State board dismisses film’s claims of ‘ballot harvesting’

Allegations of “ballot harvesting” during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia have, so far, failed to stand up to the test of investigation.

The claims were raised in the film “2000 Mules,” which includes surveillance video showing a man inserting five absentee ballots into a Gwinnett County drop box.

That would appear to be ballot harvesting — the collection and delivery of multiple absentee ballots. But a state investigator confirmed, after tracking license plates and interviewing voters, that the ballots belonged to members of the man’s family who live in the same household. That is permitted under Georgia law, as is the delivery of ballots by caregivers for disabled voters.

The State Election Board voted unanimously this past week to dismiss that case and two others after the investigator reported that he tracked license plate numbers and interviewed voters who verified the family connection.

“Just because something looks compelling doesn’t mean it’s accurate,” said Matt Mashburn, the Republican chairman of the State Election Board. “We wanted to reassure the public that yes, we have seen the videos, we are taking them very seriously, we’re tracking every one of them down, and we’ll report back to you what we find.”

So far, the board has found nothing to validate the allegations in “2000 Mules,” which theorizes that 2,000 people in Georgia and four other swing states collected and delivered multiple absentee ballots to drop boxes to steal the election from Donald Trump.

Conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza made the film, which promotes allegations by a Texas-based organization called True the Vote, that are based on drop box surveillance video and cellphone location data it gathered.

The GBI reviewed True the Vote’s allegations in the fall and found they lacked sufficient evidence

“What has not been provided is any other kind of evidence that ties these cellphones to ballot harvesting,” GBI Director Vic Reynolds wrote in a Sept. 30 letter. “As it exists, the data, while curious, does not rise to the level of probable cause that a crime has been committed.”

The State Election Board issued subpoenas last month to True the Vote seeking documents. True the Vote has yet to comply.

MIGUEL MARTINEZ/MIGUEL.MARTINEZJIMENEZ@AJC.COM The Secretary of State Office investigator, Dana DeWeese (right), updated the public on election fraud allegations during the State Elections Board meeting Tuesday.