Democrat operative Stacey Abrams effectively placed a preemptive block of signature verification on ballots in Georgia's hand recount, President Donald Trump lamented Saturday.
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I will tell you one thing. That is so inaccurate of reporting I cannot believe they ran with it. This issue was earlier this year. Early in 2020...
The president appears to be referring to a consent decree from earlier in 2020 which concerned signature matching on mail-in ballots. The Election Board and Secretary of State agreed to it and Georgia Governor as well. Abrams spoke to the
Los Angeles Times about the decree on October 4.2020
"[Y]ou could always vote by mail, that was never a problem. The issue was they threw out your ballot if there was a signature mismatch, which was twice as likely if you were Black or Latino, five times as likely if you're young," Abrams said.
"And a fairly high percentage of immigrants had their ballots thrown out. We were able to get a consent decree earlier this year where you'd get to fix your ballot if they think there's a problem."
A consent decree is an agreement entered into by parties to settle a dispute without admission of guilt or liability. As such, it was necessary for the state of Georgia to agree to it. This is what Trump has complained about on Twitter. This happened way before the Election.
The consent decree came into focus again this week when well-known Georgia attorney L. Lin Wood filed suit against Raffensperger, claiming the secretary of state "unilaterally, and without the approval or direction of the Georgia General Assembly, changed the process for handling absentee ballots in Georgia, including those case in the general election."
Raffensperger's deputy, Jordan Fuchs, called the suit a "Silly baseless claim— grasping."
"Signature match is intact and the General Assembly passed legislation to allow voters who failed to include a signature time to add one," Fuchs said.
"We strengthened signature match, and will continue to do so, period."
However, the president has highlighted the consent decree as part of his campaign's ongoing claims of voter fraud, which are unsubstantiated. They have filed lawsuits in several states.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in several key states.
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