by Jeremy Kohler and Doug Bock Clark, ProPublica
The FBI has explored using artificial intelligence to assess the validity of signatures on tens of thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes seized from Fulton County, Georgia, the latest push in the Trump administration’s unprecedented reinvestigation of the 2020 vote.
The effort, according to internal communications reviewed by ProPublica and an agency tech specialist familiar with the work, focuses on comparing signatures on ballot envelopes with signatures on other election documents, such as registration forms. President Donald Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In particular, he has repeatedly claimed that there was voter fraud in Georgia, where he lost to Joe Biden by just 11,779 votes. In January, the FBI raided Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, collecting about 700 boxes of election materials, including about 150,000 mail-in ballots, of which roughly 116,000 went for Biden.
The signature-matching initiative was under discussion as recently as late June, but its current status is uncertain. A White House spokesperson declined to answer questions from ProPublica, referring them to the FBI. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
The effort comes at the same time as the FBI has mandated that 260 analysts be redirected from field offices nationwide to focus on the Fulton County probe, according to an agency memo reviewed by ProPublica. Their work also includes comparing a spreadsheet of 175,000 voters with a commercial database to see, among other things, if they are still alive.
Whether done by people or technology, the accuracy of signature matching remains controversial. Experts have raised serious concerns in legal cases and after analyzing recent election results about how accurately signature matching can identify voter fraud through practices like examining the size and slant of letters made in different circumstances.
The FBI technology specialist told ProPublica that the bureau has technology to compare images and that if it starts with a large enough dataset, then a signature-matching analysis could be “somewhat accurate.” Ultimately, the tech specialist said, its results would turn on the threshold set for evidence of fraud: “It’s up to the builder of the system to define the guidelines.”
Some FBI staffers developing that strategy are trying to mitigate the political pressure to prove fraud in Fulton County by highlighting the limitations of broad signature analysis, arguing that though signature comparisons have been used in individual voter fraud investigations, they haven’t been done on this scale, according to the source. But agency leaders have continued to push forward.
There are grave concerns within the FBI that the results of the examination will reflect political influence, building on previous efforts by the administration to break longstanding guardrails meant to keep the federal government from interfering with elections. “Everyone is of the opinion that, whether they find anything or not, they are going to continue” to pursue proof of fraud, the source said.
A Long History of Controversy
Signature matching attracted controversy during and after the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic when more Democrats than Republicans used mail-in ballots. Trump promoted false claims that Georgia officials’ failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots had led to his loss by allowing fraud.
Conservative lawmakers then pushed strict signature-matching laws across America, including Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021, which they justified by pointing to “many electors concerned about allegations of rampant voter fraud.” The bill replaced signature matching with stricter forms of verification, such as requiring mail-in voters to provide their driver’s license number or copies of licenses.
Investigations by journalism organizations and research have shown that signature matching leads to disproportionately high levels of rejected ballots for voters of color, as well as those who are new, young, old, politically unaffiliated or disabled. A political scientist testifying as an expert witness in 2020 for a lawsuit challenging an Ohio signature-matching law said his analysis suggested that 32 legitimate ballots were blocked for every illegitimate one.
“Signatures are one of the most difficult forensic sciences, and I don’t think AI is going to be able to do this,” said Linton Mohammed, a former president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. “Signatures vary — unlike DNA or fingerprints.”
Using AI to examine signatures on ballot envelopes is a relatively new frontier, according to most experts consulted by ProPublica and the FBI tech specialist. The tech specialist said the bureau had discussed how to employ it with experts across the government and weighed whether to use commercial products such as those sold by OpenAI or Anthropic.
Internal communications reviewed by ProPublica suggest the FBI analysis would compare only the signature on a voter’s registration form with the one on the ballot envelope — a limited sample that experts said would significantly increase the likelihood of discrepancies.
“There’s a high degree of noise” in the materials the FBI has, said Max Palmer, a professor at Boston University who has studied mail-in ballot signature matching. “I’m not sure there’s enough information, enough signal, to do better.”
Conservative activists have long lobbied for a closer examination of 2020 mail-in ballots from Fulton County. Reports by an independent monitor and the States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit organization working to protect the integrity of elections, concluded the activists’ claims about signature matching and other irregularities were false.
This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.