Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) called for an audit of votes cast in Georgia to include signature verification of absentee ballots, offering his remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
A recount of ballots in Georgia must remove ineligible votes to be legitimate, Hice stated.
“There’s still some hope,” Hice said. “The Trump campaign is filing a lawsuit in Georgia today, so that will begin another round of investigation. We all knew this recount was a charade. We knew it was a joke from the very beginning. They were not examining and really looking into two key areas, one being the signature verifications, and number two, the legal versus illegal ballots.”
Hice said the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Georgia seeks to audit the ballots to remove fraudulent cases and ineligible votes from the total count.
“All they did basically was recount, and so there was not much change in the outcome, but because they didn’t get into the real issue, which is potential fraud,” Hice remarked, “So the Trump campaign is coming out to sue for the purpose of getting hold of the actual ballots and whatever else is involved for the purpose of actually determining what was the true count when it deals with legal ballots versus illegal ballots.”
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Signature verification of absentee ballots can make an “enormous” difference in Georgia, explained Hice. He estimated that signature verification could remove 40,000 votes from the state’s total vote count given the percentage of discarded absentee ballots from 2018’s congressional election in the Peach State.
According to Ballotpedia, Joe Biden received 12,284 more votes than Donald Trump in Georgia. The first vote count had Biden receiving 2,475,141 votes against the president’s 2,462,857.
“The immediate process that can make an enormous difference is to just look at the signature verifications,” Hice explained. “The national average — and the average in the past in Georgia — for ballots that are thrown out because the signatures are invalid is between three and five percent. Two years ago, Georgia threw out three and a half percent of ballots that were absentee ballots because the signatures were not accurate. This year we had 1.3 million absentee ballots, but the percentage that was thrown out due to insufficient signatures was 0.3 percent.”
Hice continued, “Now that difference — if it’s just the average that we’ve always had in Georgia — that’s a difference of 40,000 ballots. That’s the difference in the election, and that can be done relatively quickly. We’re looking at just verifying signatures. Obviously that was not done with the absentee ballots, or extremely poorly and carelessly done, so I think that’s the beginning point. Beyond that, you actually get into the ballots themselves to determine what’s legal versus illegal.”
Hice called for the use of signature verification in an audit of ballots in Georgia.
“The issue is the legal versus illegal ballots, and that begins with what signatures are valid and invalid … for these absentee ballots,” Hice determined. “When you’re talking 40,000 ballots, they should have been cast out just on a regular average of people who do not sign their signatures properly or whatever reason. That’s a huge difference in this race, and that was not done.”
Breitbart News reported that Georgia made signature verification of absentee ballots practically impossible in its recent changes to voting laws. Georgia’s ongoing hand recount of votes cast in the presidential election is not checking signatures on absentee ballots.
Hice credited Stacey Abrams with leading Georgia’s recent removal of signature verification requirements regarding absentee ballots.
“Stacey Abrams has been the mastermind of taking over the election [with] absentee ballots and, in my opinion, throwing a tremendous amount of fraud into the situation,” Hice estimated. “Because in Georgia, keep in mind the only ballots that do not have voter ID are absentee ballots, so if you vote in person or if you vote early, there must be picture ID and a variety of different voter ID, but when it comes to absentee ballots, that’s not the case.”
Hice went on, “Stacey Abrams has already announced that she’s had over 600,000 people apply for absentee ballots. It is a frightening scenario that’s going on, and at the same time you have a number of people who feel like the presidential election was rigged, and so the attitude that we’ve got to guard against is, ‘What’s the point of me voting? This thing has already rigged,’ and so we’ve got to get to greater accountability, enforcing the laws that already exist.”
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