Sean Hannity complains about Georgia mail-in ballots and tells Rep. Doug Collins to challenge Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

Hannity denounces Stacey Abrams’ voter drive in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, while making false claims about mail-in ballot signature standards

Written by Media Matters Staff

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Sean Hannity complains about Georgia mail-in ballots and tells Rep. Doug Collins to challenge Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

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From the November 16, 2020, edition of iHeartRadio’s The Sean Hannity Show

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Now, one of the things that I've spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people on the ground in Georgia, and everybody that I know is pretty ticked off at your governor — including me, and if you want to set me straight on this, you can — and also the secretary of state. You know, apparently this consent decree after a lawsuit in the early part of this year, by the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, that there was a consent decree that created two standards of signatures. And for example, if you are a day-of voter in the state of Georgia, correct me if I'm wrong, you go in, you show your photo ID, they check it with the database of signatures, make sure the signature matches, you vote, it's all set. But as part of this consent decree earlier this year, they allowed those requesting mail-in ballots — if you made an application, and as long as the application signature matches the ballot signature, that would suffice, and they wouldn't go to the database that every other voter had to use.

REP. DOUG COLLINS (R-GA): That is true. Everything that you just said is true, and that everything that you just said is — it's very frustrating, and I made it very clear, you know, that there's been, you know, numerous issues that have been going on.

…

HANNITY: So now you've got Stacey Abrams bragging out there that they've got 600,000 requests for mail-in ballots already — here we go again. And I'm talking to guys like Matt Towery, he's been polling the state for all these years. He says, “Yeah, these two seats are not a slam dunk — as a matter of fact, they could be lost easily” — his words, not mine. And seemingly, the governor doesn't even care, doesn't even say — well maybe, what do you think about running against him in a primary? Is there nothing the people of Georgia can do in all of this?

COLLINS: Well, I think right now, they just need to make their frustration known. I think the issue is —

HANNITY: Making frustrations known doesn't get the problem solved.

Just to be clear, The Associated Press has debunked similar claims by President Donald Trump about Georgia’s mail-in voting process Signatures on absentee ballots are indeed checked against the records in the state’s voter registration system. (Many people have noted the problems with signature verification in general, as well.)

The consent decree signed in March created a standardized process for local officials to notify voters in a timely fashion if their ballots are being rejected so that they can fix any problems.