New Lawsuit Seeks to Decertify Georgia Election Results and Probe Non-Resident Votes and Signature Match Anomalies

Envelopes that had previously held ballots in Gwinnett County are seen as workers begin their recount of the ballots in Lawrenceville, Ga., on Nov. 13, 2020. Megan Varner/Getty Images

A lawsuit filed on Monday in Georgia requests that the state’s election results be decertified until an investigation is completed into claims that ballots were cast by non-residents and that signature-verification practices were lax.

The complaint (pdf), brought by Paul Andrew Boland, a registered elector, against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other officials, was filed on Nov. 30 in a court in Fulton County. It claims that 20,312 ballots were cast by people who are no longer residents of Georgia and that “suspiciously low ballot rejection rates” suggest signature-verification procedures “were not enforced with their usual rigor,” resulting in dilution of Boland’s vote, “casting doubt on the integrity of the Election” and providing grounds to contest the Georgia vote.

Raffensperger’s office did not immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta on Nov. 11, 2020. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

In support of the claim that over 20,000 ballots were cast by out-of-state residents, the complaint cites an expert analysis by Matt Braynard, an analyst and former data chief and strategist for President Donald Trump’s campaign. Braynard and his team reviewed addresses on voter rolls and found that thousands were postal and commercial addresses made to appear like residential addresses, in violation of Georgia law.

“This number of invalid votes far exceeds the certified margin of victory of 12,760 in the presidential results,” the complaint says.

The claim of lax signature verification is based on unusually low absentee ballot rejection rates. Citing an affidavit by Benjamin Overholt, an expert in applied statistics and research methods at the University of Northern Colorado, the complaint notes a 0.15 percent rejection rate in the 2020 general election, compared to a 0.28 percent rejection rate in the 2016 general election, 0.20 percent in the 2018 general, and 0.28 percent in the 2020 primary.

“There are other anomalies in the reported data that should be analyzed, and many raise significant questions about the conduct and results of the 2020 General Election,” Overholt wrote in his sworn statement, and argued that the recent “hand count” audit of Georgia’s election results would not resolve these issues.

The complaint says that while Raffensperger’s office carried out an audit and recount, “no signature matching was required during that process” and argued that, “without a meaningful verification of signatures, the election results cannot be certified.”

It also alleges that, ahead of the election, Raffensperger took unlawful and unconstitutional steps to weaken safeguards against fraudulent ballots, including around signature requirements.

The suit asks the court to decertify the results of the election until Raffensperger’s office completes an investigation of a sample of the 20,311 individuals flagged as having voted in violation of residency requirements. It also calls for a signature match check for the absentee ballots cast in the election, and to make all ballots and envelopes used in casting absentee ballots available for public scrutiny.

If the two probes and related remedies cannot be assured, the suit calls for a redo of the election in Georgia.