The State Election Board on Wednesday withdrew an investigation and dismissed a lawsuit demanding a conservative voting group turn over evidence of an alleged ballot collection scheme in the 2020 election in Georgia.
In a unanimous vote, the State Election Board dismissed an investigation and a lawsuit seeking enforcement of subpoenas issued to True the Vote. The group alleged that unnamed organizations paid individuals $10 per absentee ballot delivered to drop boxes across metro Atlanta. The accusations were never proven.
“It is apparent that the whistleblower will not be identified or cannot be identified,” said Janice Johnston, a Republican appointee.
It’s a move that ended a yearslong investigation into a complaint filed by True the Vote for allegations of widespread illegal ballot stuffing, a practice of delivering multiple ballots to drop boxes, which is illegal except in instances that allow for family members and caregivers of disabled voters to deliver absentee ballots for them.
True the Vote has said in court filings that it doesn’t know the identity of its own anonymous source behind the alleged ballot harvesting scheme.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the sole Democrat on the board, said that the subpoenas demanded “significantly more” information from True the Vote than the identity of the alleged whistleblower.
“They’ve stated repeatedly that they do not have any documents,” Ghazal said. “So, I agree that it seems to be a fruitless effort to seek information that apparently does not exist.”
State Election Board Chairman John Fervier said he’s unsure if it’s worth continuing to pursue documents that the organization has said it does not possess.
The Federal Election Commission fined the Georgia Republican Party last year for failing to report campaign contributions from True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit, during the 2021 runoff election in which Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won seats in the U.S. Senate.
The nonprofit was also behind an effort to challenge the eligibility of voters in the run-up to the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff. After Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill in 2021 making it explicit that residents can challenge an unlimited number of voter registrations within their counties, conservative activists filed challenges by the tens of thousands, primarily in metro Atlanta counties with large numbers of Democratic voters.
In addition to the nonprofit’s work on voter eligibility challenges, True the Vote is the organization behind the election conspiracy movie “2000 Mules.” The movie’s bombastic allegations of widespread ballot harvesting fraud during the 2020 election were revealed to be based on “inaccurate information” in a statement by the director Dinesh D’Souza issued in December.
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