Fulton County admits verifying votes without poll worker signatures

By Staff
Published: Dec. 23, 2025 at 3:27 PM CST

Quote:ATLANTA, Ga. — Fulton County officials admitted they did not properly sign tabulator tapes after the 2020 election, a violation of state regulations.

The county also noted it had misplaced other tabulator tapes and documents related to the controversial election.

The admission was made by county attorney Ann Brumbaugh during a Dec. 9 meeting of the Georgia Elections Board.

Tabulator tapes are essentially receipts printed from ballot tabulation machines that help to verify the number of voters matches the number of votes. They are a key piece of the verification and certification process in every county election across the state.

Georgia law states that a poll manager and two witnesses be present for the printing, checking and signing of each tape from the machines.

“We do not dispute that the tapes were not signed, it was a violation of the rule,” said county attorney Ann Brumbaugh. “It’s a violation of a rule, they should have done it.”

Brumbaugh said since the 2020 vote, the county has made significant changes to ensure it didn’t happen again.

“Procedures have been updated, people are taking this very seriously now,” she said. “Since then the training has been enhanced, the poll watchers are trained specifically, they’ve got to sign the tapes in the morning and they’ve got to sign the tapes when they’re run at the end of the day.”

Over 300,000 ballots in Fulton County were included in the count without proper signature verification.

That means those 300,000+ ballots are void and should not have been included in the total vote count.

Fulton County's defense? "People are taking this very seriously now." We won't do it again.