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. Trump is set to deliver a speech Thursday about national election security and voting machine vulnerabilities, but it is unclear whether he will address the Fulton County investigation. 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. The New York Times and MS Now previously reported the memo. MS Now has reported that some FBI analysts have been fired rather than work on the effort. 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…”