Video doesn’t show a ‘Democratic operative’ making credible 2020 Georgia election fraud allegations

Across the U.S., voters are focused on the 2024 presidential election, visiting polls and casting ballots. On social media, however, some social media users’ sights are set firmly on reexamining the last presidential election’s results.

Conservative commentator Steven Crowder shared a video to his Instagram account that purported to feature a man named Joel Caldwell. 

"CAUGHT ON TAPE: Democratic Operative Details Potentially Illegal Ballot Harvesting Schemes Used to Rig American Elections; Appears to Admit 2020 Election Fraud Took Place in Georgia," Crowder captioned the Oct. 28 post, which accompanied what looks like a surreptitiously recorded video of a man talking about the 2020 election in Georgia. 

Crowder tied the video to the current election with a warning for his followers: "please be aware of this type of activity ahead of Election Day!" 

He shared this video on Instagram, Facebook and X. Conservative websites including The Gateway Pundit also covered it. 

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(Screenshot from Instagram)

The video does not include credible allegations of fraud during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. In it, Caldwell mentions a specific incident involving a plumbing leak, but officials who investigated the situation found no evidence of fraud. State investigations more broadly have uncovered no evidence of widespread fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Caldwell is not linked to the Democratic Party.

In tiny text, the video provided a disclaimer: "This opinion piece is presented for informational and discussion purposes only. The truth or falsity of these statements has not been verified." 

A person identified only as an "undercover journalist" filmed Caldwell, and the video showed no sign that Caldwell knew he was being recorded. We contacted Crowder to ask whether it was someone working for his show, "Louder With Crowder," and received no response. The video itself included no such disclosure.

Dates that appear on the screen said Caldwell was filmed on Feb. 6, 2024, in the first portion of the video, and Nov. 18, 2023, in the second portion. 

In just over nine minutes, Caldwell made multiple claims about Georgia’s 2020 election, including that: 

• A plumbing leak at a Georgia vote counting center was used as cover for fraud that undercounted votes for former President Donald Trump.

• Video of a man putting 100 ballots into a ballot box proved fraud. 

• "Groups" paid people to collect absentee ballots and drop them in ballot boxes and, as Caldwell put it, "forge ’em."

These claims are inaccurate. President Joe Biden won the election. States certified the results, Congress accepted the results and Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. Although Trump continues to repeat the false claim that the election was stolen, Republican officials in Trump’s administration and in Georgia said the 2020 election was safe and secure. 

In January, Georgia’s secretary of state’s office spokesperson Mike Hassinger told PolitiFact that at least 16 individual lawsuits were filed in Georgia to challenge the validity of Georgia’s 2020 election results. 

"Twelve were dismissed by the courts, and four withdrawn by former President Trump’s own lawyers," he said. 

Nationwide, Trump and his allies lost more than 60 legal cases challenging the election outcome. A group of conservatives, including former federal judges, examined Trump and his allies’ fraud and miscount claims and concluded that they "failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results."

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“The cheat has begun” because “Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania have officially announced that they will not have election results available on election night.”

PolitiFact and other news organizations have rebutted Caldwell’s Georgia-specific claims:

No proof of a leak-related cover-up: At around 6 a.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, there was a water leak at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, affecting the room where election workers from Fulton County, Georgia, were counting absentee ballots. Arena staff repaired the leak in about two hours, the arena said. Neither ballots nor tabulation equipment were damaged and the leak caused only "a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots," arena officials said in a statement. 

On Dec. 5, 2021, Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state’s chief investigator, wrote in an affidavit that the secretary of state’s office had begun investigating after it received complaints that Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections staff had "directed clerks, public observers and media personnel to leave" because of the leak — even though county staff continued to scan ballots. 

Watson wrote that the morning leak "did not affect the counting of votes" later that day. Investigators interviewed witnesses and reviewed security footage from the arena taken from  Nov. 3, 2020, to Nov. 4, 2020, and "discovered that observers and media were not asked to leave," he wrote, noting that "they simply left on their own."  

No evidence of widespread fraud or many illegally submitted absentee ballots: Caldwell’s second and third allegations sound like descriptions of "ballot harvesting," a term that generally refers to someone collecting absentee ballots and submitting them on others’ behalf. 

We were unable to find a video of a man depositing 100 ballots, as Caldwell mentioned. But investigations into allegations that three surveillance clips showed people dropping off multiple absentee ballots illegally proved the claims false. When state investigators interviewed the people shown depositing ballots, they learned those people were dropping off ballots for members of their households, which is legal in Georgia, The Washington Post reported. 

Nevertheless, conservative groups continuously pushed baseless claims — often from anonymous sources — about election fraud, often focused on ballot drop boxes. State officials said these claims lacked evidence. 

Election fraud incidents in Georgia were so isolated that they could not have changed the election’s outcome. The Associated Press reported that officials in 24 of Georgia’s 159 counties identified 64 potential voter fraud cases. Of those, about half were determined to be an administrative error or other kind of mistake. Georgia’s election results show Biden won the state by 11,779 votes.

"Nobody forged any ballots in the 2020 election," Hassinger said. "Georgia ballots are printed on security paper with detectable polymers embedded in them. This year, they’ll also be watermarked." 

The video identified Caldwell as "director of operations" for "Coalition for the People’s Agenda (GA)." The job aligns with a since-removed LinkedIn profile result for Joel Caldwell. 

We tried calling Caldwell, left a message, and received no response. 

We contacted The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda to ask about Caldwell and received no response before publication. The group does not list its employees on its website. 

The coalition describes itself as an "umbrella organization" of groups that "advocate for voting rights protection, elimination of barriers to the ballot box, criminal justice reform, quality education, affordable housing, economic development and equal participation in the political process for Georgians of color and underrepresented communities."

The posts identified Caldwell as a "Democratic operative," so we searched using Google and Nexis, a news database, and found no news reports or other information supporting the post’s assertion that Caldwell was involved with Georgia’s Democratic Party. PolitiFact couldn’t find voter registration information for Caldwell.  

Dave Hoffman, the Democratic Party of Georgia’s communications director, said no one named Joel Caldwell was on the party’s payroll during the 2020 election cycle — or is involved with the party now. He stressed that Democratic Party of Georgia is not the same as the The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, which he was unfamiliar with. 

Google search results for Caldwell also signaled that he once worked with Georgia STAND-UP, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization advocating for voting and other civic engagement, access to public transportation, affordable housing and Medicaid expansion in Georgia. We contacted Georgia STAND-UP and received no response. 

Hassinger, of Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, said he’d never heard of Joel Caldwell, although the The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda has sued the agency, along with other organizations, over alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the U.S. Constitution’s First and Fourteenth amendments.

"He’s never been employed by nor associated with the Secretary of State," Hassinger said. "The claims of election insecurity and ballot harvesting in the 2020 election in Georgia have been debunked for years, and anyone repeating them is either lying or has been duped."

Instagram posts claim that Video shows a "Democratic operative" making credible allegations of fraud during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

The man in the video is not involved with the Democratic Party of Georgia, a party spokesperson said. In the video, the man made unspecific, unsubstantiated allegations of election malfeasance or revived long-debunked claims. The 2020 presidential election ballots in Georgia were counted three times and Biden won each time. Republican state officials deny allegations of widespread fraud.

We rate the claim False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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