Kari Lake known as a number of witnesses
in her second election problem trial on Wednesday whose testimony
appeared to straight undermine her declare that Maricopa County didn’t
carry out signature verification for early ballots within the November 2022
election. 

“The proof right here in the present day will present a
failed course of and that no precise signature verification is being
carried out,” Kurt Olsen, certainly one of Lake’s attorneys, informed the court docket on
Wednesday, the primary day of the trial. 

Lake, a Trump-endorsed Republican,
misplaced the governor’s race to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs by greater than
17,000 votes however has insisted through the six months since then that the
election was rigged and that she is the true governor.

That is the second trial
within the courtroom of Maricopa County Superior Courtroom Decide Peter Thompson
in Lake’s lawsuit that goals to overturn the outcomes of the governor’s
race. Lake misplaced the primary trial in December. After appeals, the Arizona
Supreme Courtroom despatched the signature verification declare again to the trial court docket for additional examination. Lake included 10 claims in her unique submitting. 

Earlier than the trial that started
Wednesday, Thompson put Lake on discover that, to win her case, she would
should show that Maricopa County carried out no signature verification efforts.
Signature verifiers evaluate the signatures on poll envelopes to these
on file for that voter. If a signature is rejected by preliminary
reviewers, it’s despatched to extra skilled staff for a deeper
examination. 

Two of Lake’s witnesses on the primary
day of the trial labored as these preliminary reviewers — often called stage one
reviewers — through the November 2022 election. 

Deputy Maricopa County Lawyer Jack
O’Connor made some extent of thanking each of them for his or her work, driving
house the purpose that they did, in reality, carry out signature verification. 

“I used to be very centered on verifying signatures and making certain they matched,” Jacqueline Onigkeit informed O’Connor. 

Onigkeit informed Olsen that, through the
signature evaluate course of, she grew to become involved that the extra skilled
stage two reviewers have been overloaded and that a few of the signatures
she’d already rejected have been despatched again to her and the remainder of the employees
for additional evaluate, including that lots of the signatures have been dangerous. 

She additionally testified that these in
cost urged them to be cautious and to make certain they have been assured in
their choices to confirm or reject signatures. 

“We have been suggested a number of instances that we have been being monitored and so they have been doing audits on all of us,” Onigkeit stated. 

The opposite reviewer, Andrew Myers,
repeatedly informed the court docket that, in his perspective “the mathematics simply didn’t
add up,” when it took the group solely 36 hours to confirm signatures for
298,000 early ballots that got here in on Election Day. However Myers didn’t
appear conscious that there have been many extra folks engaged on signature
verification than these he was working with straight. 

Each Onigkeit and Myers testified
that there have been between 24-40 stage one signature reviewers and solely
three stage two reviewers working to confirm signatures straight
following the 2022 normal election. 

However Maricopa County Co-Elections
Director Rey Valenzuela later testified that the numbers provided by
these witnesses have been approach off. Valenzuela stated that, in whole, there have been
155 folks engaged on signature verification throughout that point,
together with the 24 non permanent staff  — like Onigkeit and Myers — alongside
with full-time county staff. 

However they weren’t all working on the
Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Middle the place the non permanent
staff interacted with them. Some labored on the county recorder’s
places of work in downtown Phoenix and Tempe. 

Lake’s group confirmed a video to the
court docket taken from a livestream of signature reviewers in November 2022
that confirmed one man quickly clicking via screens with out scrolling
down to have a look at signatures for comparability, saying that he was approving
each signature with out checking it in opposition to the voter’s signatures on
file. 

“You’ve taken it out of context,” Valenzuela stated of the video. 

He defined that every signature
reviewer works in batches of 250 signatures and as soon as they get to the tip
of that batch, they’re required to return via and test their
work. Valenzuela stated that might be what the person within the video was
doing. 

The trial recessed for the day at
4:30 p.m. Wednesday and was set to choose again up at 9 a.m. Thursday, with
Lake’s knowledgeable signature verification witness Erich Speckin set to testify.