Reported Burst Pipe in Atlanta Ballot Counting Area Was Overflowing Urinal: Investigator
December 7, 2020
The Election Day incident in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena that was first reported as a burst pipe was an overflowing urinal, a state investigator said Sunday.
Officials in Fulton County said late Nov. 3 that a pipe burst in the arena around 6:07 a.m., causing a delay of several hours in counting absentee ballots. They also referred to the incident as “a water leak.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office opened an investigation into the incident.
Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the office, said in a court filing Sunday that the investigation revealed the water leak “was actually a urinal that had overflowed.”
The overflowing “did not affect the counting of votes by Fulton County later that evening,” she wrote.
Jessica Corbitt, a county spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times in November that staff members at State Farm Arena notified Fulton County Registration & Elections “of a water leak affecting the room where absentee ballots were being tabulated.”
“The State Farm Arena team acted swiftly to remediate the issue. Within 2 hours, repairs were complete,” she said. “No ballots were damaged, nor was any equipment affected. There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots while the repairs were being conducted. Ballots were not moved outside of the room during this incident (it occurred on the other side of the room from the area where ballots were located.)”
Asked about the results of the investigation on Dec. 7, Corbitt told The Epoch Times via email: “It was the water from the urinal that caused the issue. So our statement stands.”
Asked whether the water leak did, in fact, stem from a burst pipe, she repeated the brief statement.
Dwight Brower, Fulton County’s election chief, told the county’s Board of Commissioners on election night that “there was a pipe that burst in the room where we actually had ballots.”
“Thank goodness that none of those ballots were damaged,” he added.
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