35 Tabulator Memory Cards Swapped Mid-Election; Closing Tapes Printed on Surrogate Machines (GA)

The EOG Report documents that 35 tabulator memory cards were swapped mid-election in Fulton County – an event for which no chain-of-custody documentation exists. Memory card swapping during an active election is not a standard procedure and introduces the possibility that cards containing accumulated vote totals were replaced with cards containing different data. The EOG Report further confirms that closing tapes – the machine-generated printouts that establish tabulator totals at poll close – were not printed on the actual scanning tabulators but on surrogate machines. Closing tapes printed on surrogate machines are not auditable records of the actual machine’s count; they are secondary printouts whose relationship to the actual tally cannot be verified. Under Georgia law, tabulators must generate their own closing tapes; the use of surrogates is not authorized and creates an irresolvable break in the chain of evidence.