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um we know that you and your constituents have a lot of questions about the november election um as secretary said we've been doing everything we can and continuing to work to get out accurate information um there has been a flurry of misinformation that has been perpetuated and as the secretary mentioned uh numerous um outlets who hosted that are now having to issue retractions um so i think that's a good thing but um you know it's kind of the old saying about the lies halfway around the world but the truth gets its pants on um so that's what we're seeing um both fox news and newsmax uh posted statements saying that there they have seen no evidence no evidence has been offered that dominion or any other voting machine used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election that's consistent with what we see as well um unfortunately election information is not new in georgia i was in this same role in 2018 and we were constantly fighting this information then as well from my perspective many of the claims made about the 2020 election are very similar to claims it was being made by the 2018 collection including allegations of vote flipping machine malfunctions and interestingly we see a lot of the complaints we get from voters are very similar back patterns um one side calls the same fact pattern voter suppression the other side called it voter fraud so that's something that we're that we're seeing as well uh the reality is um just like the claims about systematic voter suppression in 2018 were not true uh the claims about widespread voter fraud in 2020 are not supported by the evidence we have seen um in our investigations about that i'll give you guys an update on um i'm going to address some specific questions first that uh kind of been frequently asked that will hopefully address some of the questions you have and then of course if there's other ones that i that i didn't didn't get then i'm happy to try to address those we have received a lot of questions about the signature matching settlement agreement that our office into our office entered into uh regarding signature matching our office entered into that settlement agreement at the advice of the attorney general's office and our special assistant attorney general in that case um the settlement agreement basically it did one thing uh and only one thing as you guys remember back in 2019 the general assembly have to do ballot cure process um so um with it allowed for voters to cure any signature issues on their ballots by signing an affidavit showing a photo id so as part of that process the state election board passed the rule uh setting out the time period to notify a voter hey there's an issue that you can come here that was a new process we had to put in place the state election board passed that rule that said they have to get notice out within three days um except within 11 days of an election you have to get about next day uh the idea is we want to make sure voters have sufficient time to utilize that cure process now one thing that is uh i think worth noting the state election board passed that rule prior to the coven crisis um when people were envisioning a a more normal amount of absentee ballots even though georgia has no excuse absentee voting what we have seen in past elections before this year is that it was not really the preferred method of voting uh from really anybody in 2018 about five percent of the electorate voted absentee by mail and that was pretty similar to what we saw in 2016 um the other 95 is split about evenly between in-person early voting and uh election day but voting on election day so um that's what we have seen in the past that's what we expected to see this year as well and then um and then covet happen and really really change that um so the state election board passed that rule and then to settle that case which challenged the signature matching process as a whole and sought to enjoin its its use based on the argument that signature matching was not being done consistently across the counties um we did a couple things one we uh provided gbi training to counties on uh how to do how to conduct signature matching and two we put in place a process that if you're going to reject the signature based on a non-match you have to have uh three people look at it and make sure basically the majority agrees um that it doesn't match the reason we agreed to that is in talking to counties that was basically the process they had in place some some used two some used three people pretty much everyone already used an extra set of eyes um so we did not see that as changing anything uh substantively that the case that was brought was part of democrats for pillars litigation strategy georgia was obviously the main target in that strategy the strategy sought to extend the ballot receipt deadline passed election day allow ballot harvesting require government to prepay postage and then overturn signature matching requirements fortunately due to the good work of our attorney general's office and the special assistant attorney generals they appointed uh and due to the strength of the election laws in georgia that you guys passed no georgia laws on any of these items were overturned um on the final issue on that settlement agreement if you look at the numbers this year the latest numbers that we have from counties in terms of ballots that have been rejected for signature issues is 2 975. the total number of ballots that were initially flagged by counties as having seen their issue but were then cured pursuant to the process that you guys passed was 2777. so that means a total of 5752 ballots overall were initially identified by counties as having signature issues um that's 0.43 of all ballots counts and that's pretty consistent with um with uh what other states see it's probably a little high um and it's it's probably higher than what we've seen in previous years which is not surprising i think given the uh given the big increase in absentee voting this year uh the reason that i think that the overall rejection rate for future issues um is of course lower than that is due to the cure process that this general assembly passed that cure process requires the voters submit an affidavit and a copy of their photo id um which i think we all agree with does a good job of proving that the voter is who they who they say they are um so the numbers support uh i think the idea that at least i had prior to entering into that agreement that it did not change georgia law we've also received questions about absentee ballot drop boxes drop boxes were something that the state election board managed to put in place in response to the covet crisis it was something that our office supported one of our main goals this year was to make sure that going back to one of the the pillars of the four pillar litigation strategy that the the uh election day receipt deadline for ballots was not extended um not only is that a bad idea it's an especially bad idea in georgia because we have uh runoffs we're one of the only states that have a general election runoff so our election officials have to really get going on a runoff uh you know they've got to finish all their post-election activities and get going on a run-off very quickly um so we wanted to make sure we protected that election day um deadline the federal judge initially extended the deadline three days her decision was stayed by the 11th circuit and the 11th circuit uh in a good decision cited our use of drop boxes as you know a reason why that was not necessary to do that