Georgia twist! Governer Kemp urges audit of ballot envelope signatures, Trump campaign asks for second recount

John Solomon
Just the News
Sat, 21 Nov 2020 20:04 UTC

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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

After certifying his state's election results, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is now urging his state to conduct an audit comparing the signatures of voter applications and mail-in ballot envelopes to those on the approved voter file to determine if fraud occurred.

Kemp, a Republican, made the appeal to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a news conference on Friday.

"It's important to note that this audit only looked at ballots, not the signatures on the absentee applications or the signatures on the ballot envelopes," the governor said. "The Georgians I have heard from are extremely concerned about this, so I encourage Secretary Raffensperger to consider addressing these concerns. It seems simple enough to conduct a sample audit of signatures on the absentee ballot envelopes and compare those to the signatures on applications and on file at the Secretary of State's Office."

The governor sharply criticized the failure of some county clerks after an audit of ballots found thousands that went uncounted.

"It is important for Georgians to know that the vast majority of local election workers did their job well under unprecedented circumstances, and I thank them for their service," he said. "However, it's quite honestly hard to believe that during the audit, thousands of uncounted ballots were found weeks after a razor-thin outcome in a presidential election. This is simply unacceptable. I have heard directly from countless Georgians. They expect better, and they deserve better."

Kemp also rallied around emerging efforts to strengthen voter ID requirements in the aftermath of an election where the Trump campaign is disputing the results in a half dozen states, alleging fraud and misconduct.

"Voters casting their ballots in person must show photo ID, and we should consider applying that same standard to mail-in balloting," he said.

Comment: Is that not obvious? It should have been done before the election.

Kemp certified his state results Friday showing Joe Biden with a narrow victory, but he noted the action, required by the Constitution, "paves the way for the Trump campaign to pursue other legal options and a separate recount if they choose."

Comment: Indeed, it's hard to believe. You'd think that the first step would be to compare the number of voters to the number of ballots to see if they match. How do thousands of ballots just get omitted from the final count without anyone noticing?

The Trump campaign officially filed for another recount yesterday, but following Kemp's suggestion, they are insisting on signature matching. This recount itself will be done using machines, not a hand count, so we'll have to see if and how they will implement signature matching this time.

Up in Michigan, Republican U.S. Senate candidate John James has submitted a request to delay certification by two weeks.

James contests the results of his race against Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in the Nov. 3 election and hasn't conceded yet. The unofficial result shows that James is behind Peters by around 92,000 votes or a gap of about 1.7 percent.

The Michigan State Board of Canvassers will meet on Monday, Nov. 23 to decide whether to certify the results of the election or seek more time to review the results.