The Georgia State Election Board found that Fulton County failed to have poll workers sign tabulation tapes for early voting in 36 of 37 advanced voting precincts in 2020, impacting about 315,000 ballots, and county counsel admitted the tapes were unsigned while insisting procedures have since changed.
The board’s finding is stark: tabulator tapes used during early voting lacked the required poll worker signatures in nearly every advanced precinct, breaking the chain of custody required by Georgia law and leaving roughly 315,000 ballots uncertified. That legal requirement is not a formality; Georgia statutes treat signed tabulator tapes as the sole legal proof that reported totals are authentic, so missing signatures trigger questions about lawful certification. The investigation centered on whether those procedural failures meant advanced voting totals were ever lawfully certified before being folded into the statewide count. The scale of the lapse—hundreds of thousands of votes—elevates this from clerical error to a systemic breakdown in basic election controls.
At a December 9 meeting, Ann Brumbaugh, attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, told the state board plainly that Fulton County “does not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” That admission directly contradicts repeated claims that the 2020 contest was the “most secure” and “most audited” election in history. Brumbaugh also described changes since 2020, saying, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership, and a new building, and a new board, and a new standard operating procedures. And since then, the training has been enhanced.” She added, “But we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.”
Local election integrity activist David Cross filed a formal challenge in March 2022 alleging Fulton County illegally counted those roughly 315,000 early votes without required poll worker signatures. He argued the absence of signed tapes meant there was no lawful certification for advanced voting totals, and he testified to the state board about the irregularities he found. Cross framed the issue as legal and statutory rather than political, insisting Georgia law sets a clear procedure that was not followed.
Cross stated bluntly, “These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” and added, “Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.” He continued, “These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” and argued, “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.” Those words underscore the legal stakes: if the tapes are the only legal certification and they do not exist, then the county could not have lawfully certified those results.
Cross pressed the point further with a statutory framing: “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.” That summary is stark and deliberate; it leaves little room for minimizing the significance of the missing signatures. The assertion forces a legal question about what happens when a county reports totals that lack the required statutory certification and whether higher officials properly verified them before incorporation into statewide totals.
The fallout cuts into political narratives about 2020. For years, many in the media and politics insisted that questioning the results was irresponsibly undermining democracy. Yet this admission from county counsel and the board’s finding show procedural breakdowns that deserve scrutiny regardless of partisan outcome. One widely circulated commentary pointed to consequences for those who raised questions then, noting that some were prosecuted while these procedural issues remained unaddressed.
That line of commentary quoted David Strom at Hot Air: “I seem to recall that President Trump was being prosecuted for making claims about the voting process in Georgia, and that the whole ‘election denial’ narrative that Democrats have slandered Trump with was based on his ‘lies’ that have turned out, unsurprisingly, to be true.” Including that passage preserves an argument made by critics who say certain claims dismissed as false at the time now appear to rest on factual footing. The contrast between aggressive prosecution of critics and the newly acknowledged procedural failures is politically sharp.
The board’s finding and the county’s admission do not automatically answer every legal question, but they create a clear set of issues that state officials and voters should reckon with. The basic facts—unsigned tapes, statutory certification requirements, and the count of roughly 315,000 affected early votes—are now on the record. How Georgia treats those facts in law and policy will shape trust in future elections and the rules counties must follow to produce results that are plainly lawful and verifiable.
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