Cross’s Latest “Smoking Gun”Just More “Pop” and Plastic than Proof
If you spent five minutes scrolling the internet the last couple of days, you might think Georgia’s 2020 election has been dramatically rewritten: the state’s largest county has finally admitted it counted approximately 315,000 votes without following procedural signature rules, and therefore the election is “obviously” fraudulent.
TRUMP WINS!!! TRUMP WINS!!!
The latest photo op for election skeptics even looks like a smoking gun — except, like so much of the hysteria surrounding the 2020 election, the “smoke gun” is little more than a plastic child’s toy.
For those who are interested in understanding the significance of and not simply the rhetoric, here’s what actually happened.
At a December 9 meeting of the Georgia State Election Board, Fulton County election officials acknowledged that a large batch of tabulation tapes from the 2020 election lacked the required signatures from precinct workers — a regulatory (not statutory) requirement designed to ensure accountability and a verifiable chain of custody. (Scot Turner will go more into this and other issues in his upcoming post).
To procedural purists, that’s a sloppy mistake. To election conspiracy theorists, it’s a massive stolen election uncovered. None of this, though, changes the fact that there is still no credible evidence that votes were altered, forged, or illegally introduced. Independent recounts, audits, and certifications — including a statewide hand recount at the time — confirmed the outcome in Georgia.
Even the most breathless headlines are careful to couch their claims: local activists like David Cross, who filed the original challenge with the State Election Board in 2022, argue that breaking statutory process amounts to a legal problem — not proof of fraud. What Fulton County didn’t do in 2020 was sign the paperwork correctly; it didn’t magically make lawful votes into fraudulent ones, nor should the votes of 315,000 people be thrown out because some bureaucrats didn’t follow procedure. Imagine how easily a corrupt (rather than incompetent, as was likely the case here) election worker could force an outcome simply by not signing a piece of paperwork?
Furthermore, there has not been a discussion of where the votes came from or the breakdown of the votes in question because this issue affected 36 out of the 37 advance voting locations…in other words, if you voted early in Fulton County, then your vote is likely affected.
The vote in Fulton County broke down as follows:
| Candidate | Election Day Votes | Absentee by Mail Votes | Advanced Voting Votes | Provisional Votes | Total Votes |
| Trump (R) | 19,552 | 29,479 | 87,293 | 916 | 137,240 |
| Biden (D) | 38,143 | 115,788 | 224,688 | 2,525 | 381,144 |
| Jorgensen (L) | 1,448 | 1,727 | 3,004 | 96 | 6,275 |
| Totals | 59,143 | 146,994 | 314,985 | 3,537 | 524,659 |
Throwing out nearly all of the early votes in Fulton County WOULD change the result of the election, as Biden netted 157,395 votes over Trump in early voting…far more than his approximately 11,000 vote margin of victory. Still, you get there by disenfranchising not only 224,688 Democrats but also 87,293 Republicans and 3,004 Libertarians in the process based on a technicality. These rules are in place to protect both voters and candidates by providing accountability to question those who oversee our elections, not to open a door to the mass cancellation of votes.
That’s not just legally wrong…it’s un-American.
While Fulton County’s procedural failure does not matter in the outcome of the 2020 election, this lapse should not amount to an idea that procedural compliance in elections does not matter.
Georgia’s rules and regulations backed up by state election code requires election workers to sign tabulation tapes before and after voting to document that counts are accurate and machines were properly zeroed. Signatures help preserve the documentation that could support audits or investigations years later. Fulton County didn’t do that — and officials admitted as much.
But sloppy paperwork is not equivalent to tampering with ballots. Like any system that touches millions of ballots, election administration is vulnerable to human error. Our response shouldn’t be to leap to conspiracy theories, but to strengthen training, supervision, and oversight so that the process, and public confidence in it, improves.
Indeed, this incident and many other mistakes made by Fulton County over the years have resulted in much more oversight into how Fulton County administers elections, and Fulton County’s admission also included how the County has taken corrective measures since 2020 to strengthen training, increase supervision, and provide better oversight.
The broader context here is that many of these stolen election claims have been circulating for years, often detached from the facts. Bold assertions about “315,000 illegal votes” sometimes ignore that 315,000 was simply the total number of early votes in Fulton County in 2020, not a verified count of defective ballots.
If anything, this episode should remind us of two important truths:
- Compliance with election laws, rules, and regulations is critical — and when counties slip up, they should be held accountable.
- That proximate procedural missteps do not automatically prove widespread fraud.
In fact, the louder David Cross and many other so-called election “integrity” activists, including several State Election Board members, scream about having found the “smoking gun”, the more important it is to check whether their “smoking gun” is backed by real evidence of actual fraud, not just bureaucratic incompetence. Otherwise, that gun is just a vintage toy cap gun, like the one many of us used to play make-believe battles in our youth.
At least most of us stopped playing make-believe battles when we grew up.
Until someone produces evidence of a substantial number of ballots added, removed, or altered, what we have is a compliance failure, not a capitulation of our democratic system.
Let’s treat it with the seriousness it deserves, not the hysteria it doesn’t.
Be sure to check back and read Scot Turner’s more in-depth analysis coming soon to PeachPundit.com.
