Absentee Ballot Signature Audit Finds No Evidence Of Fraud In Cobb County, GA
After Signature Review Of 10% Of Cobb County Mail-In Ballots, The GBI And Secretary Of State Announce No Fraudulence Was Detected.
The Center Square [By Nyamekye Daniel]-
Georgia officials said no fraudulent absentee ballots were identified during a sample audit of signatures in Cobb County.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office partnered with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to review the signatures on 10% of the 150,431 mail-in ballot envelopes received in Cobb County during the November election.
GBI Director Vic Reynolds said Wednesday two of the 15,118 randomly selected absentee ballots reviewed during the audit should have been rejected, but they were not fraudulent.
“They were actually eligible for cure notifications,” Reynolds said. “In other words, the Cobb County Elections Department should have notified those two individuals to come in with the opportunity to cure or straighten up those procedural deficiencies.”
Reynolds said one voter signed the envelope on the wrong side, and the other voter’s spouse signed the envelope on their behalf. GBI officers tracked down the voters and interviewed them and investigated the issues. The voters filled out the ballots themselves in both cases. Therefore, officials found Cobb County had “a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures.”
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Dec. 14 the state would launch the audit after verified claims of the discrepancies in the process during the June primary elections.
Election workers must match the signatures on the envelopes to the signatures on the voter’s file in the election database, which includes information from voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications, voter certificates, passports, certificates of naturalization and documents.
President Donald Trump’s campaign and supporters and some GOP lawmakers have criticized signature matching in Georgia. Trump has made numerous demands on Twitter for a review of the state’s signature matches, and at least one lawsuit was filed to block the certification of the results because of the process. Trump continued to blame Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp for his loss of the historically Republican state in the presidential election Tuesday.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections held a hearing Wednesday to review Georgia’s election laws ahead of the Jan. 11 legislative session’s start.
