Suitcase Scandal in Atlanta blows up

The Suitcase Scandal, involving improper ballot handling at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia in 2020, blew up today. Joe Hoft, who has his own site and occasionally contributes to The Gateway Pundit, revealed today that a key member of the Fulton County Elections Board lied to the public about what exactly went on at the arena. Hoft confirms that three Officers of Election did indeed dismiss accredited Party observers, then counted ballots without observation. This couldn’t come at a worse time for the Fulton County District Attorney as she prosecutes Donald J. Trump for challenging that election. But more than that, it shows just how dirty Georgia politics is – and that even Republicans are not trustworthy.

The Suitcase Scandal in review

On the night of November 3-4, 2020, the Chief Officer of Election told Party-accredited election challengers, and news reporters, that all vote counting would cease. The Chief stated as a reason, that a water main had broken and created a flooding hazard in the building. In fact, four Officers of Election remained behind. They drew out “suitcases” (official equipment carrying cases) from beneath a black-draped table, opened them, and drew out ballots. Those containers held batches of pre-filled-out, photostatted ballots ready to scan. The OOEs scanned many of these as many as forty times.

The Epoch Times shared this embedded video on X, where it is still available.

The video link from YouTube is available at The Wayback Machine. These two video resources display behavior for which there can be no excuse. (But Erick-Woods Erickson, a Georgia native, did try to excuse it. “You don’t understand Georgia politics,” he seemed to say. What he failed to make clear is that Georgia politics is dirty. Very dirty.)

On May 25, 2023, long after Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X), Dom Lucre shared insights into the observed behavior. Georgia uses Dominion Voting Services, which has the worst reputation among purveyors of electronic voting machines. A computer science professor has already found “critical vulnerabilities” in the Dominion product line and system.

But this isn’t necessarily a question about scanner-tabulators executing hidden commands. This is about Officers of Election behaving badly.

An attempt to cover up

On November 23, 2020, Matt Mashburn, a Republican member of the Georgia Board of Elections, made several denials to WXIA-TV. (Channel 11, NBC, Atlanta, Georgia; known as “11Alive” to its regular viewers.) He systematically dismissed “more than a dozen allegations” of election integrity violations that night. At the top of his list of denials, was the Suitcase Scandal. He insisted that this was impossible to play out as suspected, because the Election Board had appointed an observer, who was on-site.

Fulton County did have a State-appointed election monitor. But, contrary to Mashburn’s statements, he was not present at a critical time. The monitor, Carter Jones, filed this report, which Joe Hoft hosts on Scribd.

Hoft then shares these crucial times. He left the State Farm Arena at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and did not return until 11:52 p.m. The OOEs sent the observers home at 10:25 p.m., and then engaged in the activity depicted in the videos.

Mr. Mashburn mentions a picture that Mr. Jones sent, showing his presence during some counting activity. But Jones took that picture at 12:08 a.m. Eastern Time November 4.

Note the second of the three captions:

Order is starting to break down – > Ralph newly re-scanned some ballots that had already been processed by Shaye.

“Shaye” and “Ralph” are Shaye Moss and Ralph Jones, two of the OOEs. (Hoft identifies a third as Ruby Freeman.)

Note that Carter Jones’ report did not become public until seven months after the election. John Solomon and Daniel Payne at Just the News published this report.

Conclusion

That Fulton County even had a monitor assigned, shows that the running of elections in Fulton County was not up to professional standard. But that a Republican would lie about what that monitor was in a position to see, makes the problem worse.

Georgia politics is in the hands of the Uniparty. A permanent political class is in charge, and any rivalry between Republicans and Democrats in Georgia is strictly superficial. It helps to think of general elections in Georgia as Uniparty primaries. General elections, as such, do not take place in Georgia.

But several Georgia residents have shared with CNAV, on X, their monumental disgust with this state of affairs. Until today, all they could know was that, with rare exception, the same policies remained in place no matter what. Today’s revelation shows them why.

Can anyone defeat the corruption that seems to pervade Georgia politics, especially in Fulton and other populous counties? That is far from clear. But the first step toward solving a problem is to identify it. And for the first time, voters have a full idea of its scope.