Georgia investigators find no fraudulent absentee ballots in Cobb County

Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Georgia investigators did not find any fraudulent absentee ballots among an audit of more than 15,000 voter signatures in Cobb County, a report by Georgia's secretary of state released Tuesday.

The result disputes claims by President Donald Trump who has repeatedly said Georgia absentee ballots were filled with fraudulent votes costing him the election in the state. President-elect Joe Biden beat Trump in Georgia by 12,000 votes.

In a detailed probe by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and secretary of state investigators, they found 10 absentee ballots that appeared to have signatures that didn't match or the signature was missing.

The report said all 10 voters verified with investigators that they indeed submitted the ballots.

"Based on the results of the audit, the Cobb County Elections Department had a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures," the report said. "The audit team was also able to confirm that the two ballots that should have initially been identified by Cobb County Elections Department staff as requiring a cure notification were actually cast by the voters to whom they were issued. No fraudulent absentee ballots were identified during the audit."

Cobb County in suburban Atlanta is the state's third-most populous county where African American and Latino residents make up a little more than 40% of the population, according to the latest available figures from the U.S. Census.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who ordered the audit, has been consistently criticized by Trump for the handling of the election.

Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are in tight runoff elections to keep their Senate seats, called for Raffensperger to resign last month.