Almost three years after the 2020 election, the mother and daughter poll workers falsely accused of participating in wild claims of election fraud by Donald Trump, have had their names officially cleared.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss had their lives turned upside down by conspiracy theorists beholden to the former president’s lies about vote counting at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
Now, the state’s election board has dismissed its yearslong investigation into the allegations, more than two years after Mr Trump falsely claimed that Ms Freeman and Ms Moss were part of a conspiracy to rob him of the 2020 election.
His claims were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit,” the investigation concluded, reporting on the work of the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and investigators from the secretary of state’s office vetting the alleged fraud.
Mr Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani both repeatedly claimed that the mother and daughter had committed electoral fraud, offering as alleged proof a heavily edited clip of security footage that was widely circulated on social media. Mr Trump called Ms Freeman “a professional vote scammer and hustler”.
During a state legislative hearing in December 2020, Mr Giuliani accused the two Black women of “surreptitiously passing around” a USB drive as if it was “heroin or cocaine” while they counted election results in Fulton County and demanded that their homes and workplaces be searched by authorities.
Ms Moss later explained her mother handed her a ginger mint during ballot counting.
Ms Freeman and Ms Moss both testified to the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot and the wider lies around the 2020 election about their experience, including being confronted at home by conspiracy theorists, leading them to flee.
The former president specifically targeted Ms Freeman in his posts online — including as recently as January — and both women were relentlessly harassed despite state officials’ repeated insistence that they had done nothing wrong.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss testify at the Capitol Riot investigation hearings— (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere,” Ms Freeman said last June in her January 6 testimony. “I have lost my name and I have lost my reputation. ... All because a group of people starting with number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter.”
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailed the conclusion of the investigation in a statement on Wednesday: “False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines.”
The mother and daughter have sued both individual and news outlets who propagated the conspiracies against them, with One America News settling a defamation suit. Other lawsuits are ongoing.
Hundreds of election workers and administrators who run the nation’s elections face “alarming” levels of abuse, largely fuelled by baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories and Mr Trump’s campaign to reject the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
One in six election workers have been threatened because of their job, according to a 2022 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, revealing the “damaging” and “sustained” attacks against people who help run the nation’s elections and put the business of “election administration and our democratic system in serious danger.”
More than half of poll respondents reported harassment on social media, on the phone, or while on the job.
