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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."
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.
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