TOPLINE


 

President Donald Trump is falsely alleging Georgia counted thousands of unverified and illegal mail-in ballots this year, another baseless and demonstrably false conspiracy theory about widespread voter-rigging as Trump tries to deny his apparent loss in the state.


 

Georgia's Secretary Of State Holds News Conference On Election Ballot Count

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger holds a press conference on the status of ballot ... [+]


 GETTY IMAGES
 

KEY FACTS




Over the last week, Trump has inaccurately claimed Georgia weakened its standards this year for verifying voters’ signatures on mail-in ballots, a process used to catch illegal votes, alleging the state let an untold number of fraudulent votes slip through the cracks.


This is false, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office says: In both 2018 and 2020, about 0.15% of absentee ballots were rejected due to missing signatures or signatures that couldn’t be verified in the state’s records, meaning the rejection rate has not changed.




 



Trump claims 4% of votes were rejected in prior years, but this figure is misleading because it includes a much larger number of ballots that were tossed because they arrived late, not due to verification issues, officials say.


 



The rejection rate dropped between this year’s primary and general election, but the state says this is probably because both political parties encouraged their voters to “cure” faulty ballots by proving their identities after Election Day, a normal process designed to prevent legal voters from being disenfranchised due to clerical problems.


 



The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.


BIG NUMBER




2,011. That’s the number of mail-in ballots that were rejected due to signature issues this year, according to the Secretary of State’s office.


TANGENT


Trump claims Georgia is legally prohibited from checking mail-in ballot signatures. In reality, the opposite is true. The state actually requires local officials to verify all signatures, and although the state signed a legal settlement this year to make it easier for voters to cure rejected ballots, this “consent decree” did not halt verification. Trump’s campaign now wants the state to re-verify every ballot a second time, but this is impossible because — per state law — all ballots have already been separated from the envelopes containing voters’ signatures. 


KEY BACKGROUND


In Georgia, President-elect Joe Biden leads Trump by more than 12,000 votes. The state is conducting a hand recount and audit set to wrap up on Thursday, but state officials expect Biden to remain the winner after this process is over. Still, Trump and his allies have used the recount as an opportunity to rehash wild — and false — allegations about vote-rigging, part of a nationwide legal effort to challenge Trump’s loss to Biden. So far, Trump’s campaign has not presented credible proof of widespread voter fraud in Georgia or any other state, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his staff have consistently told voters they do not see any evidence of systemic fraud.


SURPRISING FACT


As Trump angles to reverse his fortunes in Georgia, Raffensperger has endured pressure and baseless criticism from fellow Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly implied Raffensperger should look into throwing out legal mail-in ballots (an allegation Graham has denied), members of Georgia’s congressional delegation have called him incompetent and demanded his resignation, and Trump (whom Raffensperger declined to endorse due to conflict-of-interest concerns) called him a “so-called Republican.” Raffensperger, for his part, has refused to lend credence to Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories.


CRUCIAL QUOTE


"The election appears to be very accurate and as a Republican, I'm disappointed, but as a secretary of state, my job is to report accurate results,” Raffensperger told Business Insider on Wednesday.


WHAT TO WATCH FOR


Georgia is not the only state where Trump has suggested officials should toss out more mail-in ballots. His campaign filed a swath of lawsuits in Pennsylvania aiming to invalidate ballots with minor mistakes, though a judge quashed several of these suits last week.