The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) released a report on Wednesday showing 27,787 absentee ballots sent to voters by mail in the 2020 Georgia presidential election were deemed “undeliverable.”
That number is more than two times greater than 12,670 vote margin of victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in Georgia certified by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on November 20, 2020, 17 days after the November 3, 2020 election. All told, 5 million votes were cast in the 2020 election in Georgia.
“In 2020, Georgia broke records for undeliverable and unaccounted-for mail ballots,” PILF said in a press statement accompanying the release of the report.
“Election officials don’t know what happened to” 217,677 of the “1.7 million absentee (mail) ballots sent to voters,” the statement noted. These 217,677 ballots were officially classified as “unknown.”
In addition, 27,287 of the 1.7 million absentee (mail) ballots were classified as “undeliverable,” while 4,804 were “returned by voters but rejected by election officials.” The statement continued:
One of the most consequential stories to come out of Georgia is how the number of mail ballots directed to faulty addresses (returned undeliverable) was greater than the ultimate difference between winning and losing 16 Electoral College votes. The state’s recent close election results make clear the vital importance of voter roll list maintenance operations the keep voter registrations accurate and up to date.
“Now you see why Georgia lawmakers passed mail ballot integrity laws,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in the statement, addomg”
You can’t ‘vote from home’ with confidence when you learn how many mail ballots failed. The fact that the Biden Justice Department is committed to interrupting Georgia’s integrity law demonstrates the level to which Washington bureaucrats will sink to preserve system weaknesses.
The full report stated that, “in 2020, the Peach State broke records for undeliverable and unaccounted-for mail ballots.”
The state’s recent close election results make clear the importance of voter roll list maintenance operations. One of the most consequential stories to come out of Georgia is how the number of mail ballots directed to faulty addresses (returned undeliverable) was greater than the ultimate difference between winning and losing 16 Electoral College votes. Like in Wisconsin and other states, political candidates would be wise to factor in the sloppiness of mail balloting when forecasting their voter turnout needs for victory. Georgia’s recently passed election integrity reforms are a positive step forward in addressing the multitude of mail ballot risks, even if the Biden DOJ is trying to shut them down in court.
The report noted that:
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission asks local officials how many ballots were not returned as voted, were undeliverable, or were otherwise ‘unable to be tracked.’ The USPS Inspector General most recently reported that only 13 percent of mail ballots in the 2018 General Election used the official tracking system. This means a wide variety of things that can happen to a ballot in the ‘unknown’ column. A ballot can be mis-delivered. It can be thrown out with your unpaid bills. It can be left on the floor of apartment mail rooms (like seen in Nevada in 2020). Election officials simply do not know what happened.”
Wednesday’s report by PILF was another in a series of reports recently released by the conservative election integrity organization.
On August 27, PILF released a similar report on Wisconsin, which showed that “83K Mail Ballots Went Missing or Undeliverable amid 20K Vote Margin of Victory” in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.
On August 17 , PILF released a national report which found, “Nearly 15 Million Mail Ballots Went Unaccounted for in 2020 Election.”
