This article originally appeared on JoeHoft.com and was republished with permission.
The scene in State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020 in Georgia was a mess. A recent review sheds light on the massive train wreck.
Georgia State Election Board member Matt Mashburn attempted to address accusations of election fraud in the 2020 election in his public statements in a meeting on November 23, 2020. He omitted key items and skimmed over other items, all in what to be an effort to cover up the real issues and seeming in the 2020 Georgia Presidential election.
Matt Mashburn shared his comments from a special meeting with the State Elections Board with local media outlet 11Alive on November 23, 2020.
He shared in part:
For the first time in the state’s history as part of the settlement of complaints against Fulton County arising from the primaries, the State Election Board appointed an election monitor over Fulton County. This election monitor was allowed to go anywhere he wanted to go and see anything he wanted to see.
Mashburn neglected to state what the complaints were that were so serious in the primary that Fulton County was required to have an election monitor located onsite during the 2020 election. The fact that this was needed provided evidence that the operations in Fulton County leading up to the 2020 Election were in historically terrible shape. They were so bad that “for the first time in the state’s history…the State Election Board appointed an election monitor over Fulton County”.
Mashburn then tried to describe the events that occurred at the State Farm Arena on election night. His comments here also were distorted with evidence of wrongdoing omitted from his presentation.
…The allegation that has been tweeted out by very respective members of the party is that Fulton County was fraudulently counting ballots in secret on election night. Well as I just mentioned, for the first time ever in Georgia history, an election monitor was accountable to the board and stationed in Fulton County. He actually sent a picture, and nobody seems to know this, so let’s get this out there and let the public know, but he sent a picture on election night standing in the room at State Farm Arena where the counting was taking place with the time written on the piece of paper that he was sending. The election monitor was there. There was no counting in secret period.
Mashburn omits key information in his comments. By stating that the election monitor was stationed in Fulton County due to the massive mess from the prior election, so bad that “for the first time ever in Georgia history, an election monitor was accountable to the board and stationed in Fulton County,” the listener/reader is led to believe that this election monitor was there at the State Farm Arena all election night. But this is not true. The election monitor was not at the State Farm Arena the entire evening observing workers there who were later identified as Shaye Moss, Ruby Freeman, and Ralph Jones, because this was included in notes that the Georgia State Election Board received on November 13, two weeks before Mashburn made his statements.
We learned seven months after Mashburn made these comments that the “election monitor” in Fulton County was a man by the name of Carter Jones. We learned this from an article by and in Just the News in June 2021.
In this article was a report that Carter Jones provided to the Georgia State Election Board on November 13, 2020. Solomon’s article was the first time that we were made aware of Jones and his report. Remember, Mr. Mashburn was a member of the Georgia State Board of Elections in November 2020.
Here is the Carter Jones report:
Carter Jones FultonCountyNo… by Joe Ho
In the report, Jones describes the incredible mess at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County during the 2020 Election.
(From an international audit executive formerly stationed in Hong Kong for a decade, this report indicates that the election processes at the State Farm Arena during the 2020 Election were a God-awful horrible mess.)
But in reference to Carter Jones being at the State Farm Arena, Jones clearly states that on election night, he left State Farm Arena at 8:30 p.m. (see page 6). Carter Jones then says that he did not arrive back to State Farm Arena until 11:52pm.
For this entire time, Jones was not at the State Farm Arena. The videotape that Rudy Giuliani and his team presented to the public in presentations before the Georgia Senate on December 3, 2020, shows multiple batches of ballots rammed through machines after Republican poll observers were sent home at around 10:25 pm Election night.
For roughly an hour and a half, ballots were run through tabulators in State Farm Arena on election night, and no observers, not Republican observers nor Carter Jones were anywhere to be found.
(Note also that Carter Jones worked for the State, he was not a Republican poll observer.)
Mashburn goes on to state that the election monitor, there for the first time in Georgia history due to the muck-up of the primary, “actually sent a picture, and nobody seems to know this, so let’s get this out there and let the public know, but he sent a picture on election night standing in the room at State Farm Arena where the counting was taking place with the time written on the piece of paper that he was sending. The election monitor was there. There was no counting in secret period.”
This is not true.
Carter Jones sent this picture to Raffensperger’s team after midnight:
Yes, Mashburn is correct that Carter Jones sent a picture to Raffensperger’s team showing that election workers were still pushing ballots through tabulators late that night and early into November 4th. Jones omits that no Republican observers were there and that Carter Jones was not there between 8:30 p.m. and 11:52 p.m.
Also, Mashburn neglects to mention the very next line in Carter Jones’ report. (Note that this report was not released to the public until seven months later.)
“Order is starting to break down – > Ralph newly re-scanned some ballots that had already been processed by Shaye.”
What this indicates is that Mashburn saw a picture from the election monitor from Fulton County’s State Farm Arena noting the time of the picture. He neglected to mention the next line in Carter Jones’s report and the public was not aware of Carter Jones’ report until seven months later!
Mashburn spoke out six months later in response to voter mules found dropping off ballots in drop boxes across the state in the movie “2000 Mules”. He addressed these ballots as follows:
Mashburn, who said he watched the film, said it suggested there were 92,000 “illegitimate, manufactured votes” in the state, but he said that’s not true. Even if a ballot is illegally dropped off, it goes through the same checks as other ballots to ensure the vote is legitimate, he said.
“A ballot harvested vote might be a perfectly legal vote,” he said. “It’s just the manner of its delivery was illegal.”
It’s unclear whether Mashburn suggests counting the ballots inserted into an election illegally or not.