Trump misleadingly cites ‘duplicate’ ballots in disputed Georgia county as proof of election fraud
FILE - In this Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020, file photo, election workers in Fulton County began working through a recount of ballots in Atlanta. The Associated Press on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023, reported on social media posts misleadingly claiming that a recent court filing has revealed that 3,600 “duplicate” ballots were cast for President Joe Biden and illegally counted in Fulton County, Georgia during the 2020 election. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
CLAIM: A recent court filing revealed that 3,600 “duplicate” ballots were cast for Biden and illegally counted in Fulton County, Georgia during the 2020 election.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. A state review of the county’s audit of the 2020 presidential race found errors and inconsistencies in the vote count, including some double counting of ballots. But the errors weren’t enough to alter the election results, according to the review and outside experts. They also weren’t deemed criminal, as social media posts claim.
THE FACTS: Former President Donald Trump is continuing to cast doubt on the 2020 election results in Georgia as he seeks a return to the White House amid myriad legal cases, including election interference charges in the Peach State.
In recent days, he’s taken to social media to claim a legal filing in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, proves that thousands of ballots were illegally double counted in the battleground state he narrowly lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.
“Fulton County, Georgia, acknowledges, in a major Consent Decree, that 3,600 individual ballots were DUPLICATED,” the Republican wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “THAT’S A LOT OF CRIME. When are the rest of the facts coming out? We are all waiting. This is just the beginning. UNBELIEVABLE!”
The claim has since been widely shared on other social media sites including Instagram and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“3,600 duplicate ballots in Georgia? What are your thoughts?” wrote one user on Instagram who shared a video of Trump’s comments.
Trump’s posts refer to a June consent order that found Fulton County election workers “misidentified and duplicated” voting results during the state-mandated audit of the 2020 election, which was a hand recount of the presidential race results.
But the errors don’t change the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia, in which Biden garnered more than 12,000 votes than Trump to take a surprise win in a traditionally red state, election officials and experts say.
It also isn’t evidence of criminal wrongdoing or voter fraud, as Trump and others imply.
“There was, in fact, no crime,” Jessica Corbitt, a spokesperson for the Fulton County Board of Elections, responded in an email this week. “The consent order addresses procedural issues but there were no accusations or admissions of criminal activity.”
The order identified 36 inconsistencies in batch tally sheets for the audit, but found they were due to “human error” and not “intentional misconduct.” It also found they did not affect the final election results as they represented a “fractional number” of the votes cast.
The purpose of the risk-limiting audit was to confirm whether the results of the original tabulation were accurate, which the audit confirmed,” reads the order.
The county agreed to take remedial steps to prevent repeat issues, according to the order. Those policies and procedures were put in place in time for the 2022 election.
The court filing additionally states that it represents a “civil settlement” with “no criminal ramifications” and is not an admission of guilt or liability by Fulton County officials.
Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, noted Georgia’s election results were tallied three times in 2020: the initial Election Day count, the hand-counted audit and a final recount by voting machine requested by Trump’s campaign. All three times, Biden prevailed.
“It’s misleading to claim this is fraud,” Bullock said by phone. “Were there errors? Yes. But they were not malicious.”
Corbitt, the Fulton County spokesperson, declined to address Trump’s claims directly, but stressed elections in the county have undergone numerous reviews besides the audit investigation.
“In the face of this intensive scrutiny, no fraud has ever been identified in Fulton County elections,” she wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, various parties continue to spread misinformation about previous Fulton County elections.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung maintained that the audit errors suggest more than 4,000 “false votes for Joe Biden” were counted.
“These errors from one county, in one category of votes (absentee ballots), could certainly have impacted the results, given that no other counties or vote categories were checked,” he wrote in an email. Cheung didn’t respond to requests to elaborate on the figures he cited.
But experts agree with the review’s findings that the errors could not have swung the election decisively to Trump.
“There’s nothing nefarious here,” Trey Hood, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said by phone Monday. “It’s irrelevant to the election outcome.”
Trump and 18 other people are facing charges in Georgia that include participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to keep Trump in power after his 2020 loss.
Four people have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with Georgia prosecutors. The remaining 15 have pleaded not guilty, and no trial date has been set.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
