Trump Tells Kemp To Resign As No Fraudulent Ballots Found

COBB COUNTY, GA — The Nov. 3 presidential election continues to be fought in Georgia, as officials in Cobb County found no problems with votes cast and President Donald Trump — unhappy that Georgia leaders won't toss out results that show he lost — called for Gov. Brian Kemp to resign.

No fraudulent absentee ballots were found in the signature match audit of more than 15,000 voter signatures in Cobb County from the election, according to a report from the Georgia secretary of state’s office released Tuesday.

After a hand recount and subsequent machine recount requested by the Trump campaign, the audit team — consisting of law enforcement officers with the secretary of state’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation — found only 10 absentee ballots that did not have a signature, did not have the same signature as the voter or the signatures did not match, according to the report. All 10 voters were located, positively identified and interviewed.

Eight of the voters had mismatched signatures, but law enforcement officers determined the signatures were legitimate. In the other two cases, one voter had signed her husband’s envelope by accident, and another voter signed the front of the envelope rather than the back.

The audit counters President Donald Trump’s accusations of widespread voter fraud in Georgia, claiming President-elect Joe Biden stole the election. According to election results, Trump lost to Biden by roughly 12,000 votes in Georgia.

“The secretary of state’s office has always been focused on calling balls and strikes in elections and, in this case, three strikes against the voter fraud claims and they’re out,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement. “We conducted a statewide hand recount that reaffirmed the initial tally, and a machine recount at the request of the Trump campaign that also reaffirmed the original tally. This audit disproves the only credible allegations the Trump campaign had against the strength of Georgia’s signature match processes.”

The audit reviewed 15,118 absentee ballot envelopes out of 150,431 total absentee ballots in Cobb County, according to the report, reaching a 99% confidence level in the results. These ballots were pulled from 30 randomly selected ballot boxes in the county by a random number generator. The report said the Cobb County elections department also had a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification.

On Dec. 30, Trump tweeted that Gov. Brian Kemp should resign, calling him an “obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia.” This is the latest — and harshest — of Trump’s criticisms of Kemp, just days before Georgia’s crucial runoff election for control of the U.S. Senate.

Hearings from Atlanta on the Georgia Election overturn now being broadcast. Check it out. @OANN @newsmax and many more. @BrianKempGA should resign from office. He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2020

During the audit, secretary of state investigators and GBI special agents broke into 18 two-member teams, known as inspection teams, and two three-member teams, known as investigation teams. If both team members agreed that signatures appeared valid, the envelope was accepted; if not, they were submitted to an investigation team. If team members were split on judging the signature’s legitimacy, a designated “referee” would make the deciding vote.

From there, law enforcement officers on the investigation teams compared the absentee ballot signatures to other documents such as voter registration forms, driver services forms, passports and certificates of naturalization, according to the report. If two of the three investigation team members agreed on the signature’s legitimacy, the envelope was accepted; if not, the voter was located and interviewed.

“The audit found ‘no fraudulent absentee ballots’ with a 99% confidence threshold,” according to a statement from Raffensperger’s office.