Georgia man who admitted he was paid $45,000 to harvest 4,500 ballots in the Atlanta metropolitan area during the November election and the lead-up to Jan. 5, 2021 runoff for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, which were both captured by Democrats and ended GOP control of Congress. The group has yet to identify the cooperating witness to state authorities, referring to him in the complaint simply as John Doe.

The group does not allege that the ballots delivered by couriers were fraudulent. However even lawful ballots delivered by third-parties to drop boxes would run afoul of Georgia’s law. If more than 200 people had received similar sums for drop-box stuffing of ballots, the group estimates that there could have been close to a million illegal votes during the closely fought elections.

Raffensperger confirmed in an interview aired Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast that his office has deemed the allegations credible enough to open an investigation and possibly seek subpoenas from the State Election Board to secure evidence.

“We do have some information,” Raffensperger said. “And we are going to investigate that. We did deploy drop boxes that were under 24/7 surveillance, and because they were then that really, you know, can indicate who dropped that information off, and we’re really just going through that.”

Catherine Engelbrecht, the longtime head of True the Vote, declined to comment Tuesday, saying she wanted to let the Georgia investigation take its course. However on the True the Vote site a statement was issued saying that “shockingly similar findings will soon be released to appropriate authorities in five additional states.”

Raffensperger said his office is considering asking the State Elections Board to issue subpoenas to secure evidence such as the names of suspected ballot harvesters.

“That will be one of the processes we’re looking at if we have people that don’t want to come forward for whatever concern, because we really need to get to the bottom of it,” he said during the interview. “We just can’t let it sit there and lie. So if it comes to that, then that’s probably the next step that we’d be looking at.”