The Fulton County Superior Court ruled on Tuesday that election workers must let poll workers watch the vote-counting process from 10 feet away, but Georgia Republicans were still restricted from meaningfully observing absentee ballots, Fox News reported.
Judge Jane Barwick ruled that elections workers at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta had to take down blue trifold posters that were being used to hide the count.
“At all times during which absentee ballot processes are taking place, Defendants shall allow credentialed monitors to view absentee and UOCAVA [military and overseas] ballots, at least ten feet away from processing tables, inside the steel barriers as they are processed,” she wrote in the opinion.
Poll observer Benjamin Neer said Barwick’s ruling shuffled some metal barriers but had no effect on his ability to observe the process.
“What is that, 30 to 40 feet?” he asked. “It’s a joke that we are here. They call this an observation. This is not an observation. This is a complete joke.”
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Barwick’s ruling was meant to give poll watchers the opportunity to walk “on the floor.”
Even after they removed some metal barriers, the election workers simply rearranged their setup so that the poll workers could not observe from the new perspective.
“They took out the gates, but they switched [the positions] of the computer screens on two areas,” Ashley Phillips said to Atlanta Fox News. “Nothing’s changed with the distance. It’s just that you can walk the floor now.”
“I can’t see anything. I couldn’t see it with the binoculars. No, no, no, no,” she said. “There’s nothing you can see. I have no idea what they’re doing back there. Gates are super high. It looks like they’re trying to, it’s like they’re trying to cage people back there. I don’t know. Like they’re trying to keep people out.”
Video evidence of the Georgia World Congress Center confirms that poll watchers were not meaningfully observing the process.
FULTON COUNTY: Georgia World Congress Center. Screens all facing away from media pen. No observers. No dual control. Single individuals scanning ballots into dominion while kept from public view. @RealAmVoice pic.twitter.com/oeH57fxIAK
— Heather Mullins – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) (@TalkMullins) January 5, 2021
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