Awaiting Unsealed DOJ Warrant for Fulton Ballots (An Explainer)

Awaiting Unsealed DOJ Warrant for Fulton Ballots

CGG Explainer Series – #1

February 9. 2026

Over the weekend, a federal judge ordered that the affidavit supporting the Department of Justice’s search warrant for Fulton County election records be filed unsealed by 5 pm Tuesday, but urged earlier compliance. Following that order, members of the press and public contacted us at Coalition for Good Governance seeking background and context on what issues we believe may be implicated by the warrant and why these records still matter, five years after the election. This explainer summarizes what we know about the records at issue, key information the public has not been told, and why the unsealing of the affidavit matters now, particularly in the context of the urgent need to protect Georgia’s 2026 elections from disruption.

Key Takeaways from this Explainer

The public has been told for years that Georgia’s 2020 presidential election was confirmed by “three matching counts.” That slogan-like claim is grossly misleading.
We know of no evidence that Donald Trump won Georgia.
But we also know—based on public records, sworn testimony, expert analysis, and court filings—that the Fulton County vote count contained thousands of significant vote counting irregularities that were never resolved, although the net effect likely does not impact the outcome of the POTUS election in Georgia.
Those discrepancies were effectively concealed by state and Fulton officials through improvised procedures, an improperly conducted audit, and an unlawful machine “recount” and apparent efforts to “plug” significant differences.
The unsealing of the DOJ affidavit may shed light on whether federal investigators believe those discrepancies involved knowing false tabulation of votes under federal law (including 52 U.S.C. § 20511.(2)(B)).
Regardless of DOJ’s theory, misplaced or not, Georgia officials must finally acknowledge what went wrong in 2020 and overhaul the voting and reporting systems now—before 2026 elections, and before the FBI discloses their sure-to-be controversial, likely exaggerated and flawed findings.

Why CGG Is Publishing This Explainer Series

This is the first in a new series of explainers by the Coalition for Good Governance (CGG), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has been deeply involved in Georgia election security, vote counting, audits, and voting-system litigation since 2017, including the current long-running federal Curling v. Raffensperger case challenging Georgia’s voting system.

While we are not “insiders” in the Fulton matter, we have unusually deep technical, legal, and practical knowledge of how Georgia and Fulton County elections have been conducted—and where the public record, press coverage, and official statements have often failed to tell the full story in light of the over-heated rhetoric concerning Georgia’s 2020 election results. Again, we are aware of no evidence to suggest that Trump won Georgia, despite the significant irregularities in the vote tallies. It is possibly those significant discrepancies that may be at the core of the DOJ allegations.

These Explainers are intended for journalists, researchers, decision-makers, and activists who want to be highly informed, not reassured by meaningless slogans of “the election counted three times!”

This first Explainer addresses two primary issues:

What the DOJ search warrant affidavit, soon to be unsealed, may be based on; and
Why unresolved problems from the 2020 Fulton County vote count still matter—and must finally be confronted—if Georgia is to avoid chaos, loss of confidence, and endless challenges in the 2026 election cycle, including the 2026 U.S. Senate race.

Future explainers will show how these still-present problems can be easily and promptly fixed if state and county officials are willing to act soon, before the 2026 elections. Decision makers and influencers must be willing to face the uncomfortable facts about Georgia’s flawed voting system and poor processes that are contained in the Fulton files and be willing to undertake remediation, not simply protest the shameful wrongful raid.

Why Would DOJ Want Fulton County Ballots?

Many observers assume there is nothing left to investigate concerning 2020 because:

Georgia timely certified an initial machine count,
followed by a purported hand count “risk-limiting audit,” and
then a machine recount—

each said to confirm the same tabulated results.

That narrative masks an uncomfortable truth. The three counts did not match without making improper “adjustments” and apparently purposeful ballot count manipulation to force the “audit” and the final recount to match the first count. The processes used for the manual audit were highly irregular, and the following unlawful machine recount was apparently dishonestly conducted in Fulton, likely in order to match previous results.

While the final reported vote count margin between Biden and Trump remained relatively stable through the three counts, the underlying vote data did not. The 2020 Fulton County final official recount alone contained discrepancies of several thousand, at a time when the thin by statewide margin was the infamous “11,779 votes.”

To achieve matching results across counts, ballots and tallies were apparently repeatedly “adjusted” (not corrected)—not audited in any rigorous or transparent sense, while major discrepancies were ignored. Falsely claiming the three counts “matched” obscures the scale and seriousness of the discrepancies that were buried by state officials.

We anticipate—without any inside information—that DOJ could be examining whether those vote count “adjustments” crossed the line into knowing materially false vote tallying (52 U.S.C. § 20511.(2)(B)), and whether later representations by state officials to federal officials attempted to obscure what actually happened.

