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STORY UPDATED: bank check for updates below.

Legal Counting

By Alan Knuckles and Hallie Gold

Does security camera video show a Fulton County, Georgia, election supervisor suspiciously pulling suitcases filled with ballots from under a table later on telling poll workers to leave the room? And did that ballot official keep to illegally count ballots without required monitors in a way that calls into question Joe Biden'south narrow win over Donald Trump in Georgia? No, those merits are not true: Ii loftier-level officials with the Georgia secretarial assistant of land's office and a country elections board monitor each told Lead Stories that their investigations revealed nothing suspicious in the video. The officials said the ballots seen in the video were in regular ballot containers -- not suitcases -- and they had been removed from their envelopes and candy while news media and election observers for the Republican Party and Trump campaign were nowadays. The media and party observers were never told to get out considering counting was over for the night, merely they apparently followed workers who left once their chore of opening envelopes was completed, the principal investigator for the secretary of land told Lead Stories. The observers were gratis to return at anytime, she said. Georgia law allows observers, but does non require them to exist at that place for ballots to be counted, she said.

The claims made at a Georgia state senate hearing by a Trump lawyer appeared in a video posted on YouTube on December 3, 2020, Past Trump'due south campaign titled "Video from GA shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from nether a table After poll workers left" (archived here). The video description read:

WATCH: Video footage from #Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and iv people stayed behind to continue counting votes

Click below to picket the video on YouTube:

The Epoch Times reported the false claims in an article titled Georgia Country Farm Arena Footage Shows Poll Workers Staying Behind, Pulling Out Suitcases With Ballots published on December 3, 2020. It opened:

President Donald Trump's legal squad on Thursday presented surveillance footage to a Georgia Country Legislature hearing that appears to prove election election-counting workers kicking out poll observers late at night on Election Day before pulling out suitcases allegedly filled with ballots.

A woman who identified herself as Jackie Pick, a lawyer who is assisting with their legal case, said the squad received video footage from State Farm Arena's vote-tabulation center in Fulton County, Georgia. The team said that GOP poll watchers were non allowed to sentry the counting procedure in the poll center.

But, co-ordinate to Selection, an unusual occurrence took place later in the evening at around 10 p.m. ET. A woman--described as a blonde woman with braids--told workers to stop counting and told everyone to get abode.

"Anybody clears out, including the Republican observers and the printing, just four people stay behind and continue counting and tabulating well into the night," Pick said. They counted unobserved until about 1 a.m.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and Georgia's voting system implementation manager, told Lead Stories during a phone phone call on December iii, 2020 that what can be seen on the video is normal process and goose egg looks "bizarre or odd."

Election workers known as "cutters" because their chore was to open absentee ballot envelopes and verify ballots for eventual scanning and counting were dismissed for the dark one-time after 10 p.m. on November 3, 2020, considering their work for the evening had been completed, he explained. Those workers who remained were responsible for conducting the scanning portion of the procedure, since ballots could not be left without beingness scanned overnight. He said:

If you expect at the video tape, the work you meet is the work you lot would wait, which is you have the sealed suitcase looking things in, yous identify the ballots on the scanner in manageable batches and you browse them.

Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgia secretarial assistant of state, told Lead Stories during a telephone call on December 3, 2020, that the ballots were in standard containers, and the work during the fourth dimension in question had nothing to do with pulling ballots from nether a table. She said:

There wasn't a bin that had ballots in it under that table. It was an empty bin and the ballots from it were really out on the table when the media were however there, and then it was placed back into the box when the media were still at that place and placed next to the tabular array.

In that location was never an announcement made to the media and other observers about the counting being over for the night and them needing to leave, according to Watson, who was provided data by the media liaison, who was present. She said they only followed the "cutters" as they left.

She said:

Nobody told them to stay. Nobody told them to leave. Nobody gave them any communication on what they should do. And Information technology was still open for them or the public to come dorsum in to view at whatever time they wanted to, as long as they were even so working.

In add-on, she explained that the merely ballots that were scanned after the media and other observers had left were those that had already been opened in front end of these observers.

Contrary to the merits, the ballots were non in suitcases, she said. The black boxes and bins seen in the video are the standard container used for the ballot counting process.

Watson'due south statements to Lead Stories are similar to what the investigator said in a sworn affidavit submitted two days later in a court example involving an effort to over plow the election. Read that affirmation hither.

A state election lath monitor, who asked for his name non to be used due to safety concerns, told Lead Stories on the telephone on December iii, 2020, that he was present at the vote counting location beginning at 11:52 p.m., after leaving briefly at earlier in the evening. He then stayed until most 12:45 a.m., when the piece of work that night was completed.

The deputy chief investigator for the secretary of state's function was present beginning at 12:15 a.thou. Nov four, he said.

The election monitor too told Lead Stories that betwixt eight p.k. on November iii, 2020, and 12:43 a.chiliad. on November four, 2020, the scanners had scanned about 10,000 ballots.

According to the Georgia Secretary of State's office, Biden received ii,474,507 votes, while Trump received 2,461,837 -- a winning margin of 12,670 votes for Biden.

Sterling said when he looked at the results, "there was nothing abnormal in the distribution of votes."

Section § 21-2-408 of the Code Of Georgia, which addresses poll watchers, explains that political bodies and parties are "entitled" to take official poll watchers. The secretary of state'due south chief counsel told Lead Stories information technology was not a requirement that observers be present for counting to continue -- but that information technology is their correct to be at that place is they choose.

Updates:

• 2020-12-07T16:24:19Z 2020-12-07T16:24:19Z

  Added a link to Investigator Frances Watson'due south sworn affirmation

• 2020-12-05T07:54:41Z 2020-12-05T07:54:41Z

  An earlier version of this story included a hypothetical scenario mathematically estimating the maximum possible touch on on the vote count. This example has been removed because it contained faulty math. We regret the mistake but since it was a hypothetical it does non alter the determination of this fact cheque.

• 2020-12-04T13:twenty:37Z 2020-12-04T13:20:37Z

  Updated the image explanation from "Not Suspicious" to "Legal Counting" considering our headline already covers the "suspiciously" part and the explanation now provides more than information.

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Source: https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html

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