Dear Editor:
I recently read an account of the Superior Court trial in Maricopa County, Ariz. dealing with the matter of whether signature verification really took place for some 300,000 mail-in ballots for the November governor’s election in Arizona. Katie Hobbs (then Secretary of State) defeated challenger Kari Lake by a mere 17,000 votes across the state. Witnesses included a poll worker whistleblower and the Maricopa County Elections Director, Ray Valenzuela. Eyewitnesses suggested that Maricopa County election officials “permitted the counting of tens of thousands of mail-in and drop box ballots that did not satisfy signature verification requirements,” including allowing “tens of thousands of ballots with signature mismatches.” A decision is forthcoming but this trial points out just one of the repeatable elements wrong with today’s new and improved open-ended election process.
Expert witness testimony suggested about 60,000 ballots was a reasonable and attainable number of signature verifications for a 24-hour period. Miraculously, the Maricopa County election staff verified 300,000 in less than 36 hours! One poll worker verified 100% of 26,900 ballots in a single hour by himself. Another instance identified 11 poll workers that verified 274,000 signatures at 99.97% acceptability in less than three seconds each (70,000 of those at less than two seconds each). Video footage was played which showed poll workers simply scrolling through digital documents and “verifying them” as fast as the screen could regenerate an image. Instead of pursuing ‘cures’ for an anticipated 5000-7000 ballots it appears almost all were ‘rubber stamped’. This doesn’t even factor in that these verifications did not take place at voting centers, as required by Arizona law, but instead took place at Maricopa’s processing center, necessitating a break in the chain of custody. The primary question to ask is “can an untrained person really verify a signature at all?” and secondly, “if something as important as ‘voting’ hinges on signature verification, why would anyone be so cavalier about accomplishing it?”
Working a poll is an awesome responsibility and should never be taken lightly. There are corners of the world where freedom will never shine because citizens of those countries simply don’t have the right to freely elect the leaders of their country. How can we even risk losing such a right?
As 2024 approaches, journalists seem indignant when they ask a 2024 candidate whether they’d “accept the results of the upcoming election” and don’t get a resounding ‘yes’. This is reminiscent of a “when did you stop beating your wife” type question. It’s no wonder we have skeptics. Losing an election is a recoverable event; losing because people play fast and loose with rules is dangerous. States better figure this out.
Dan Schnieders
Jefferson City
References:
https://www.facebook.com/turleytalks/videos/3351265608459158
https://apnews.com/article/kari-lake-arizona-governor-election-ballots-signatures-359821ab558edf42c25244510accb0f2
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2023/05/19/lakes-attorneys-argue-more-than-270k-signatures-county-verified-in-less-than-three-seconds/
