The Georgia Elections Board on Monday gave Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger subpoena power to secure evidence amid allegations of illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election, Breitbart reports.
Raffensperger announced in January that he would investigate a complaint submitted by True the Vote, a conservative vote monitoring group. According to the complaint, True the Vote found cellphone pings on 242 people who visited drop boxes in Georgia multiple times at 5,662 different drop-box locations.
Video evidence allegedly backs up the phone data, according to True the Vote. The unsecured drop boxes were monitored by video 24 hours a day, Raffensperger said.
The complaint also alleges that about 40% of the ballot drop-offs occurred between midnight and 5 a.m., an unusual time for such a significant number of people to cast such ballots.
Then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, lost in Georgia by just 12,000 votes. If the allegations prove true — and fraudulent ballots were cast for eventual winner Joe Biden — it would likely be enough to hand the state to Trump.
Georgia's number of electoral votes would not be enough to overturn the election results, but True the Vote said in a letter to donors that it had found similar evidence in other states, including Arizona.
It is illegal in Georgia for so-called ballot harvesters or canvassers to pick up and deliver multiple write-in ballots. Delivering them for others is legal in the state only if the person is a relative, and payment is not permitted.
Part of the inquiry is also looking into whether the canvassers were paid a certain amount per ballot delivered to the drop boxes.
"We need to get a subpoena for the fella who this John Doe is," Raffensperger told Just the News. "Was he paid? How much was he paid? And then who paid him. And we’re going to follow the money, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And we’re going to prosecute this, if we find that there’s substance to it."
Raffensperger came under fire from Trump shortly after the election for his refusal to investigate Trump's unproven allegations of election fraud.