Sec. of State to do statewide signature audit to combat ‘tsunami of disinformation’ in Nov. election

ATLANTA — As voters lined up in the rain Wednesday to cast their early ballots for the Jan. 5 runoff, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office announced it would perform a signature match audit across the state to combat what it says is a “tsunami of disinformation” attempting to erode confidence in our election system.

The state says there were specific allegations about signature matches in Cobb County so it will do the audit, which is expected to start next week.

They will then expand that audit to races across the state to combat lies with the truth.

“The facts are on our side,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Along with the Cobb audit, Raffensperger said the University of Georgia will assist his office with a statewide signature match audit study after that.

He said the only reason they’re doing it is to combat all the lies circulating about voter fraud.

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Raffensperger said they need the audits to restore confidence in the system.

“At this point, it will be difficult to change some minds. I get that. We understand that. But as I said earlier, all voters need to be respected equally. All voters desire to have faith in the system,” Raffensperger said.

The Secretary of State called the campaign to discredit Georgia’s election system as a “tsunami of disinformation.”

Voting implementation manager Gabriel Sterling took that a step further.

He blamed Republicans for spreading disinformation about voting in 2020, but also accused Democrats of doing the same thing in 2018 and 2016.

He said they’re working hard to restore the confidence that disinformation eroded.

“This is our response to the tsunami of disinformation Secretary Raffensperger said in order to attempt to restore confidence of some level of people because as he said, there are people who are going to go to their graves feeling like this election was stolen regardless of how much evidence they see,” Sterling said.

Sterling said as of 7 a.m. Wednesday, some 714,000 people across Georgia had voted early or absentee by mail in the runoff election.

Georgia certifies election results, declares Joe Biden the winner

Cox Media Group