(Ana Usma) – In January 2026, a comprehensive investigative report submitted to the Georgia State Election Board reached a conclusion that is both narrow and consequential: Fulton County’s 2020 election results cannot be independently verified because the records required to validate them were never created, were compromised, or were later destroyed.
The report, prepared by Election Oversight Group, LLC, does not allege that every vote was fraudulent, nor does it claim to definitively know who won the election.
Instead, it advances a more fundamental argument—one rooted in election law and auditability rather than partisan outcomes.
According to the report, the election process in Fulton County failed at the level of basic compliance, leaving no reliable way to confirm the accuracy of the final results.
A process that could not be audited
At the center of the report is a breakdown of election safeguards designed to ensure that votes can be verified after the fact. These safeguards include pre-election testing of voting equipment, documented chain of custody for ballots, voter verification procedures, and preservation of records for audit and review.
The report states that voting machines used across Georgia were reprogrammed shortly before the election and deployed before required testing was completed.
In Fulton County, these machines were then used for early voting without legally mandated Logic and Accuracy testing.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of ballots were cast on systems that had not been properly certified for use.
Compounding this issue, the report alleges that ballot results for early voting were produced on machines different from those that originally scanned the ballots—breaking chain-of-custody requirements and making it impossible to trace votes back to the equipment that counted them.
Absentee ballots without verification
Absentee voting expanded dramatically in 2020 due to the pandemic, and Georgia law required election officials to verify absentee ballots by comparing voter signatures on ballot envelopes with signatures on file.
According to the report, Fulton County did not perform this verification in any meaningful way, rejecting only a handful of ballots out of approximately 148,000 absentee votes.
Because signature verification was the only method of confirming voter identity for absentee ballots at the time, the report argues that the county cannot demonstrate that these ballots were lawfully cast.
The failure to perform this step, the report claims, eliminated a core anti-fraud safeguard built into state law.
The unexplained ballot surplus
One of the most controversial findings in the report concerns Fulton County’s order of more than one million additional absentee ballots—far exceeding both the number of ballots cast and the number of registered voters in the county.
These ballots were ordered without envelopes or tracking stubs and were printed after they could realistically be mailed to voters.
While ordering ballots is not itself illegal, the report argues that the timing, quantity, and lack of tracking features created an opportunity for misuse.
The situation became more concerning when the county later destroyed many of these ballots, leaving a significant number unaccounted for and eliminating the ability to verify how many remained unused.
Records destroyed, audits undermined
Perhaps the most consequential allegation is the destruction of election records. The report states that all ballot images for in-person voting—more than 370,000 ballots—were destroyed, along with authentication files for most absentee ballots.
These digital records function as the forensic backbone of election audits; without them, independent verification is impossible.
Subsequent audits and recounts did not resolve these issues.
According to the report, the hand-count audit introduced thousands of fictitious votes due to documentation errors, while the recount counted some ballots twice and excluded others entirely. In most precincts, the number of ballots reported differed between the original count and the recount—an outcome that undermines confidence in both.
What the report actually claims
The report does not assert widespread voter fraud, nor does it accuse voters of wrongdoing.
Its claim is procedural, not ideological: an election that cannot be audited cannot be validated.
In the absence of preserved records and legally compliant procedures, the report argues, the outcome cannot be proven accurate—regardless of who ultimately benefited.
Why this matters now
The significance of the report lies less in revisiting the 2020 election and more in what it says about election administration going forward.
Elections depend not only on public trust, but on verifiable processes that can withstand scrutiny long after votes are cast. When records are missing or destroyed, trust becomes a matter of belief rather than proof.
The Fulton County report raises a difficult question for policymakers and election officials alike: Is an election legitimate if its results cannot be independently verified?
How that question is answered may shape the future of election law, oversight, and reform well beyond a single county or election cycle.
Digital technology was used in the research, writing, and production of this article. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.