Kari Lake election challenge goes to judge amid secrecy claims

PHOENIX — An attorney for Kari Lake charged Friday that Maricopa County was trying to hide something from the public in how it processed, and claims to have verified, the signatures on 1.3 million early ballots.

Video cameras were focused on about 50 workstations where people were doing ballot verification, said the attorney, Kurt Olsen.

“That’s what the public saw,’’ Olsen told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson in his closing arguments Friday of the three-day trial, in which Republican Lake seeks to reverse the 2022 election results in which she lost the governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes.

“This is the front that Maricopa puts on to the public,’’ Olsen said. “It looks like things are being done out in the open, transparent.’’

But he said an additional 99 workers were working in back offices, including Maricopa County Elections Director Rey Valenzuela.

“He was doing signature verification, and he wasn’t going to have anybody standing over his shoulder looking at him,’’ Olsen said. “That is the secret army that Maricopa County employed,’’ he said, saying it backs up the testimony from one whistleblower who testified for Lake that “the math never added up’’ on being able to properly verify the signatures on the 1.3 million early ballots received.

But an attorney representing Hobbs, Elena Rodriguez Armenta, told Thompson he should recognize what Lake’s lawsuit is really about.

“The most charitable view of the case boils down to the simple assertion that unless Lake or her allies personally observed with their own eyes every signature reviewer and every signature, the signature verification process couldn’t have happened,’’ she said.

That is countered by Lake’s own witnesses who worked as signature verifiers, Rodriguez Armenta said. Both testified they were trained by the county, reviewed signatures and only verified those they said met the legal requirements of being consistent with other signatures already on file.

“At the end of the day, all Ms. Lake claims, all she has ever claimed, is because she lost the election, something, anything must be amiss,’’ Rodriguez Armenta said.

What did not happen, she said, is the complete failure of Maricopa County’s signature verification system at every level as Lake claims. Nor is it a conspiracy, she said.

“It is not that the Republican election officials secretly conspired to rig the vote against the Republican candidate,’’ Rodriguez Armenta said. “It’s not that Maricopa is somehow uniquely plagued with thousands of fraudulent voters signing thousands of fraudulent ballots. But it is that Kari Lake lost an election.’’

Olsen’s case relies almost exclusively on the testimony of Eric Speckin, who said he is an expert on signature verification. He claimed his review of county documents about the processing of those 1.3 million early ballots showed that about 274,000 were marked as accepted within three seconds, with about 70,000 passed in fewer than two seconds.

That means the county was not able to comply, Speckin said, with the law that says verifiers “shall compare’’ signatures shown to them on computer screens, not simply glance at the images and click the keyboard to say they were OK.

“That requires a minimum amount of time in order to accomplish in order to comply,’’ he said.

“If I flip through the pages of a book, thumbing through them, I can say I’m reading it, but it’s not so,’’ said Olsen. “Similarly, parking a verification worker in front of a computer screen while they tap on a keyboard and scroll through ballot images or ballot signature images is not signature verification in accordance with the law.’’

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Olsen argued that the county brought in no one to dispute Speckin’s testimony that there was no way to process that many ballots as fast as he said were shown on county records.

But Tom Liddy, a deputy county attorney, pointed out that the data on which Speckin was relying was never actually admitted into evidence. That’s just part of the problem, he told the judge.

“Not a single witness came before you, your honor, this week and said that a single ballot packet affidavit envelope was not reviewed for signature,’’ as the law requires, Liddy said.

“Not a single ballot,’’ he said. “Not this number we hear about 274,000.’’

Olsen continued with his claim the verification law was ignored. He said when that happens, “people lose faith’’ in the election system, which he said is reflected in polls.

Liddy had a different explanation. He said it’s not because Maricopa County, or any county, didn’t do its job, but “because there are misinformation, lies and filth being broadcast all over the internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.’’

“So the fact that some people in Arizona and some people in America don’t have confidence in our elections is not evidence, as suggested by Ms. Lake’s team, that the many counties across this fruited plain are not doing their job,’’ he said. “And it’s just possible, your honor, that some of the folks out there who are losing confidence in elections, (it’s) because they’re reading that stuff.’’

At least part of Lake’s claim is based on the assertion that signature verification is the “gatekeeper’’ for the election system, the only protection keeping invalid votes out of the system. Valenzuela said that’s not true.

He said people first have to be registered voters, which under Arizona law requires proof of identification. Only those who are registered voters can request an early ballot.

Valenzuela said the county also verifies the ballots are sent to the proper address, using procedures that ensure his office is notified by the U.S. Postal Service if someone has moved.

“So you can’t just go to Walmart and buy a green envelope and a ballot?’’ asked Liddy. “You got to get one sent to you by Maricopa County?’’

Valenzuela agreed. “It has to be issued by us, to a registered voter, with a unique piece ID barcode that is assigned to that voter so we can track it, and to that election, more specifically,’’ he responded.

“There is due diligence done on the front end before we send that,’’ Valenzuela continued. “So it’s not the first line. The first line is, before I mail you that packet, are you a registered voter, are you eligible, and is that your address.’’

Valenzuela also detailed for Thompson not just the first-level signature review process — the one Lake’s lawyers contend could not have been properly done in the time stated on the county’s records — but also an audit of 2% of the reviewed ballots to ensure the decisions made by reviewers are correct.

Thompson has not said when he will rule on Lake’s bid to get a new election.