A top Georgia official announced investigators will conduct a signature audit of absentee ballot envelopes for votes cast during the state’s June primary and the 2020 presidential election in Cobb County.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said during a press conference on Monday that officials received a report that signatures may not have been properly verified in the county during the primary election but did not mention whether any such complaint was made during the county’s general election in November.
“I feel we need to take steps to restore confidence in our elections,“ Raffensperger said. “Starting immediately, we are pulling all of our resources together with [the Georgia Bureau of Investigation] to conduct a signature match audit in Cobb County.”
The audit is not expected to change the outcome of the election. Officials will be taking a statistically significant sample of absentee ballot envelopes from both elections and comparing them to the voter signatures kept on file. Since ballot envelopes are already separated from the ballots that they carried, they are impossible to match up after the initial counting process. The name of the voter is not present on his or her ballot. Even if a signature is found not to match, the coordinating ballot will not be thrown out.
Officials said the Cobb County audit is merely meant to see if the county is following signature matching protocol.
“I’m confident any audit would find our office followed procedures and only counted ballots that were processed correctly,” Cobb County Election Director Janine Eveler said in a statement. “Even though our resources are already stretched thin by advance voting and preparations for the January 5 runoff, we will help this process move as expeditiously as possible.”
“People want to have confidence in the election,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That’s why I felt like it would be good to do a signature audit just to bring people peace of mind.”
President Trump expressed his frustration with the governor over his handling of the November election.
“What a fool Governor @BrianKempGA of Georgia is,” the president said in a tweet on Monday. “Could have been so easy, but now we have to do it the hard way. Demand this clown call a Special Session and open up signature verification, NOW. Otherwise, could be a bad day for two GREAT Senators on January 5th.”
What a fool Governor @BrianKempGA of Georgia is. Could have been so easy, but now we have to do it the hard way. Demand this clown call a Special Session and open up signature verification, NOW. Otherwise, could be a bad day for two GREAT Senators on January 5th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2020
“That’s a start. Only 158 counties left to go,” a spokesman for Sen. Kelly Loeffler, one of two GOP Senate incumbents in Georgia facing a runoff next month, said in a statement. “Full audit or it didn’t happen.”
