Fact-checking misleading claims of 2020 election fraud in Fulton County, Georgia

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, some social media users continue to spread false claims that the 2020 presidential contest was stolen, pointing to purported fraud in Georgia as evidence.

A May 9 Instagram post claimed that Fulton County, Georgia, election officials "scanned more than 3,000 ballots twice during the recount of the 2020 presidential election." The post also claimed, "There are 380,761 ballot images from machine count that are not available from 2020 elections."

The post’s caption read, "Georgia was stolen. But they swore there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. Now there's proof."

Other Instagram posts made similar claims about double-scanned ballots and missing ballot images from the 2020 election in Georgia.

These claims went viral after a May 7 Georgia Elections Board meeting in which board members heard testimony and received findings from a state investigation into multiple allegations of 2020 election fraud in Fulton County. The largely Democratic county, which includes parts of Atlanta, has often been at the center of 2020 voter fraud claims.

The secretary of state’s office began investigating after Georgia resident Joseph Rossi and Texas resident Kevin Moncla filed a complaint in 2022. The complaint accused Fulton County of improperly recounting the 2020 presidential election and said the complainants had found other voting irregularities.

State investigators told the Georgia Elections Board they found errors in Fulton County’s recount of the 2020 presidential contest, but the discrepancies did not significantly change the election results.

Because of these errors, the Georgia Elections Board voted 2-1 to reprimand Fulton County elections officials and ordered the county to install an independent election monitor ahead of the 2024 election.

In the Peach State’s 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 11,779 votes. Three vote counts — the initial machine tabulation, a hand-counted risk-limiting audit and a machine recount — produced similar vote tallies that confirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia.

Fulton County election officials scanned some 2020 ballots twice, but investigators couldn’t determine whether they were counted twice.

State investigators said during the May 7 meeting that they found 3,075 duplicate ballot images in Fulton County from the statewide machine recount of the 2020 presidential election. They couldn’t determine whether any duplicates were tabulated in the recount.

Ballot images are not counted as votes, the state investigators said. Election workers use these electronic pictures of ballots during vote tabulation to ensure the vote count’s accuracy, they said.

For instance, if a ballot scanner detects an ambiguous mark that it can’t read, an election worker will compare the ballot image with the paper ballot to determine where the mark is and what it means, Georgia secretary of state spokesperson Mike Hassinger told PolitiFact.

"If the ‘3,000 duplicate ballot images’ had been counted as votes (again, images are not used to count votes) the results would have been off by 3,000 — and they were not," Hassinger said. Comparing the initial results with the machine recount, there were 880 fewer votes for president counted in the machine recount.

The state investigators explained that the duplicate ballot images likely occurred because an error during the tabulation process required some ballots to be rescanned.

After rescanning these ballots and before submitting the results, election officials could delete the results and ballot images from the first scan, said Charlene McGowan, general counsel for the secretary of state’s office. Election officials might have deleted the duplicate ballot results, but not the duplicate ballot images, she said.

"So, there is a way that it is possible for there to be duplicative ballot images that appear within the images, but not necessarily with the count," McGowan said. "We can't say conclusively one way or the other because ballots are anonymous and there's no way to know for sure."

State and local officials did not substantiate this claim.

During the May 7 meeting, Elections Board member Janice Johnston asked state investigators and Fulton County officials "why 380,761 ballot images from Election Day" are "not available." The Georgia Republican Party appointed Johnston to the board in 2022.

McGowan said state investigators subpoenaed Fulton County for its ballot images from the recount, not Election Day, as the recount is what the complaint disputed.

Fulton County officials said at the meeting they didn’t know about this allegation and so could not comment. PolitiFact also contacted Fulton County’s elections office and received no response.

Hassinger also said he didn’t know where this figure originated.

"The proper answer to ‘unavailable ballot images’ of ANY number is ‘So what?’" he said. "It wasn’t required under the law, and images are not used to tally votes."

In 2020, Georgia law did not require election officials to keep ballot images. In 2021, the state Legislature passed a law requiring ballot images to be retained and subject to public disclosure.

No. All three vote counts in Georgia confirmed that Biden won the state’s 2020 presidential election.

In Fulton County, specifically, the initial tabulation reported 524,659 votes cast in the presidential contest, including 137,240 votes for Donald Trump and 381,144 votes for Joe Biden.

The risk-limiting audit, conducted by hand, found that 525,293 votes were cast in Fulton County for the presidential election, including 137,620 votes for Trump and 381,179 votes for Biden.

Finally, the machine recount, requested by Trump, reported 523,779 votes cast for president in Fulton County. Trump received 137,247 of those votes, a net gain of seven votes; and Biden received 380,212 of the votes, a net loss of 932 votes.