What did Georgia’s official audits and recounts find about Fulton County’s 2020 totals?
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Executive summary
Georgia’s official post‑2020 tallies — the initial machine tabulation, a hand‑count risk‑limiting audit (RLA), and a machine recount — produced highly similar totals for Fulton County and for the state, confirming Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia; the audits and recounts did identify human errors (including some duplicate entries and omitted batches) in Fulton’s audit process but found those mistakes were not large enough to change the outcome [1] [2] [3].
1. What the three official tallies showed: consistent results across methods
The Secretary of State’s machine tabulation and the two subsequent official checks produced close numbers: Fulton’s initial tabulation reported roughly 524,659 presidential votes (about 381,144 for Biden and 137,240 for Trump), while the hand‑count RLA found 525,293 total votes in Fulton (381,179 for Biden, 137,620 for Trump) — differences measured in the hundreds, not tens of thousands, and consistent enough that the statewide recount likewise left the certified result intact [1] [4] [2].
2. Errors the audits actually documented: human mistakes, transcription and process lapses
State investigators and reporting by The Atlanta Journal‑Constitution (AJC) and AP documented that Fulton’s Nov. 2020 audit work suffered from human error and rushed procedures: batches were hand‑counted, tallies written on paper and then transcribed to software, and in some cases numbers were re‑entered because the audit software’s status was unclear, producing duplicate entries and transcription mistakes (the AJC estimated roughly 3,000 extra absentee votes were double‑counted in audit paperwork) [3] [2].
3. The technical oddities flagged by outside analysts: missing entries and ABBS issues
Independent analyses (such as the arXiv review) flagged technical irregularities in the audit artifacts: Fulton’s posted ABBS image files contained 1,927 ABBSs and the auditors’ published spreadsheet omitted some hand‑count subtotals and in some places appeared to fail to enter every counted ballot exactly once, producing unexplained differences between batch tallies and the reported audit spreadsheet [5].
4. Official response and remedial steps: discipline, directives, and limits on impact
Following the investigations, Georgia’s State Election Board found procedural violations in how Fulton conducted its audit, ordered the county to change procedures and training, and required oversight measures for future elections — actions premised on procedural lapses rather than a finding that the certified outcomes were wrong; the board’s intervention acknowledges error without overturning results [3] [2].
5. What the mistakes did — and did not — change about the result
Although errors (duplicate entries, omitted or misentered subtotals, missing poll‑tape signatures in some records) were verified in audit files and county communications, multiple independent tallies and a statewide recount before certification produced virtually the same statewide result — Biden’s statewide margin remained in the low tens of thousands (the finalized statewide count after recount/audits showed Biden ahead by roughly 12,284 votes) — and the investigators concluded the identified Fulton errors did not alter the certified outcome [4] [1] [2].
6. Alternative claims, contested narratives, and limits of available reporting
In late‑2025 partisan outlets have publicized newer claims that Fulton “admitted” roughly 315,000 early votes lacked tabulator‑tape signatures (a characterization emphasized by The Federalist and conservative press), but the materials provided here do not include the underlying SEB hearing transcript or an official statewide re‑certification reversing the 2020 totals; reporters and fact‑checkers who reviewed the 2020 audits and recounts have emphasized that other records (memory cards, official canvass reports, the RLA and recount results) document the vote even where individual poll tapes or signatures were missing, and that those checks supported the original outcome [6] [7] [2]. The existing official audits and recounts established procedural errors in Fulton’s audit process but did not find enough miscounted ballots to change who won Georgia in 2020 [1] [3].