A viral video shows lightning speed signature verification of ballots, with a ludicrous 99.97 percent success rate. Arizona ballots were approved as fast as they could load on screen, leading to questions over whether any actual signature verification was taking place at the state’s gubernatorial election in 2022.
Kari Lake, the Republican candidate who lost out to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has also pointed out that many signatures were verified in officials’ offices with no observers present. The new video lends credence to Lake’s contention that it is simply not possible for officials to have legitimately verified the hundreds of thousands of ballots they approved in the time allotted – and the rejection rate for mail-ins in Maricopa County does appear to be unusually low.
WATCH:
To believe that Maricopa County successfully verified more than 400,000 ballots would mean that they would have had to verify signatures in 3 seconds or less.
While working OT.
Watch this video.
Are they treating the integrity of your vote with the respect it deserves? pic.twitter.com/66jO2SGuQq
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) May 17, 2023
Not Enough Time in the Day.
Lake’s lawyer, Kurt Olsen, said in court that “Maricopa’s log file data shows that 11… signature verification workers approved 170,000 signatures at a rate of between 0 and 2.99 seconds with a 99.97 per cent approval rating,” telling the judge: “That’s not signature review, Your Honor.”
Whistleblowers called by Lake’s team have suggested that there were plenty of issues with mail-in ballots that might have been caught by a more thorough vetting process, with one claiming to have seen “signatures of individuals [who] didn’t even belong in the history” in testimony published to social media.
“[S]ay it’s John Smith, and it was a woman’s name… [W]e ask, ‘how did these even possibly get into the history? They’re not even the same, they’re not the same name, they weren’t a relative. How did this happen?’ The addresses were different. Everything,” they alleged.
Whistleblowers also spoke of being pressured to reassess ballots they had previously rejected, saying: “We felt uncomfortable about approving what we had already rejected. We’d already went through them.”
Lake’s team insists the election “was stolen from the people,” and that their fight to prove it is not about Lake herself as much as “exposing a broken system that’s disenfranchising Arizonans,” vowing: “We will never let another election be run this way again.”