Fulton County Exposed: Biden Victory Marred by 315,000 Unsigned Ballots

Paul Riverbank, 12/24/2025Fulton County’s admission that over 315,000 2020 ballots lacked proper poll worker sign-off intensifies concerns over election procedures and public trust, spotlighting urgent calls for reform while deepening the nation’s partisan divide over the integrity of American democracy.

At the center of this storm sits a step most voters won’t see, but all are meant to trust: before any ballot scanner’s results are certified, election rules say that poll workers must sign “closing tapes.” It's a check against error, providing some assurance the tally matches reality. Yet, as David Cross, an election integrity advocate from the area, pointed out, Fulton County went ahead with certification on hundreds of thousands of early voting ballots without these sign-offs. According to Cross, this meant the county, strictly speaking, lacked legal authority to present those results to the secretary of state.

Ann Brumbaugh, representing the county, didn’t pretend otherwise. Addressing recent reports, she admitted, “We don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.” The official line: since then, procedures and training have been shored up, new faces have stepped in, and the county operates from a different playbook.

However, for many Georgia voters—and Americans watching from farther afield—the damage isn’t so easily repaired. Numbers like 315,000 stick in the mind, perhaps more than procedural explanations or appeals to improved oversight. The shadow they cast goes deeper than the margin between the two candidates. Instead, they raise doubts about whether the system did, in fact, function as intended. Among election skeptics, this is powder for the ongoing fire of mistrust. Yet as critics of the fraud narrative counter, there is no evidence these unsigned ballots were counterfeit or maliciously altered. Rather, the problem was rooted in a lapse in paperwork—a serious one, but not in itself proof of vote tampering.

Still, this procedural breakdown supplied fuel for a partisan showdown that scarcely needed another spark. After the election, cries for audits and accountability rang out, nowhere more than in Georgia. Trump and his supporters seized on the signature issue as a rallying cry, pressuring officials like Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger to explain or rectify the process. Meanwhile, those who raised questions publicly sometimes found themselves facing legal fallout—a development their defenders cited as evidence of a “dangerous overstep.” The boundaries between legal review, political discourse, and criminal prosecution blurred, sometimes perilously so.

In retrospect, Brumbaugh’s assurances that the county has “a new board, a new building, and a new standard operating procedure” offer at least an effort to restore public trust. But reforms enacted in the aftermath don’t erase the concerns tied to what happened in 2020. The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of votes lacked a crucial, legally mandated seal of approval before counting.

This isn’t just a Georgia story. At heart, it’s a question that echoes well beyond one state: Can Americans feel certain their vote not only counts, but is counted in accordance with the rules? Can we insist on answers from officials—whether or not those questions are comfortable—without fear of retribution? Perhaps most crucially, will reforms be enough to repair a fragile public faith, or will the specter of 315,000 unsigned ballots linger, an emblem of what can go wrong even where fraud is not alleged?

The lessons here are neither simple nor easily digested. For all the noise, what endures is a public hungry for accountability, fairness, and the sense that the process, while imperfect, bends as much as possible toward integrity. The work ahead is less about relitigating the past than about insisting the system, and those who steward it, are worthy of our trust—because they earn it, one vote at a time.

Weeks after the story emerged, Fulton County, Georgia found itself thrust into the national spotlight yet again. News had surfaced that over 315,000 votes cast in the pivotal 2020 presidential election—amounting to around 6.5% of all ballots in the state—were processed without the required poll worker signatures. For a state ultimately decided by a mere 11,779 votes, the revelation was bound to set alarm bells ringing.At the center of this storm sits a step most voters won’t see, but all are meant to trust: before any ballot scanner’s results are certified, election rules say that poll workers must sign “closing tapes.” It's a check against error, providing some assurance the tally matches reality. Yet, as David Cross, an election integrity advocate from the area, pointed out, Fulton County went ahead with certification on hundreds of thousands of early voting ballots without these sign-offs. According to Cross, this meant the county, strictly speaking, lacked legal authority to present those results to the secretary of state.Ann Brumbaugh, representing the county, didn’t pretend otherwise. Addressing recent reports, she admitted, “We don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.” The official line: since then, procedures and training have been shored up, new faces have stepped in, and the county operates from a different playbook.However, for many Georgia voters—and Americans watching from farther afield—the damage isn’t so easily repaired. Numbers like 315,000 stick in the mind, perhaps more than procedural explanations or appeals to improved oversight. The shadow they cast goes deeper than the margin between the two candidates. Instead, they raise doubts about whether the system did, in fact, function as intended. Among election skeptics, this is powder for the ongoing fire of mistrust. Yet as critics of the fraud narrative counter, there is no evidence these unsigned ballots were counterfeit or maliciously altered. Rather, the problem was rooted in a lapse in paperwork—a serious one, but not in itself proof of vote tampering.Still, this procedural breakdown supplied fuel for a partisan showdown that scarcely needed another spark. After the election, cries for audits and accountability rang out, nowhere more than in Georgia. Trump and his supporters seized on the signature issue as a rallying cry, pressuring officials like Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger to explain or rectify the process. Meanwhile, those who raised questions publicly sometimes found themselves facing legal fallout—a development their defenders cited as evidence of a “dangerous overstep.” The boundaries between legal review, political discourse, and criminal prosecution blurred, sometimes perilously so.In retrospect, Brumbaugh’s assurances that the county has “a new board, a new building, and a new standard operating procedure” offer at least an effort to restore public trust. But reforms enacted in the aftermath don’t erase the concerns tied to what happened in 2020. The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of votes lacked a crucial, legally mandated seal of approval before counting.This isn’t just a Georgia story. At heart, it’s a question that echoes well beyond one state: Can Americans feel certain their vote not only counts, but is counted in accordance with the rules? Can we insist on answers from officials—whether or not those questions are comfortable—without fear of retribution? Perhaps most crucially, will reforms be enough to repair a fragile public faith, or will the specter of 315,000 unsigned ballots linger, an emblem of what can go wrong even where fraud is not alleged?The lessons here are neither simple nor easily digested. For all the noise, what endures is a public hungry for accountability, fairness, and the sense that the process, while imperfect, bends as much as possible toward integrity. The work ahead is less about relitigating the past than about insisting the system, and those who steward it, are worthy of our trust—because they earn it, one vote at a time.