What Vote-Counting Irregularities Were Identified?

It appears that thousands of votes for both Biden and Trump were miscounted, often in ways that offset each other, masking the magnitude of the gross number of inaccuracies. But available data reveal striking facts, including these preliminary estimates[1]:

Nearly 4,000 ballots appear to have been double- or triple counted in the official POTUS machine recount. (See Stark paper referenced above for verified examples.)
At least 125 test ballots included in the official tally.
Roughly 1,300 ballots appeared in the official recount but not in the first count.
An estimated 5,800 ballots counted in the first count were not counted in the recount.

How do we know this?

Because electronic cast vote records (CVRs) and ballot images—photo-like images of individual ballots—exist for portions of the first machine count and most of the recount, allowing side-by-side comparisons. Professor Philip Stark of U C Berkeley explained the lack of controls and errors summarized in this paper, after analyzing a sample of such discrepant records for his expert witness report in the Curling litigation. (See Exhibit 7 of his declaration for examples of images of double- and triple counted ballots.)

Additionally--

All valid ballot images for polling place ballots in the first Fulton County count were improperly deleted.
Nearly 18,000 ballot images from the official recount are missing.
Fulton County officials confirmed the loss of these electronic records in federal court.

This is not speculation. We confronted officials in multiple settings about the tabulation issues. For example, see the sample series of my emails with Fulton attorneys four years ago. There is also SEB testimony for Fulton officials that touches on this.

Scientific certainty is no longer possible because the chain of custody was lost long ago, well before the recent FBI seizure, which further destroyed any credible provenance of the records. Nonetheless, authenticated electronic records—obtained through litigation discovery, including by CGG—demonstrate that the final official count contains thousands of errors, although the net effect on the margin cannot be precisely reconstructed because of wrongfully deleted electronic records.

The Undying Myth of “Three Counts"

Officials and press repeatedly hail the “three counts” as evidence of an accurate election, but that slogan-like claim grossly misrepresents the facts.

First vote count:

A scanner tabulation a produced a narrow Biden victory.

Second count-- (“audit” (not a “recount”)) –Nov. 13-19:

Secretary Raffensperger haphazardly assembled what he improperly labeled a “risk-limiting audit” of the presidential race—even though a subsequent official recount was inevitable. The sloppy unorthodox “audit” should have been skipped in favor of a legally conducted recount. (Other races should have been properly audited instead.) The over-hyped manual 100% “audit” involved a sloppily done manual tally of all POTUS votes. Proper audit methodology was abandoned in favor of rushed, poorly trained, last-minute concocted procedures conducted during challenging COVID times, but accompanied by relentless public boasting and absolute assurances of accuracy that were neither earned nor justified by the “audit’s” design, execution or actual results.

Third count-- (official “recount”)-Nov. 24-Dec. 2:

Instead of the manual recount required by Georgia law, ballots were run through the scanners again. This violated the purpose of the recount statute, which exists precisely to test close machine counts and resolve ambiguous ballots through human inspection. But reviews of the electronic records of the machine recount show alarming signs of likely purposeful manipulation of ballot scanning to achieve target results that matched the previously reported counts as described above related to double counting. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reviewed over 3,000 double scanned ballots in the recount , but stopped short of taking the simple step to confirm that such ballots were double counted, not simply scanned twice. (They were double counted.)

Had Georgia conducted a lawful and transparent manual recount—with required multi-partisan counters appointed by the candidates—there would likely have been little doubt about the vote tabulation. The controversies would likely have been far less. Instead, Raffensperger helped fuel the fire by giving improper instructions to conduct a (noncompliant) machine recount, and Trump bizarrely acquiesced, locking in years of controversy.

Raffensperger likely wanted to minimize any chance of more discrepancies in the original count and “audit” being discovered, so shortcut the recount process. Some speculate the Trump preferred to let the bogus machine official recount occur without challenge, and then escalate unverifiable claims of cheating post-recount, after the ballots were locked away.

Why Didn’t the Audit Detect the Discrepancies?

CGG experienced observers and nationally respected experts observed the “audit” in Fulton and other counties in real time. Within hours of observing the start of the Fulton audit, we warned some of the nation’s top experts that this so-called “audit” could not possibly produce valid conclusions, because:

Counties received grossly inadequate training.
Timelines were impossibly tight.
Procedures created on the fly.
Minimal transparency or ability to verify tallies.
A state-provided ill-fitting software tool for recording audit hand counts caused uncorrectable audit count data entry problems.

Material errors were embedded in the final audit work papers. Rather than being corrected, results appear to have been smoothed to closely match the original machine count.

Why Didn’t Someone Report This at the Time?

We believe Fulton County officials did so—quietly.

