Category: Politics

A state court has ruled that the Arizona Secretary of State used illegal signature-verification methods in the state’s prior two elections. The Superior Court for the County of Yavapai ruled that the Secretary, in permitting signature verification with documents that have no relation to the act of registering, “contradict[ed] the plain language” of the law.

In the decision, Judge John Napper wrote that the Arizona election “statute is clear and unambiguous” while adding, “…the legislature intended for the recorder to attempt to match the signature on the outside of the envelope to the signature on the documents the putative voter used to register.” By not specifically matching ballot signatures with voter registration documents, the Arizona Secretary of State acted in violation of the law.

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), a legal organization founded to defend state election laws, filed a lawsuit in March against the Arizona Secretary of State’s office – challenging it’s authority to ignore the state’s signature verification statute as written. According to RITE the Secretary’s instructions to “use a broader and less reliable universe of comparison signatures” resulted in “…ballots [being] counted despite using a signature that did not match anything in the voter’s registration record.”

Counsel for all parties have been ordered by Judge Napper to appear for a status conference on Sept. 19.

The 2022 elections in Arizona were fraught with accusations of voter fraud and mismanagement by then Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – herself a candidate for governor. Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial, argued at the time that many voter signatures were verified by election officials with no observers present. Lake was defeated by Hobbs by less than 20,000 votes. In the Arizona Attorney General race, Republican candidate Abraham Hamadeh was defeated his Democrat opponent by only 280 votes.