An election worker in Georgia has ‘gone into hiding’ after he was threatened and had his personal information leaked over false claims he threw away a ballot. 

The unnamed staff member was filmed using a machine to separate an outer envelope from an inner envelope before he threw away a piece of paper.

It comes as election officials in a number of battleground states say they are worried about the safety of poll workers amid threats and gatherings of protesters outside vote-counting centres.

The video was shared on Twitter where the election worker was falsely accused of throwing away a ballot and then threatened. 

Elections Supervisor Rick Barron said: ‘That has now resulted in someone having to leave his house and go stay with friends. 

‘He’s afraid to drive his car because the information about his car and his license plate is out there.’

He told reporters the worker was not even part of the process where ballots are extracted and was only operating the cutting machine.

He explained that ballots are ‘8 ½ by 19 inches long’ and the worker was seen crumpling up a smaller piece of paper that held instructions. 

He said: ‘These devices are used to cut the envelopes so that you can then separate the outer envelope from the inner envelope.

‘It’s been questioned whether the poll worker featured in the video was discarding one of those ballots.

‘The answer is undeniably no. At no time was the poll worker able to extract a ballot. 

‘I operated one of those machines. The only thing you do at that station is separating the envelopes and cutting them. 

‘Ballot extraction happens at the next stage of the process. And ballot extraction only occurs with the workers who are assigned to those sorting duties.’ 

Barron said he told the worker how sorry he is for everything that has happened to him as he ‘simply wanted to be an election worker and doing nothing but a good job during that’.

He told the press the staff member ‘was one of the workers that we had who trained everyone how to use those cutting machines because he was very good at it and he was the fastest one, we depended on him and he’s no longer out there right now’.

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