A memo—recently surfaced at a State Election Board meeting—shows that election consultants warned senior Fulton officials of a ~7,000-vote discrepancy in the audit workpaper hours before the statewide audit results were released, yet Fulton had no ability to correct the state software application worksheet containing the audit entries. We believe the Secretary of State’s office was promptly notified before Raffensperger announced the audit results. No corrections were made. Honest corrections would have caused a major problem for the false narrative that the audit matched the first machine count.

Yet the flawed audit was falsely and endlessly praised by Secretary Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling, his deputy, as confirming the original count. Fulton officials were on record as having timely reported at least some of the audit discrepancies. The details of the botched SEB investigation are convoluted and clearly initially involved efforts to avoid embarrassing Secretary Raffensperger and targeting Fulton for blame.

There is much documentation available on the proven 2020 discrepancies that never penetrated public consciousness, because exaggerated and often fantastical claims by some Trump supporters overwhelmed and discredited the narrower, fact-based serious concerns that deserved scrutiny. As those baseless claims imploded, traditional media largely abandoned the entire topic, leaving documented and provable irregularities unexplored and unreported. Officials and voting rights orgs were lulled to sleep, creating the dangerous complacency we are experiencing now while we face a daunting situation in the 2026 elections.

Were Georgia Officials Dishonest About Results?

We cannot say precisely who knew what, when. But there is no doubt that information demonstrating serious problems was available inside the Secretary of State’s office while officials repeatedly proclaimed the myth of “three matching counts.”

Raffensperger was under immense pressure to defend a new highly controversial $150 million voting system rushed into place after our Curling case exposed the fundamental flaws of Georgia’s prior touchscreen system, and the federal court ordered Georgia to abandon the unconstitutionally defective system. Instead of adopting a proven hand-marked paper ballot system, Georgia deployed an unorthodox, touchscreen design that has built in risks of electronic error and needless complexity.

What About the Five-Year Statute of Limitations?

The federal statutes cited in the warrant—covering record retention and false vote counting—appear time-barred as to the 2020 election itself.

It is unclear whether DOJ is examining later misrepresentations to Congress or sworn federal court testimony to effectively extend the statute for the underlying alleged violations. Their targets and purported claims are not evident from the citations alone.

What Should Be Done Now About the 2020 Controversy and Likely Allegations?

We will address solution details in future explainers, but several steps are urgent before the DOJ sets a narrative based on incomplete information and partisan rhetoric:

Fulton County should fully disclose what it knew, when it knew it, and what it communicated to the Secretary of State before audit and recount results were finalized.
Fulton County should fully disclose the details of the thousands of vote counting discrepancies involved double counting of ballots and counting test ballots in the official final recount tally.
The State Election Board should stop deflecting responsibility and immediately conduct a proper objective non-partisan investigation. After being urged in November 2021, by Governor Kemp to investigate the failed Fulton audit, it handed the matter back to the Secretary of State to review—one of the two very offices whose conduct was at issue. The SEB has consistently ineptly and unprofessionally mangled all attempts to impartially conduct an investigation for 5+ years.
When recently Senate-appointed SEB member Salleigh Grubbs proposed engaging independent expert forensic CPAs last month, the Board declined even to discuss an expert review—one week before the FBI seized the records.
There is still an opportunity for the SEB to properly and impartially perform its duty to conduct a fair and in-depth review and hold those responsible accountable, and insist on reforms. So far, there are no signs it intends to do so.
Georgia’s General Assembly should order the SEB to immediately conduct such an investigation using the authenticated electronic files the SEB has long possessed, insisting the Board engage highly respected professionals to conduct an impartial investigation and recommend prompt mitigations for protecting 2026 elections at risk.

Looking Ahead

Georgia’s election system can be stabilized quickly with bipartisan efforts and lawfully to protect the 2026 elections from recurring problems and the predictable controversies of unauditable results. But the political will seems lacking on both sides of the aisle. But denial and delay only invite chaos—and provide openings for electronic vote manipulation and bad-faith challenges in both primaries and the general election.

Watch for future CGG explainers on how Georgia can ensure that the 2026 election is transparent, verifiable, and worthy of public confidence.

Contact:

Marilyn Marks

Executive Director
Coalition for Good Governance

Marilyn@uscgg.org

678.221.1672

[1] Data provided at BallotAssure.com. The ongoing in-depth data analysis is still in progress by software engineer Phillip Davis. (Some other counties also had concerning discrepancies caused by double counting ballots.)

# # #

About Coalition for Good Governance

Coalition for Good Governance is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting voters’ rights to secure, fair, and transparent elections with verifiable outcomes. The Coalition works to ensure that every voter can cast a completely secret ballot and have confidence in the accuracy and integrity of election results.