Are 315,000 unsigned early votes in Fulton County, Georgia proof of electoral fraud? No, that's not true. The Georgia secretary of state told Lead Stories that the missing signatures were the result of a clerical error and did not invalidate legally cast votes. An election expert told Lead Stories that the minor administrative error did not affect the final results of the election, as shown by multiple counts of all ballots in Georgia.
The claim appeared in a December 18, 2025 post on X.com/C_3C_3 (archived here). It opened:
Well well well...
Here's the latest from STOLEN Georgia.
Biden: 2,473,633
Trump: 2,461,854Biden "won" by 11,779 votes.
Fulton County admits certifying 315,000 fraudulent early votes without poll worker signatures.
Crime of the century.
People should already be in prison.
This is what the post looked like on X.com at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of x.com/C_3C_3.)
Claims about 315,000 allegedly fraudulent early votes without poll worker signatures circulated in December 2025 following a hearing on a complaint filed with the Georgia State Election Board. Fulton County did not deny that some tabulator tapes from the 2020 election were unsigned, representing about 315,000 votes.
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, shared a statement with Lead Stories on December 22, 2025 via phone about the claims:
Georgia has the most secure elections in the country and 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.
Raffensberger posted the same message on his X.com/GaSecofState account as this screenshot shows:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of x.com/GaSecofState.)
David Becker, executive director and founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, told Lead Stories in a December 22, 2025, email that "The failure to sign the tapes would be a minor administrative issue," and continued:
There are minor administrative issues in every major election, where over 150 million Americans are doing something they don't do every day (voting), in a process run by a million volunteers. Mistakes happen, which is why so many redundancies and checks and balances are built into the process.
Becker said Georgia thoroughly counted the ballots from the 2020 election multiple times, with the results never changing from Biden winning the race:
The Fulton County situation is a perfect example. If those tapes weren't signed, there were subsequent opportunities for the counts to be confirmed. The 2020 presidential ballots in Georgia were counted, statewide, three times, three different ways. Initially, and unofficially, through the tabulators. They were recounted again, at President Trump's request, through different tabulators, confirming the result. Then every single presidential ballot in Georgia -- all paper -- were recounted by hand in every county, transparently observed by representatives of the campaigns, again confirming the results. Over 5 million ballots counted by hand to confirm the results.
A hearing about the complaint was held on December 9, 2025, and according to the transcript from the video of the State Election Board meeting posted on the Georgia State Election Board YouTube account, attorney Ann Brumbaugh represented the county and said they "do not dispute that the tapes were not signed," and while that was a violation of the rule and an error by the poll watchers, they have new standard operating procedures and have enhanced the poll watcher training:
I've not seen the tapes myself, but we do not dispute that the tapes were not signed. It was a violation of the rule. Since 2020, again we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and new standard operating procedures and 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. When the tapes come back to the hub for you know with all the documentation they are checked again and if somebody forgot to sign a tape then Fulton initiates an investigation. But we don't dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.
David Cross, who filed the complaint, spoke in front of the board at the Dec. 9 meeting, saying that he disagreed with Fulton County's statement that the certification of votes without a poll watcher signature was a serious violation:
These are not clerical errors, they are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification.
Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the Secretary of State. Yet, it did. And Secretary Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia's official total without questioning them. This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law.
The board begins discussing the complaint at approximately 6:29 in the video posted on YouTube:
The State Election Board voted to refer the case to the Georgia Attorney General's Office for violation of the rule for tabulating results.
