Five years after the 2020 presidential election, GOP-led Georgia is still facing repercussions from Fulton County’s issues, as the state is also under scrutiny by the Justice Department for voter roll maintenance.

Georgia continues to face election integrity issues as more information regarding the 2020 election has come to light, while the state pushes back against federal oversight.

Last month, Fulton County informed the State Elections Board that tabulator tapes were not properly signed after the 2020 election, in violation of state regulations, Atlanta News First reported. Also, the county explained that it had misplaced other tabulator tapes and documents from that election.

"People are taking this very seriously now," county official says

The tabulator tapes are essentially receipts printed from ballot tabulation machines used to verify that the number of voters matches the number of votes. According to Georgia regulations, a poll manager and two witnesses must be present for the printing, checking, and signing of each tape from the machines.

Ann Brumbaugh, an attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, told the board on Dec. 9, “We do not dispute that the tapes were not signed. It was a violation of the rule. They should have done it.”

She said that since the 2020 election, the county has made significant changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“Procedures have been updated. People are taking this very seriously now,” Brumbaugh said. “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.”

Shenanigans involve early voters' ballots

About 130 of the unsigned tapes from voting machines accounted for 315,000 early voters in 2020, which is almost every ballot cast before Election Day.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) posted on X on Dec. 20 regarding the alleged procedural errors made by Fulton County in 2020, “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.”

Janelle King, a Republican member of the State Elections Board, said, “At best, this is sloppy and lazy. At worst, it could be egregious, and it could have affected an election.”

Garland Favorito, who leads election watchdog group VoterGA, told WRDW regarding the Fulton County election issue, “It’s not vindication, it’s just about accuracy and the integrity and security of future elections. A clerical error could be one tabulator tape not signed or one tabulator tape missing. Not 148 tabulator tapes missing.”

The State Election Board unanimously voted to refer the case to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, where Fulton County could be fined as much as $5,000 for each missing or unsigned tabulator tape.

Robert Sinners, communications director for the Secretary of State's Office, told The Center Square, "The basis for these claims is that Fulton County admitted to sloppy election administration and not following a State Election Board rule. There is no mechanism in law to overturn the election based on not following this rule – as it wasn’t even part of the election code – it was a procedural rule."

Georgia State Sen. Colton Moore (RD), who is running for Congress to replace Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, told The Center Square, "I think there needs to be an investigation into these ballots and people need to be prosecuted. If the law isn’t going to be enforced, then that sets a precedent going forward."

The feds step in

"I’m hopeful the Justice Department will impound the 2020 ballots and conduct a count that’s open to the public," Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer told The Center Square. "Maybe we need to put an asterisk next to the election results in the history books and determine who’s responsible for these errors and hold them accountable."

Just the News reported that the Justice Department on Dec. 12 sued Fulton County, seeking records related to the 2020 general election.

The department claimed the lawsuit comes after it sent a letter to the Fulton County clerk in November seeking ballot stubs and signature envelopes from the election, which allegedly went unanswered.

Meanwhile, the DOJ is also suing Georgia for refusing to turn over the state’s voter registration lists.

On Dec. 18, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announced that it filed lawsuits against Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., for failing “to produce their full voter registration lists upon request.” Including those lawsuits, the DOJ has now sued 22 states over failing to provide their voter roll information.

The DOJ cited the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 for its authority in ensuring that states are maintaining their voter rolls.

State's "privacy" concerns are "total nonsense": Dhillon

While states have cited privacy concerns as reasons not to turn over their voter rolls, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said during a Just the News and Real America's Voice special report with AMAC last month that she is asking only for "stuff like the last four [digits] of somebody's [Social Security Number], whether someone's in the country legally or not, or is a citizen or not,” which “is obviously a matter of federal records.

“So the concept that that's some kind of a privacy issue is total nonsense. So they have no right to be on the voter rolls. And so we expect to win these cases, but it may take us going up to the Supreme Court to do that.”

Dhillon also laid out states’ arguments over privacy, noting that “they're saying, ‘our state law doesn't allow this.’ But federal law regarding elections and this data trumps state law, and we're talking about federal elections and people who vote for president, Senate, Congress. We have a right at the federal government level to ensure that only American citizens are voting at only one time in one state when they vote. And so this is a no-brainer.”