Georgia elections chief vows to 'follow the money' in harvesting probe, prosecute if warranted

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says next step is to get State
Elections Board to issue subpoena targeting whistleblower who claims he
was paid to illegally collect ballots.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-elections-chief-
vows-follow-money-harvesting-probe-prosecute-if

Georgia's election chief is vowing a full-scale investigation into
allegations Democrats may have illegally harvested ballots in the 2020
election, saying his team is preparing subpoenas to "follow the money" and
bring prosecutions if warranted.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sought to dispel whispers in
conservative circles that he is slow-walking the probe he announced in
January, explaining to Just the News that the only delays are related to
administrative changes on the State Elections Board. That panel possesses
the power to issue subpoenas Raffensperger says his investigators need to
solve the case.

"Right now we're waiting for the State Election Board to pick their new
chair, so that we can ask for a subpoena," he told the "Just the News"
television show Tuesday night on Real America's Voice.

Raffensperger says his investigative team wants to use the subpoena to
secure the identity of a John Doe witness/whistleblower who told the
election watchdog group True the Vote last year that he was paid thousands
of dollars to collect third-party ballots during Georgia's November 2020
general election and Jan. 5, 2021 runoff election that gave Democrats
control of the U.S. Senate.

Georgia law expressly prohibits third parties from collecting absentee
ballots, a practice known as harvesting that Raffensperger helped to
explicitly outlaw in 2019.

"We outlawed ballot harvesting as soon as I took office," Raffensperger
said. "We think that's a serious violation of state law. The only person
that should touch your ballot ever is you, the voter, or the election
official when they receive your absentee ballot.

"So we're going to do a thorough investigation, but we need to get a
subpoena for the fella who this John Doe is. Was he paid? How much was he
paid? And then who paid him. And we're going to follow the money, and
we're gonna get to the bottom of it. And we're gonna prosecute this, if we
find that there's substance to it."

Raffensperger's comments were his most detailed to date about the probe,
which was prompted by a criminal complaint filed by True the Vote and its
founder Catherine Engelbrecht on Nov. 30.

The group said in the complaint, obtained by Just the News, that it had
assembled evidence that scores of activists worked with nonprofit groups
to collect and deliver thousands of absentee ballots, often during wee-
hour operations, 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 the complaint.

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's comments came the same day a former Supreme Court Justice
in Wisconsin reported to the state legislature his investigation of the
2020 election found widespread evidence of irregularities, including third
parties casting absentee ballots on behalf of disabled nursing home
residents unable to make voting decisions on their own.,

Mike Gableman said the problems he uncovered are serious enough to warrant
lawmakers to consider taking the symbolic action of decertifying the final
results that declared Joe Biden the winner in Wisconsin.

Arizona this week also announced that a study funded by the state Senate
estimates 200,000 or more absentee ballots cast in that state in November
2020 had signatures that did not match the voter's registration.

Raffensperger also confirmed another election integrity issue in his state
first reported Monday by Just the News: More than 2,200 non-citizen
foreigners tried to register in Georgia and got to provisional status on
the voter rolls. While none voted, the secretary said the efforts show why
Georgia needs to amend its Constitution to outlaw noncitizen voting rather
than leave it simply banned by a state law that could be changed one day.

"I believe only American citizens should vote in our elections," he said.
"And that's why I want a constitutional amendment. State law precludes it,
but the Constitution is unclear. And we need a constitutional amendment."

As for the foreigners who tried to register, Raffensperger said: "We're
gonna investigate. They didn't vote, but they got on the voter roll. We
want to find out why. And then we're going to prosecute."

For the second time in 2022, Raffensperger also addressed the conversation
he had in late 2020 with Donald Trump in which the president asked him to
investigate what turned out to be unproven allegations of voter fraud in
the state. He explicitly refused to say Trump broke any laws while making
the request.

"I'm an engineer. I'm not a lawyer. So I'll let the lawyers answer that
one," he said. "I just wanted to make sure that President Trump understood
that we checked, and continue to, checked and looked at them, every single
allegation that was made. And there just weren't the votes to find. They
said there was 10,315 dead people. At that time, we had found two, and
then we found two more. They said there are 6,600 underage voters. There
weren't any of that. So every allegation that was made, we checked it
out."



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