We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA) issued a video earlier this month going over problems with the signature verification on ballot affidavits from the botched 2020 election.
The alliance has been investigating voting irregularities in Maricopa County in recent elections.
WPAA found that out of 1.9 million ballots, 10 percent or about 200,000 had “egregiously” mismatched signatures, and another 10 percent had poorly matched signatures that violated the state’s guidelines for acceptance.
Super great show!
— AzPinkLady #SaveArizona #SaveAmerica (@AzPinkLady) April 8, 2025
Shelby & Chris drop a lot of nuggets a long the way. It’s worth watching the whole thing before the next show.
What they reveal is a big deal!
Here are some snippets to share around, but it by no means all of the discussion that needs to be heard.
Clip 1:… https://t.co/nu5yhuxEzH pic.twitter.com/t9DJ8GVlAe
Attorney Bryan Blehm, a member of WPAA who previously represented Kari Lake in her election challenges, said during the presentation that then-Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer didn’t do anything to stop signature reviewers from clicking “approved” on every signature verification screen as fast as a new screen came up. He noted that 20,000 ballots that came in after the election was over violated the law.
“The big concern is who has access to a large number of these ballots, that can then be illegally voted,” Blehm said. “And we know, Stephen Richard wasn’t doing his job. We know they hire people, and they’ve consistently hired people that sit there to just hit enter, enter, enter.”
WPAA asked the Arizona State Senate for permission to inspect images of 120,000 ballot affidavit envelopes that were examined during the State Senate’s audit of the 2020 election. They were provided far more, 1.9 million images, as well as 5.3 million reference images, allowing the group to redo signature verification for the entire election.
Chris Handsel, director of IT and data for WPAA, said, “We gave everybody the same training that was in the signature verification manual that was given to the county, and we had our people redo signature verification just the way it was instructed by the county.”
Shelby Busch, co-founder of WPAA, pointed out that A.R.S. 16-550 states that ballots may not be accepted after 7 p.m. on Election Day. Part of the statute provides, “If the signature is missing, the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall make reasonable efforts to contact the elector, advise the elector of the missing signature and allow the elector to add the elector’s signature not later than 7 p.m. on Election Day.”
