Fulton County admits 315,000 votes were counted in 2020 election without legal certification in Georgia

A Georgia State Election Board (SEB) hearing earlier in December regarding a challenge raised by local election integrity activist David Cross, per The Federalist. Cross had filed the challenge in March of 2022, alleging that Fulton County had violated state election rules in the handling of early voting during the 2020 election season, with hundreds of thousands of vote being counted despite poll workers not signing off on vote tabulation "tapes," which are critical to the certification process.

Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections Ann Brumbaugh said during the hearing that while she has "not seen the tapes," the county does "not dispute that the tapes were not signed." She added, "It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and new standard operating procedures. And since then, the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election."

Under Georgia’s election rules, election officials are required to have each ballot scanner print three closing tapes at the end of each voting day, which poll workers must sign or include a documented reason for refusal. Poll workers are also required to start each voting day by printing and signing a "zero tape" that shows voting machines are starting the day with zero votes.

An investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office "sustained" findings that Fulton County "violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by SEB rules]." The investigation had also found that officials at 32 sites did not verify their zero tapes.

Cross said at the December hearing, "These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic. Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting." He said that he had obtained 77 megabytes of data from the county through an open records request, and that this included 134 tabulator tapes, representing 315,000 votes, none of which were signed.

He noted other irregularities in the election, including polling locations being open "impossibly late hours, like 2:09 am," and that he had found "duplicated scanner serial numbers, where the memory devices were removed from one scanner and printed on an alternate scanner."

“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said, adding, "Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did. And Secretary Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them. This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law. When the law demands three signatures on tabulator tapes and the county fails to follow the rules, those 315,000 votes are, by definition, uncertified."

Cross is demanding that the SEB "impose sanctions on Fulton County, have them publicly acknowledge their violations, and for the state to decertify Fulton County’s 2020 advanced voting results. It’s not to change who sits in the White House or what the score was, but, but instead to place an indelible and permanent asterisk on the record and finally force accountability."