Georgia election worker forced into hiding over false claims he threw away a ballot

An Atlanta-area election worker went into hiding after false claims that he threw away a ballot went viral.

Fulton County Elections Supervisor Rick Barron said a worker who was at the State Farm Arena was threatened over the false claims and that some of his personal information was leaked.

“He is in hiding,” Barron said.

“He is having to leave his house and go stay with friends,” he added. “He’s afraid to drive his car because the information about his car, about his license plate are out there.”

“He is currently in hiding.” Fulton Election Director Rick Barron says an election worker at State Farm was falsely accused of throwing out a ballot, video uploaded to Twitter and his personal info including car license plate were released #gapol #Election2020 @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/zGs0gq5F5v

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrWSB) November 6, 2020

Barron said Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, is weighing providing protection to the worker.

The worker, who remained unnamed, was falsely accused of tossing out a ballot. But Barron said video of the incident showed the worker was using a machine to separate the outer envelope from the inner envelope and that the ballot itself was not affected.

“However one thing that you need to know is that those ballots are 8 ½ by 19 inches long,” said Barron. “At no time did you see him extract anything from the envelope and that crumbled piece of paper, they were instructions and it was a smaller piece of paper.”