ATLANTA — Fulton County's admission that more than 130 tabulator tapes, the receipt-like pieces of paper that contain vote tabulation information for a particular machine, were unsigned in 2020 has brought the spotlight back on Georgia's election that year.
The records account for virtually all of the county's early in-person votes in 2020, more than 315,000. Fulton County addressed the issue of the unsigned tapes, raised in complaint SEB 2022-015, before the State Election Board earlier this month, in a moment that has gained increasing attention this week, including from figures such as Elon Musk after The Federalist reported on it.
The county contends, in essence, that poll workers five years ago made an administrative error that they've taken steps to resolve — attorney Ann Brumbaugh represented the county at the hearing on December 9, and said those steps include enhanced training for election workers as well as a review process on handling the paper records, known as tabulator tapes, and a self-initiated investigation process if they're not signed.
The tapes are a part of the record-keeping and chain of custody procedure outlined in state regulations. Georgia state Rule 183-1-12-.12 requires a poll manager and two witnesses to print three such tapes, and "sign each tape indicating that it is a true and correct copy of the tape produced by the ballot scanner."
That was not done with the more than 130 early in-person tapes (encompassing 315,000+ votes) in Fulton County in 2020 that were obtained in open records requests by activists.
"I do not dispute that the tapes were not signed. It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, we have new leadership, and a new building and a new board, new standard operating procedures. Since then the training has been enhanced, the poll watchers are trained specifically, they've gotta sign the tapes in the morning and they've gotta sign the tapes when they're run at the end of the day," Brumbaugh said in the meeting. "...This case is about tapes that are not signed, which is a violation of a rule not a statute, but a rule they should have done... like I said, if they weren't signed they weren't signed — procedures have been updated, people are taking this very seriously now."
Janelle King, one of the board members, said "at best this is sloppy and it's lazy, at worst it could be egregious." Dr. Janice Johnston, the board's vice chair who ran the meeting with Chair John Fervier not present, called the case "troubling."
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement Saturday that, "All voters were verified with photo ID and lawfully cast their ballots. A clerical error at the end of the day does not erase valid, legal votes."
Ultimately the SEB voted 3-0 to refer the case to the Georgia Attorney General's Office for possible sanctions against Fulton County, as well as requesting a $5,000 fine for each of the missing tabulator tapes — possibly totaling $670,000 or more.
As a related but separate matter, there are 10 of 148 total tapes missing entirely, the subject of another, earlier complaint. Those encompass more than 20,000 votes which became the subject of a claim in 2023 that they "didn't exist."
A spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office at that time, Mike Hassinger, said poll tapes are one part of how "vote totals are recorded multiple ways to provide redundancy and security."
"A scanner that didn’t produce a poll tape would have no effect on the number or validity of the votes cast," Hassinger said. "Poll tapes are not supposed to go missing, but precincts are managed by human beings who sometimes make mistakes."
David Cross, who brought the SEB 2022-015 complaint at issue this month, presented a competing vision of the seriousness of poll tapes.
"These are not clerical errors, they are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification," he said at the December 9 meeting, adding that the lack of signatures on the tapes meant Fulton County "had no lawful authority to certify its advance voting results to the Secretary of State, yet did."
That spoke to a deeper debate now ongoing about how to treat the legitimacy of mishandled votes.
Some reports on the Fulton admission have referenced the county "illegally certifying" the votes with unsigned poll tapes. A ruling by Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney in another matter on certification held in 2024 that counties must certify their results "under any circumstance." The Georgia Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in July, emphasizing how state law uses the word "shall" in relation to certification and citing a "mandatory duty to certify election results."
King, at the December 9 meeting, acknowledged that standing law but disagreed with it.
"I know according to the new law, now you have to certify even if there's missing tapes, I get it, even if the data's wrong, even if we have elections... where there's clearly been some improprieties, where the board members do not want to certify. But according to the law you gotta do it anyway," she said. "That's insanity."
The notion of nullifying votes or decertifying an election also came before (now-retired) federal Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr, a George W. Bush appointment, when President Donald Trump's attorney Sidney Powell sued against Georgia's election results in December 2020.
"They ask the Court to order the Secretary of State to decertify the election results as if such a mechanism even exists, and I find that it does not," Judge Batten said then.
It's unclear, following the board's vote to send the case to the Attorney General's Office, when there might be movement on the case next. The motion also made a request for additional tapes that may not have been unearthed — Cross noted he received no opening, start-of-day or "zero" tapes in his records request — with the board asserting there are hundreds of additional boxes of election material that haven't been examined in Fulton County's possession.
Those materials are now also the subject of a Department of Justice lawsuit, as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon seeks access to them on behalf of the State Election Board. Brumbaugh noted she was not representing Fulton County in that matter, and could not speak to any additional boxes or, potentially, tapes.
You can watch the full December 9 proceeding in the archived live stream of the State Election Board meeting. The matter involving Fulton County plays out from roughly 6 hours, 31 minutes to 7 hours, 8 minutes:
