{"id":2558239,"date":"2026-01-30T09:42:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T14:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-8\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T14:44:11","slug":"investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigators Can&#8217;t Find Fulton County&#8217;s &#8216;Zero Tapes,&#8217; Board Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Finvestigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-8%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2558239&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A growing investigation into Fulton County\u2019s handling of the 2020 election centers on missing \u201czero tapes\u201d \u2014 the opening printer tapes that show a ballot scanner\u2019s count began at zero. Fulton County experienced serious problems in 2020, including long lines and machine malfunctions, and its election director later resigned. In December the county\u2019s attorney acknowledged more than 100 unsigned tabulator (closing) tapes\u2014about 315,000 votes\u2014from early voting, a disclosure prompted by a 2022 complaint. During a recent State Election board review, members said investigators could not find any of the 148 zero tapes from Fulton County\u2019s early voting period, and the secretary of state\u2019s office likewise could not produce them. Georgia rules require zero tapes be attached to forms with multiple copies intended for different officials, but regulations and practices appear unclear about which office should retain the originals, and no clear paper trail has been found. State retention laws would have covered the relevant period, and just after the SEB meeting the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election office that reportedly sought the zero tapes.Investigators are left uncertain whether the tapes were never produced, misplaced, destroyed, or remain undiscovered in county records.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A 2020 election scandal in Fulton County, Georgia&rsquo;s most populous county, continues to grow with new details revealed in a State Election Board (SEB) meeting last Wednesday &mdash; and now, a week later, with an FBI raid seeking election documents from the county.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Fulton County was notoriously plagued with issues like long lines and voting machine malfunctions in the 2020 primary election, problems The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/09\/us\/politics\/atlanta-voting-georgia-primary.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described<\/a> as &ldquo;a full-scale meltdown.&rdquo; The problems continued through November&rsquo;s Election Day and beyond, prompting <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/12\/07\/no-the-georgia-vote-counting-video-was-not-debunked-not-even-close\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">concerns<\/a> about votes being counted without proper supervision, among other things. The county&rsquo;s repeated failures in 2020 so degraded trust in Fulton County&rsquo;s ability to administer elections that the election director was forced to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/11\/03\/politics\/fulton-county-election-chief-resigns\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">resign<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Now, members of the State Election Board have raised new concerns about the county&rsquo;s administration of the 2020 election, revealing in last week&rsquo;s meeting that the &ldquo;tapes&rdquo; used to verify that ballot counters started their counts at zero may be missing.<\/p>\n<p>When a ballot scanner is used to count ballots, election officials&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/rules.sos.ga.gov\/gac\/183-1-12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">must<\/a>&nbsp;start the process by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/rules.sos.georgia.gov\/gac\/183-1-14-.02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">printing and signing<\/a>&nbsp;a &ldquo;zero tape,&rdquo; which confirms the count started at zero.&nbsp;After counting ballots on the ballot scanner, officials must print and sign a closing tape, which confirms the final vote tally from that machine.&nbsp;In December, an attorney for Fulton County&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/12\/17\/fulton-county-we-dont-dispute-315000-votes-lacking-poll-workers-signatures-were-counted-in-2020\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">admitted<\/a>&nbsp;that the county failed to sign off on more than 100 &ldquo;tabulator tapes&rdquo; &mdash;&nbsp;equivalent to&nbsp;about 315,000 votes &mdash; from early voting in the 2020 election. That admission was prompted by a complaint that was investigated by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger&rsquo;s office.<\/p>\n<p>But in the course of investigating that complaint about the &ldquo;closing tapes,&rdquo; state investigators also looked for the &ldquo;zero tapes,&rdquo; and were unable to find&nbsp;<em>any<\/em>&nbsp;from Fulton County&rsquo;s early voting period in the 2020 general election, SEB member Jan Johnston said during the board meeting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The zero tape is like the beginning of a trip odometer,&rdquo; Johnston explained. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re gonna take a trip, you&rsquo;re gonna open the polls, and you set your trip odometer to zero. You look in the ballot box, and there are no ballots in the ballot box. That&rsquo;s the open zero tape. You have the election, and at the end of the day, you print out a closing tape. That is the end of the trip odometer.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The &ldquo;zero tape&rdquo; also helps ensure that there are no previous ballots left on the tabulator, such as votes from a previous election or a test run, that could be counted. It helps avoid situations like one that happened in a primary election in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/09\/06\/montana-county-declares-wrong-winner-after-failing-to-compare-total-voters-to-ballots\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Montana<\/a>&nbsp;in 2024, when officials discovered more votes were counted than voters physically cast. The county clerk said she believed the votes were leftover sample data that had not been cleared.<\/p>\n<p>Fulton County&rsquo;s admission in December came in response to a&nbsp;2022&nbsp;complaint by election integrity activist David Cross. Raffensperger&rsquo;s office investigated the complaint, but did not present the completed investigation to the board until October, Johnston said during the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>While reviewing the investigators&rsquo; report, the board became concerned that the investigators apparently were unable to find any of Fulton County&rsquo;s 148&nbsp;early voting &ldquo;zero tapes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>To the board&rsquo;s knowledge, Fulton County turned over &ldquo;zero signed or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-3\/\" title=\"... Can&#039;t Find Fulton County&#039;s &#039;Zero Tapes,&#039; ... Says\">unsigned opening tapes&#038;rdquo<\/a>; from early voting, Johnston said last week.