There’s a narrative developing out of Georgia that claims 315,000 votes were illegally counted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia, and — as the story goes — since Trump only lost the state by 11,780 votes, this new revelation means Trump rightfully won Georgia and therefore won the entire presidential election and Rudy Giuliani was right all along, and Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss should give back the money they won against Rudy for defamation, and Trump should be declared the real winner of the 2020 election.
This story exploded in rightwing media outlets after Fulton County officials recently admitted in a meeting of the State Elections Board that they did not properly sign tabulator tapes corresponding with 315,000 votes after the 2020 election.
Georgia is said — by the Republican Secretary of State — to have the most secure elections in the country because we use paper ballots… we do not use “voting machines.”
When a voter walks up to a voting booth, there is a “machine” in the booth, with a screen displaying the choices for each contest. This “machine” is officially called a “ballot marking device” because it does not record votes like a voting machine does — it is merely a tool, much like a pencil, that simply serves as the mechanism for putting the voter’s choices onto the paper ballot.
There is a separate laser printer attached to each ballot marking device. Once a voter finishes making selections, the voter presses the “print” button, and a paper ballot is then printed containing all the voter’s selections.
The voter checks the paper ballot to make sure it correctly printed the voter’s choices. The voter then walks up to the “vote tabulator” also known as a “ballot scanner” and feeds the printed paper ballot into the scanner.
At the end of the day, when the polls close, the poll manager and two witnesses, sworn as poll officers, open the ballot scanner and cause it to print out a receipt tape that verifies the number of votes that were scanned. They are required to print out three copies of the receipt tape, and the two witnesses are required to sign all three tapes.
According to Rule 183-1-12-.12 (Tabulating Results), one of the three tapes of the tabulated results printed from the ballot scanner shall be affixed to the door of the polling place for the information of the public. One tape shall be placed into an envelope which shall be sealed by the poll manager and the same two witnesses, such that the envelope cannot be opened without breaking the seal. The poll manager and the two witnesses shall initial the envelope indicating that it contains the correct tape and memory card from the indicated ballot scanner. The third tape shall be placed into another envelope with the polling place recap form.
There is no allegation that anything improper went on with the printed paper BALLOTS (votes) in Fulton County. The ballots, which are scanned by the ballot scanner or vote tabulator, go inside the scanner into a locked box.
What the Fulton County officials recently admitted to doing, is failing to have the two witnesses sign the receipt tapes which were printed by the ballot scanner — a mere clerical error that didn’t affect the actual paper ballots (votes) in any way whatsoever, according to the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican.
While the State Elections Board — which is heavily Republican and has been on a five-year mission to prove Trump won the 2020 election — referred the matter of the unsigned tapes to the state attorney general, it is unlikely anything will come of it, primarily because the requirement that the two witnesses sign the tape is a RULE promulgated by the Secretary of State’s office; not a LAW passed by the legislature — it carries no criminal penalties for failing to sign the tapes.
Moreover, the actual paper ballots were re-counted — TWICE — after the 2020 election, once by hand.
The Georgia law that established this new system of voting that began with the 2020 election, required the Secretary of State to pick an election to conduct a hand-recount to ensure the accuracy of the new system.
Raffensperger picked the 2020 presidential election for this “Risk Limiting Audit” and ordered a full hand-recount of every single paper ballot cast in all 159 counties across Georgia. On November 19, 2020, he announced the results — they verified the previous machine counts compiled from all the ballot scanners.
Furthermore, since the statewide results were less than a half percent apart, Trump, as the loser, was authorized to request — and did request — a second recount.
Every ballot in Georgia that had first been counted on election night by the ballot scanners, and then counted a second time by hand, were counted a third time by being fed into the ballot scanners again.
The results were the same in all three counts of the paper ballots — Trump legitimately lost Georgia.
Nothing is going to come of this latest freak-out on the right. Rudy Giuliani still defamed Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely accusing them of fraudulently adding votes to Biden’s column and they are not going to have to give back any of the settlement money they obtained from him.
The election in Georgia for 2020 is not going to be overturned. No poll worker is going to jail for failing to sign a receipt tape.
This is much ado about nothing.
And even if by some incredible long shot, Georgia’s results were retroactively declared to be invalid in 2020, Georgia only has 16 electoral votes and Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 74 electoral votes… 306 Biden to 232 Trump.
Interestingly, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the national law firm based in Washington DC and Los Angeles that “heroically” represented Freeman and Moss in the settlement they secured against Giuliani in February 2025, immediately bowed their knees to Trump in March 2025, agreeing to donate $100 million in free legal services to whatever cause Trump directs them to pursue.
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