Newt Gingrich called out Georgia’s Governor Kemp this afternoon for not pushing his state to do an audit of absentee ballot signatures during the hand recount and warns him to do it now and fix the election loopholes before Democrats try and steal the Senate seats:
Governor Kemp may have an opportunity to make real progress on election reform in Georgia.Last friday November 20 he called for the Secretary of State Raffensberger to audit the absentee ballot envelopes for signature match with applications.He also called for election law reform
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
Would have been better if Governor Kemp had acted on November 12 when Trump Recount Chair Doug Collins and GOP state chair David Shafer wrote Raffensberger asking for a review of the signatures on absentee ballot applications and envelopes.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
Newt points out that if they had verified signatures like they did in 2018, the error rate would be three times the number of ballots Biden won by:
Why did Governor Kemp wait until AFTER certification to ask for an audit of the absentee envelopes? In 2018 3.5% of the absentee votes were thrown out for not matching signatures and not being valid. In 2020 with 4 times as many absentee ballots only 0.3% have been rejected.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
The difference in absentee ballot acceptance from 2018 to 2020 is about 39,000 votes. Biden’s entire margin in Georgia is 12,670 so if the normal absentee ballot rejection rate had been implemented it would be more than three times Biden’s margin of winning.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
Newt then lays out the three things Kemp needs to do now, and says ‘we’ll be watching’ to see if he’s really serious about fixing this:
Kemp now has 3 big challenges.Get Secretary of State to undertake audit of absentee ballot envelopes. Call on State Election Board to undertake a full audit. Call a special session of the Georgia legislature to fix the loopholes before the Democrats try to steal Senate seats.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
Governor Kemp’s next steps will tell us if his friday statement on election problems was a real change of heart or just public relations to try to appease the many angry Georgia Republicans. We will be watching.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 23, 2020
The ball’s in Governor Kemp’s court now…