Election Workers Set to Be Deposed in Georgia Ballot Case

Media crews film while election workers process absentee ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 2, 2020. Megan Varner/Getty Images

Several election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, are scheduled to be deposed in the coming days in a lawsuit that alleges thousands of fraudulent ballots were scanned in Atlanta on election night in 2020.

Ruby Freeman, her daughter Wandrea Moss, Caryn Ficklin, and Keisha Dixon were served with notices to appear for depositions in the case, according to court records.

Freeman and Moss were two of the workers in the absentee ballot counting room at State Farm Arena, when ballots were processed for some time on Nov. 3, 2020, with no observers, including no state election monitor.

Freeman is scheduled to be deposed on June 11. She was advised to bring a thumb drive containing images of all communications she made between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020, regarding the presidential election, according to a court document obtained by The Epoch Times. The communications include messages sent by cellphones, through email, on Snapchat, and over Facebook.

She was also told to bring all electronic devices she utilized during the same timeframe.

Moss, who was given similar orders, is slated to appear on June 10.

Dixon helped register voters while Ficklin works for the county.

Robert Cheeley, who is representing some of the plaintiffs in the case, asked for the depositions. Cheeley didn’t respond to repeated requests by The Epoch Times for comment, including a message left at his office with a secretary.

A Fulton County spokesperson declined to comment.

“Our position is that that’s premature. We want to get to the inspection and then we'll figure out who we want to depose,” Garland Favorito, an election observer who is one of the petitioners, told people in an online chat over the weekend.

“I think it would nail down some of the issues, some of the things that are still unanswered at State Farm Arena. I think that’s [Cheeley’s] intent.”

Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside State Farm Arena as ballots are counted inside, in Atlanta, on Nov. 5, 2020. Megan Varner/Getty Images

Petitioners in the case asserted in December 2020 that election workers failed to comply with state laws governing the treatment of absentee ballots. That failure “created two classes that had two different standards” when it came to mail-in ballots, they alleged.

A county official told news outlets and people in a ballot counting room at roughly 11 p.m. on election night that counting was done for the evening, but workers soon resumed processing ballots. Republican observers said they left because of the announcement and a state election monitor was absent for 82 minutes, according to Gabriel Sterling, an official with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.

Sterling later said there was “managerial sloppiness” and “chain of custody” issues in the county, although county officials insisted nothing untoward happened.

Petitioners received low-resolution images of ballots in the case, but have more recently sought images that are at a quality of 600 dots per inch or higher. Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero agreed to the request last month, but postponed the taking of new images after county agencies filed motions to dismiss the case.

A hearing on the motions will take place on June 21.