Republican poll observers Mitchell Harrison and Michelle Branton said in affidavits that at approximately 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 inside an absentee ballot counting room State Farm Arena, a woman shouted to everyone to stop working and return the following morning at 8:30 a.m.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis lady had appeared through the night and Mitchell and I believed her to be the supervisor,<\/strong>\u201d Branton wrote in\u00a0an affidavit<\/a>.<\/p>\n Following the instruction, nearly all workers left, except a handful of people. All ballot counting stopped.<\/strong><\/p>\n The poll observers were the only outsiders left, along with a Fox News crew. Harrison spent time seeking answers from Regina Waller, the\u00a0Fulton County<\/a>\u2019s public affairs manager for elections, but she refused to answer the questions, he said in\u00a0an affidavit<\/a>.<\/p>\n A few minutes later, Branton, Harrison, and the crew left. Only four people remained in the room including Waller, when they had departed.<\/p>\n The group later heard that ballot counting had resumed at the arena, despite the public being told that it had ceased for the night. Observers rushed back at around 1 a.m. on Nov. 4 and found that to be the case.<\/strong><\/p>\n David Shafer, the head of Georgia\u2019s Republican Party, said Thursday in a statement: \u201cOur Republican observers and members of the news media departed State Farm when they announced they were shutting down for the night and would resume counting at 8:30 a.m. the next day.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n Citing surveillance\u00a0video footage<\/a>\u00a0that showed everyone leave but\u00a0a handful of workers, he said the workers \u201ccontinued counting ballots in secret until 1 a.m.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The footage was presented by President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign during a state legislature hearing this week. It appears to show a few workers pulling out boxes filled with ballots from underneath tables and counting them after the room cleared.<\/p>\n Officials insist the video does not show fraud.\u00a0They said Friday<\/a>\u00a0they are probing why poll observers left on election night.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have launched an investigation into why the monitors from the political parties left before scanning ended. While it was their right to leave early, we want to make certain they were not misled into thinking scanning had stopped for the night when it had not<\/strong>,\u201d Walter Jones, a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told The Epoch Times via email.<\/p>\n The issue appears to center around semantics. While observers weren\u2019t explicitly told to leave, they believed counting was stopping because officials made it seem that way.<\/p>\n Waller\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0ABC on election night that the county\u2019s election department sent the ballot counters at the arena home at 10:30 p.m. Waller told The Epoch Times in an email, \u201cFor clarification, I informed ABC News that some workers left but four remained.\u201d<\/p>\n Raffensperger and his team \u201care busily \u2018investigating\u2019 whether or not Fulton County elections officials sent our monitors home on election night<\/strong>, as if that question is actually in dispute,\u201d Shafer wrote in a tweet on Friday. Gabriel Sterling, an official in Raffensperger\u2019s office, \u201chas accepted Fulton County\u2019s explanation that the Republican monitors and news media are to blame for believing the election officials who told them that they were shutting down, packed up the voting equipment, and started cleaning,\u201d Shafer added in another post.<\/p>\n Sterling said in a statement that the video \u201cshows normal ballot processing.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0He said investigators with his office watched the surveillance footage. Sterling and other state officials have said Fulton County \u201ccut corners<\/a>\u201d and showed \u201cmanagerial sloppiness<\/a>\u201d in handling the election and subsequent recounts.<\/p>\n A county spokeswoman told The Epoch Times on the day after the election Registration & Elections Director Richard Barron told the Board of Commissioners\u00a0that when he learned that staff were dismissed at 10:30 p.m.,\u00a0he advised that some workers needed to continue.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBased on that directive, a smaller crew continued to work through the night. It may be possible that observers left at the time the majority of the staff left, but from the information we have, the processing area was never closed to observers<\/strong>,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Other people in Georgia said they were inexplicably told to go home.<\/p>\n Poll manager Susan Voyles, who was helping audit ballots at Georgia World Congress Centers, said she was told to go home on Nov. 15 after counting just 60 ballots, even though workers at nearby tables had thousands to process.<\/p>\n \u201cWe offered to help on some larger piles that were still evident, and the officials present were adamant that they did not need any help<\/strong>,\u201d she said in an affidavit.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_desktop\/public\/inline-images\/ballot-counting-room-empty_0.jpg?itok=_JX4SqlX){kind=spacer}
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