Georgia senators join federal lawsuit “to improve the reliability and transparency of the signature verification process”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - Thursday, Senators David Perdue (R-Ga) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga) joined forces with the Georgia Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in a federal lawsuit to “improve the reliability and transparency of the signature verification process.”

This comes as “an effort to increase the integrity of the elections process ahead of the upcoming runoff for both U.S. Senate seats in Georgia,” according to the press release.

The lawsuit “seeks to reaffirm these simple, non-partisan principles: every lawful vote cast should be counted, any illegal vote submitted cannot be counted and there must be full transparency and uniformity in the counting process.”

The requested relief is said to be necessary before the state can begin processing absentee ballots on Dec 21, “after which violations of the signature match verification process will be impossible to remedy.”

The senators issued the following statement:

“Georgia’s Senate elections will determine the future direction of our country -- everyone should have total confidence in its outcomes. That starts with making meaningful improvements to the reliability and transparency of the signature verification process. We need to do it now, before votes are processed. No American should ever have to question the integrity and credibility of our elections system. These are reasonable and actionable steps we can take immediately to further ensure the integrity and accuracy of our January 5 elections.”

The case papers filed Thursday say: “Georgia election officials, from the state level to the local level, have undertaken significant efforts to assure the integrity of the Georgia election process in the runoff. Those efforts should be commended, and this lawsuit is brought to augment and further improve them.”

The lawsuit will provide a county-by-county analysis of the state’s signature matching rejection rates during the November 2020 election, according to the press release. This will reveal “conclusively that the existing process is resulting in the counting of thousands of votes unequally across the state – many without any signature matching review whatsoever.”

The press release states that key empirical findings from the November 2020 election include:

• Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 100 did not reject a single absentee ballot because of a signature mismatch.
• The data revealed significant differences in rejection rates across counties, indicating that the signature matching process is being applied unequally across the state.
• In contrast to the 100 counties that did not reject a single ballot for a mismatched signature, the rejection rate in Taylor County (2.09%) was more than forty times higher than the statewide rejection rate. Likewise, the rejection rate in Clay County (1.20%) was more than twenty times higher than the statewide rate.
• The vast disparity in rejection rates cannot be explained by population size. For instance, Georgia’s least populous county, Taliaferro County, had the third highest rejection rate of 0.65%, while Georgia’s second least populous county, Quitman County, rejected zero ballots.
• The disparity also cannot be explained based on a county’s geographic location: Of the ten contiguous counties comprising the Atlanta region, two counties (Douglas and Rockdale) rejected zero ballots for mismatched signatures, while three others (Fayette, Gwinnett, and Henry) had rejection rates far exceeding the statewide average.
• Georgia’s recently low signature rejection rate is dramatically lower than signature rejection rates from other states. For example, Nevada’s rejection rate for mismatched signatures in the 2020 general election was 0.42% -- more than eight times higher than Georgia’s rejection rate.
• No known statistical analysis supports the county-by-county rejection rates for mismatched signatures. To the contrary, the analysis establishes that the likelihood of obtaining the rejection rates as reported by ten of the counties (Cherokee, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Dougherty, Gwinnett, Henry, Liberty, and Taylor) is practically zero, with a statistical likelihood of less than 0.01%.

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