RE: https://mastodon.social/@lawfare/116048314109181139

Lawfare has the unsealed affidavits for the Fulton County elections office search warrants, which are online at the link.

I’ve so far only skimmed, but a couple initial impressions.

-Lots of mentions of small discrepancies, but not much that appears to establish PC of an actual crime. Some of the alleged discrepancies were previously refuted by GA officials.

-Nothing mentioned (such as an indictment) that would stop the 5 year statute of limitations clock; all the acts are > 5 years ago.

Again, I’ve not yet read the docs carefully. But it’s worth noting that mere discrepancies aren’t crimes, and small errors and mishaps are normal and expected in something as large scale as this. Also, these seem to be related to the statewide machine recount, which was a new process partly invented on the fly, intended to validate the initial results.

And the statute of limitations problem is significant. It may have been addressed in some other filing or hearing, but it’s not explained here.

I’m NOT saying there’s nothing to any of this, only that the affidavits don’t themselves suggest that there’s all that much here.

Much is made of the presence of "pristine" absentee ballots, which is the term they use for ballots that lacked creases from being folded and sealed in an envelope. The assert that there's no innocent explanation for this, since all absentee ballots have to arrive in an envelope.

But there *is* an explanation. UOCAVA ballots, a generic ballot form used by some overseas/military voters, aren't machine readable. They have to be transcribed onto a regular ballot form for tabulation.

@mattblaze *Waving arms helplessly* What if an envelope. Was big
@mattblaze Artist's rendering of hypothetical "Big Envelope" cryptid
@mcc absentee ballot envelopes are of a particular form and are provided with the blank ballots sent to the voters.
@mattblaze I am a permanent absentee voter and I have more than once voted by downloading a PDF and mailing it in in my own envelope. Can you clarify if you mean "in Georgia"?
@mcc yes , this is a thread about Georgia that you responded to.