Georgia Audit Finds 99.99 Percent Signature Accuracy Rate in County Trump Contested

Georgia has once again shot down President Donald Trump's allegations of widespread voter fraud after a signature match audit in Cobb County found its elections department had a "99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures."

Only two ballots had mismatched signatures out of the 15,118 ballots reviewed. One ballot was "mistakenly signed by the elector's spouse," and the other problem was that the voter signed only the front of the ballot envelope.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement Tuesday that his office has "always been focused on calling balls and strikes in elections, and in this case, three strikes against the voter fraud claims and they're out."

He added, "We conducted a statewide hand recount that reaffirmed the initial tally, and a machine recount at the request of the Trump campaign that also reaffirmed that original tally. This audit disproves the only credible allegations the Trump campaign had against the strength of Georgia's signature match processes."

The secretary of state first announced the signature match audit on December 14, noting that his office would be partnering with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct the Cobb County audit. The audit was a result of a specific allegation against how the county did the signature matching process during the June primaries.

"The Trump campaign claimed that Cobb County did not properly conduct signature match in June," Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said earlier this month. "After the countywide audit, we will look at the entire state. We will look at the entire election to make sure signature match was executed properly."

Officials in the Peach State counted the 5 million votes cast in the November 3 election three times and certified President-elect Joe Biden's win on two occasions. Biden is the first Democrat to earn the state's 16 electoral votes in nearly three decades.

The former vice president won Georgia, an unexpected battleground state in the 2020 race, by roughly 12,000 votes. The state had gone for Trump in the 2016 election, and he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there by more than 210,000 votes.

In Cobb County, the state's third most populous county located outside of Atlanta, Biden won 56 percent of the vote and Trump received 42 percent, according to the county's elections website.

While Raffensperger and other Republican state officials have defended the integrity of the state's electoral process, Trump and his allies have made unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. They've also filed multiple lawsuits challenging the state's results, including one challenge from Texas that was soundly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Amid the president's attacks on Georgia, election workers reported receiving threats as they recounted ballots. One Georgia election official made a plea for Trump to stop his behavior, saying that "someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed."

The president continued his tirade against Georgia in a tweet Wednesday morning, in which he called for Republican Governor Brian Kemp to "resign from office."

"He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States," Trump wrote.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the signature audit in Cobb County but did not receive a response in time for publication.