David Perdue distorts facts in Georgia agreement on absentee ballot signatures

In the GOP primary race for Georgia’s governor, former Sen. David Perdue has a message he wants voters to carry with them when they decide whether Gov. Brian Kemp should progress in his bid to retain the state’s top seat: Kemp "caved" to Democrats during the 2020 presidential election in an election-stealing move that sealed the fate of President Donald Trump’s loss in Georgia.

It’s an assertion built on two falsehoods. The first, that Trump’s election was stolen. And the second, that a settlement reached in a lawsuit related to the state’s absentee ballot system somehow threw the results in Joe Biden’s favor as Kemp looked on approvingly.

"When they passed that consent decree, it invalidated all voter ID law" and "allowed fraudulent ballots to be accepted into the race," Perdue said, addressing Kemp during an April 24  primary debate. "Absolutely that’s what the consent decree did and you allowed it to happen."

That’s not what happened. And Perdue’s characterization of what he inaccurately termed a "consent decree" gets a lot of facts wrong. Here we explain the lawsuit settlement at the center of Perdue’s accusations — themes that have also been repeated by Trump, who has characterized the agreement as "horrible," a "disaster" and "more poorly negotiated" than the Iran nuclear deal. 

Perdue’s campaign did not respond to our queries. The primary is May 24. The winner will face Democrat Stacey Abrams in November.

In 2018, Abrams narrowly lost the governor’s race to Kemp, who was Secretary of State at the time. Simultaneously, a Republican won a congressional race by just 0.14% in Gwinnett County, which rejected more absentee ballots than any other county in Georgia. 

 In November 2019, spurred by those midterm election results, the Democratic Party of Georgia and national Democratic groups filed a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and election officials in Gwinnett. The main point of the lawsuit was to challenge election officials’ procedures for notifying voters when their absentee ballots were rejected due to missing or mismatched signatures.

Though a state law required election officials to "promptly" notify voters of missing or mismatched signatures, it didn’t include specific timeframes. That meant that each county set its own rules for how long it could take to notify voters of their problematic ballots and each had its own plan for how it should attempt to contact the voters about the issue. 

The Democrats’ suit also challenged the design of the ballot envelope in Gwinnett County. As it was, instructions were printed in a small font size on the envelope. The lawsuit argued that the small type resulted in many Gwinnett voters not realizing their signatures were required.

In March 2020, Raffensperger and the Democrats reached what was called a "compromise settlement agreement and release" — not a consent decree — in the lawsuit. A settlement agreement is a resolution signed by the parties without a court order, while a consent decree is entered as a court order enforceable by a judge.

The State Election Board agreed to new notification rules for rejected absentee ballots. Officials agreed to notify voters by mail, and if available, by telephone and email, within three business days of receiving the ballot and to give them an opportunity to fix it. 

State officials also agreed to issue an official bulletin to local election officials about signature matching procedures. The bulletin indicated that if an election official finds a signature mismatch, the official has to seek review from two other election officials. 

Gwinnett officials agreed to a more clear ballot design.

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The settlement doesn’t appear to have had any significant impact on absentee ballot rejections in the November 2020 election. The signature match ballot rejection rate increased slightly from 0.18% in 2018 to 0.2% in 2020, according to the Secretary of State. We found no evidence that the settlement opened up the door to fraudulent ballots. ​​The presidential election results in Georgia were counted three times, and each showed Biden won. Republican statewide election officials said that they found no evidence of systematic voter fraud. 

Perdue said during the debate that the agreement "invalidated all voter ID law" but the settlement made zero mention of voter identification law. 

It would be possible for voters to hear Perdue’s statement and assume Georgia has no voter ID law, but that would be wrong. Georgia law requires photo identification when voting in person or absentee. In 2021, a new state law took effect adding ID rules for absentee voting.

During the debate, while speaking about the agreement, Perdue said that Kemp "allowed it to happen" and suggested he should have called a special legislative session.

Kemp countered "I had nothing to do with" it and that under state law "the reason I affirmed the certification of the election is because the law says ‘I shall.’ It doesn’t say ‘I may.’"

Kemp’s campaign spokesperson Tate Mitchell told us that Kemp played no role in the settlement between Raffensperger and the Democratic Party of Georgia. Kemp was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the settlement agreement makes no mention of Kemp’s name. 

Perdue said that a consent decree approved by Kemp "invalidated all voter ID law" and "allowed fraudulent ballots to be accepted into the race."

Perdue’s statements are rife with inaccuracies. 

There was no consent decree, which would have been overseen by a judge. Instead, there was a settlement agreement involving state and Gwinnett County election officials and state and national Democratic groups. Kemp had no role in the matter.

The agreement spelled out that when an absentee ballot is rejected for a missing or mismatched signature, election officials have three days to contact the voter by mail, and if possible, by telephone and email. It also said that in the event of a signature mismatch, an election official has to  seek the review of two other officials.

The agreement said nothing about voter ID law and we found no evidence that it opened the door to the counting of fraudulent ballots. 

We rate this statement Pants on Fire! 

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