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the problem is a lack of clarity on whom Fulton County was supposed to deliver the original &ldquo;zero tapes&rdquo; to during the 2020 election.&nbsp;Some members of the board are under the impression that the &ldquo;zero tapes&rdquo; should have been delivered to the secretary of state, but Georgia regulations are unclear.<\/p>\n<p>According to Johnston, the secretary of state&rsquo;s investigators even &ldquo;sought the zero tapes from the secretary of state&rsquo;s office&rdquo; &mdash; where there would presumably be a paper trail if the office had ever received them from Fulton County &mdash; but the secretary of state&rsquo;s office was &ldquo;unable to produce&rdquo; them.<\/p>\n<p>The Federalist asked Raffensperger&rsquo;s office if Fulton County ever gave his office the &ldquo;zero tapes&rdquo; from early voting, either at the time of the 2020 election or later in response to the Secretary of State&rsquo;s investigation.&nbsp;A spokesman for Raffensperger said he was &ldquo;not finding anything even close to&rdquo; a requirement that Fulton County send the &ldquo;zero tapes&rdquo; to the secretary of state&rsquo;s office as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says\/\" title=\"... Can&#039;t Find Fulton County&#039;s &#039;Zero Tapes,&#039; ... Says\">normal election administration process<\/a>, but did not respond to follow-up inquiries about whether the county sent them or not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The regulation&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/rules.sos.georgia.gov\/gac\/183-1-14-.02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">governing<\/a>&nbsp;early voting says election workers shall attach the zero tape to a form that &ldquo;shall be returned to the election superintendent at the close of the advance voting period.&rdquo; (In Fulton County, the Fulton County Elections Board&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/law.justia.com\/codes\/georgia\/title-21\/chapter-2\/article-2\/part-1\/subpart-2\/section-21-2-40\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">operates<\/a>&nbsp;as the elections superintendent.) But the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/voting.naacpldf.org\/media\/awupuwrx\/2020-poll-guide-ga.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">forms used in 2020<\/a>,&nbsp;which are designed to be used with carbonless paper to create multiple copies in various coded colors,&nbsp;instruct election workers to &ldquo;attach zero tapes.&rdquo;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;You Are Making Three Copies,&rdquo; the form instructs. &ldquo;WHITE sheet to Secretary of State &hellip; PINK sheet to Clerk of Superior Court\/City Clerk &hellip; YELLOW sheet to Superintendent &hellip; GOLDENROD sheet to Registrar.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>\n<div>\n<p>         <span>Image Credit<\/span>2020 Poll Worker Manual       <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Federalist asked Nadine Williams, the Fulton County elections director who chairs the Fulton County Elections Board, whether the&nbsp;county possesses any or all of the &ldquo;zero tapes&rdquo; from early voting or whether the county ever provided the secretary of state or his investigators with those &ldquo;zero tapes,&rdquo; either in November 2020 or since then. Fulton County acknowledged receipt of The Federalist&rsquo;s comment request and promised to &ldquo;provide an update if one becomes available&rdquo; but did not answer the question. The Federalist also reached out to the clerk of Fulton County Superior Court to ask whether the Superior Court received the tapes, but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/law.justia.com\/codes\/georgia\/title-21\/chapter-2\/article-2\/part-2\/section-21-2-52\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">State law<\/a>&nbsp;only requires the secretary of state to retain election documents for 24 months past the election, and local governments only retain &ldquo;records related to the process of computing, tallying, and canvassing the vote&rdquo; for two years,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.georgiaarchives.org\/records\/localprint\/80\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">according<\/a>&nbsp;to the Georgia Archives.<\/p>\n<p>But, as Johnston noted in last week&rsquo;s meeting, the&nbsp;complaint was submitted in early 2022,&nbsp;&ldquo;well within the 24-month period.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, a week after the SEB meeting, the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election office. According to election attorney&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Bannons_WarRoom\/status\/2016658635586150667?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cleta Mitchell<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investigators-cant-find-fulton-countys-zero-tapes-board-says-2\/\" title=\"... Can&#039;t Find Fulton County&#039;s &#039;Zero Tapes,&#039; ... Says\">search warrant included &#038;ldquo<\/a>;zero tapes&rdquo; from the 2020 general election.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the board is left&nbsp;with few answers. It&rsquo;s unclear whether the tapes ever made it out of Fulton County, if they were signed, or even if they exist at all. If they do exist, they may have been handled properly but thrown away in the years since 2020. They could even still be filed away somewhere, where investigators have been unable to track them down. No one seems able to provide a paper trail.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fulton 2020 election probe grows; FBI raids<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2558240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-26-at-12.16.16-PM-scaled-e1769447891676.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[72307,72306,72303,72305,72304],"class_list":["post-2558239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-board-statement-2","tag-election-investigation-2","tag-fulton-county-2","tag-missing-evidence-2","tag-zero-tapes-2"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-26-at-12.16.16-PM-scaled-e1769447891676.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2558239"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2558243,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558239\/revisions\/2558243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2558240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}