Election Experts Rebut False Claims About Fulton County’s 2020 Election in Court Filing

ATLANTA — A group of election experts and scholars, represented by the States United Democracy Center and Wolfe Law, filed an amicus brief in Pitts v. United States, a case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The brief responds to claims advanced by the “Election Oversight Group” (EOG), which are built on inaccurate facts, misstatements of law, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections are administered.

This case stems from a Department of Justice seizure of hundreds of boxes of election materials at the Fulton County Elections Hub on January 28, 2026. The affidavit supporting that raid drew from claims that Fulton County’s administration of the 2020 general election was compromised by widespread fraud and misconduct, including claims related to ballot images, double-counting, audit discrepancies, and tabulation errors. The brief supports Fulton County’s motion seeking the return of its election materials.

“Time and again, claims of fraud in the 2020 election collapse under even basic scrutiny,” said Dax Goldstein, Senior Counsel and an Election Protection Program Director at the States United Democracy Center. “Fulton County’s election was subject to extensive verification—including audits, recounts, and multiple layers of security—and those processes consistently confirmed the outcome of the election. This brief makes clear that these allegations rely on flawed analysis and ignore the safeguards that protect our free and fair elections.”

The brief explains the extensive safeguards in place during the 2020 election, including voter verification requirements, the use of paper ballots, and reconciliation processes that are designed to detect and prevent errors or fraud. The brief also details how many of the claims advanced by EOG have already been investigated and rejected by the courts.

Amici also address specific inaccuracies underlying the allegations, including unreliable claims about “missing” ballot images, purported double-scanning of ballots, and errors identified during audits. In each instance, they explain that these claims either misinterpret election law, rely on incomplete or misleading data, or ignore established election processes. The brief emphasizes that there is no evidence that any of these issues affected the outcome of the election.

The brief also underscores the importance of courts carefully evaluating such claims, particularly when they are used to cast doubt on verified election outcomes. By grounding their analysis in established election practices and prior investigations, amici distinguish between credible evidence and unsupported allegations.

Signatories of the brief are:

• Ryan Germany: Former General Counsel to three Georgia Secretaries of State, and partner leading the Political and Election Law Practice Group at Gilbert Harrell Sumerford & Martin, P.C.
• Stephen Richer: Former Maricopa County Recorder, legal scholar at the Cato Institute, and fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center
• Justin Grimmer: Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in election data analysis

Key excerpts from the brief include:

“The EOG Report relies on faulty and inadequate evidence, unsupported claims, meaningless comparisons, omissions and misreadings of primary sources, misunderstandings of election laws, and disregard for the election safeguards in place in 2020.

“The EOG Amicus, in turn, is no better. It regurgitates several of the EOG Report’s flawed arguments, and adds new ones, in an attempt to craft a conspiracy from a collection of misunderstandings, misstatements, and inconsequential irregularities.”

“The EOG Report and Amicus are shot through with misstatements and inaccuracies, but both also suffer from one pervasive error: The failure to acknowledge the safeguards in place during Fulton County’s 2020 general election. Those safeguards protect against the very types of fraud the EOG Report and Amicus attempt to suggest. The EOG Report and Amicus’s failures to address these safeguards results in a set of inaccurate and unreliable conclusions about the consequences of election events.

“In 2020, Georgia employed strong election-safeguard procedures, including registration verification, use of printed and paper ballots, and verification of voters and ballots. These procedures are designed to ensure that errors are caught and the rare attempts to commit fraud are detected. Georgia also employed automatic checks, including risk-limiting audits and reconciliations, designed to detect significant issues in the election—even if no safeguard was known to have failed. Together, these safeguards and checks are designed to ensure that there is no single point of failure in the conduct of the election, and problems in any one process or technology will not affect the election outcome.”

Read a summary of the amicus brief here. Read an independent review authored by amici evaluating the false claims at issue here.

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About the States United Democracy Center

States United is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the rule of law and free, fair, secure elections. We provide direct support to state officials and law enforcement leaders as they uphold the law and our system of checks and balances, protect public safety, defend elections, and preserve our democracy. For more information, visit statesunited.org.