David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia GOP, said on Wednesday that Georgia’s Fulton County instructed observers to leave and “continued to count ballots in secret” despite claiming that they were “closing up” for the night.
“At the @GaRepublicans State Headquarters monitoring reports from county tabulation centers. Problems with Republican and other public observers being allowed to view tabulation and canvass,” Shafer said on Wednesday.
“Fulton County told our observers last night to go home because they were closing up and then continued to count ballots in secret,” he added in a follow-up tweet:
The Atlanta County made headlines late Tuesday evening following reports of a burst water pipe at a ballot processing site, delaying absentee ballot counts.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) provided an update on Wednesday, telling reporters that his team asked counties to get their election results counted by the day’s end.
“Every legal vote will count,” he assured.
The state had roughly 200,000 outstanding ballots at the time of his update. Trump led by less than 79,000 votes, as of 3:35 p.m. Eastern, with 93 percent of votes counted in the Peach State.