The Kari Lake trial is underway now after The Arizona Supreme Court remanded the “erroneous[ly]” dismissed signature verification fraud count back to Judge Peter Thompson for further review.
Thompson previously dismissed the lawsuit on Christmas Eve, despite the evidence of massive voter disenfranchisement targeting Republicans and obviously false trial testimony by County Elections officials in the December trial.
The first witness called to the stand by Lake’s attorneys was level one signature reviewer Jacqueline Onigkeit, who testified that they were seeing signatures on ballot affidavits that were different names and that many other level one reviewers “didn’t feel comfortable with what they were seeing.”
These ballots were sent back to level one reviewers by direct supervisors and full-time County employees, Tony, Michelle, Paloma, and Cecilia, for level one to approve the signature anyway, said Onigkeit. “If it’s a unique name you’re going to remember,” she said.
Onigkeit previously submitted an affidavit which is included in Kari Lake’s initial 70-page filing. She testified that “nothing prevented” signature reviewers from approving fraudulent signatures “without accountability.”
From Kari Lake’s lawsuit:
Three signature verification workers have signed sworn declarations concerning their experience at Maricopa County during the 2022 general election.[4]These three witnesses testified that their and their co-workers’ rejection rates while verifying signatures ranged from 35-40% (Onigkeit Decl. ¶¶ 19-22), 15%-30% (Myers Decl. at ¶¶ 18, 21), to 35%-40% (Nystrom Decl. ¶ 13). These figures are consistent with the rejection rate of WPAA discussed above equating to tens of thousands of illegal ballots being counted.
Each of these witnesses testified to deep flaws in the ballot signature verification and/or curing process employed by Maricopa County.
Jacqueline Onigkeit reviewed approximately 42,500 ballots and rejected about 13,000 to 15,000 of them, with rejection rates in the 25% – 40% range. Her co-workers complained of similar rejection rates. Onigkeit Decl. ¶¶ 23, 25.
Maricopa permitted any signature reviewer to un-reject ballots without accountability using curing stickers. Workers were able to obtain massive amounts of these stickers and use them to cure ballots without oversight. Onigkeit explained:
In order to perform the curing process, we were given a batch of stickers to place on a ballot, which included stickers with abbreviations. Some, but not all, of the ballot stickers and abbreviations were as follows: “VER” meant that we verified the voter’s information, and their ballot was approved to be counted, “WV” meant that a voter did not want to verify their ballot over the phone, and “LM” meant that we called the voter and left a message.
One of the problems with the stickers was that nothing prevented a level 1, 2 or 3 worked from requesting a massive amount of “approved” stickers and placing them on ballots. Again, observers did not watch any level 3 work and did not watch most of level 2 work. Once stickers were placed on ballots, there was no record on the ballot or elsewhere to determine who placed the sticker there. We were told to not sign or initial the sticker, but to only date it. Accordingly, there was no way to know who placed “verified” stickers on ballots. The system was wide open to abuse and allowed for potential false placement of “verified” stickers without accountability.
Onigkeit Decl. ¶¶ 17-18.
This morning, during the trial, Onigkeit testified the following:
We were having so many problems with signatures and the rejections… they [level two reviewers] were getting overloaded with signatures and they were getting frustrated.
We would go out on breaks or at lunch, and Andrew and Jeff would complain about how many [signatures] they were having to go through, and they didn’t think they were going to be able to get through those signatures because there was too many and there was not enough of them. I do know there were times when rejected signatures that I did send to them, they actually sent them back to us because they got so overloaded for level two. So, because we would question, we would ask the manager, I just looked at this signature and I rejected it. Why am I seeing the same signatures again? And so they would say, the level two managers, they’ve got too many to go through. So, we’re just sending them back to you to re-review and see if there isn’t anything that matches.
It wasn’t just me complaining, it was other people in my room that were complaining of how many because we kept having to call the managers over to come and look at the signatures of you know how bad they were. They weren’t matching up and, you know, what do I do with this? So, they would come over and just tell us you need to be very cautious. You need to pay attention to what you’re doing. And remember that whatever you reject or approve, you could be called in to testify. And I think that’s why a lot of us were asking them to come over and look because there was so many bad signatures.
We had noticed ones that we had already rejected were being put back into the queue. So, we asked, you know, I just did this maybe like a half an hour ago. If it’s a unique name you’re going to remember, and so a lot of us were stating why why are we seeing these? What’s going on, and we were told by Tony, or Michelle, Paloma, or Cecilia that they kicked it back because level two had too many to go through. They just wanted to make sure you know, for us to go back through and really verify whether or not we couldn’t find a match.
I think we all felt really pressured when they sent back what we had already reviewed. And we really didn’t feel comfortable about approving what we had already rejected. We had already went through them. So, you know, when we questioned them about it, they just told us, if you still don’t feel like you can find a match, go ahead and re-reject it. And I did because I did not feel comfortable approving something that I had already rejected. We already went through them.
Especially for the newer people that hadn’t worked the elections, they didn’t feel comfortable with what they were seeing and they were complaining.
We were catching signatures of individuals that didn’t even belong in the history. Meaning if it’s a John Smith, and it was a woman’s name and this wasn’t a married couple. This was completely different names. So, they told us to write down the voter ID, the name of the person and to give it to Jeff, the second level manager, and he was keeping a spreadsheet of all of those signatures, and we were told they were going to clean up the voter history to try and get rid of those out, because we asked how did these even possibly get into the history? They’re not even the same. They’re not the same name, they weren’t a relative. How did this happen? The addresses were different, everything.
They [others] were complaining a lot about a lot of the bad signatures.
The very next day [after election day] we got bombarded with I’m gonna say close to 298,000 ballots that we have to go through. It was very overwhelming.
We would be going through signatures and then we would notice one that we just went over. That had been kicked back because level two got too overwhelmed with with their crews. And so they would come in and say we are sending back the level two manager queue to you to just recheck, check in a second time and make sure you’re not missing anything… Most of us rejected them and sent them back to level two.
After brief cross-examination by the Maricopa County attorneys, Lake attorney Kurt Olsen played a video of a signature verification worker approving mail-in ballot signatures in less than two seconds each without comparing them to a voter signature.
The Gateway Pundit reported this video that reveals the truth about Maricopa County’s fraudulent signature verification by showing a signature verification worker approving mail-in ballot signatures in less than two seconds each. Kari Lake’s attorneys plan to reveal more at trial.
See examples of the fraudulent signatures previously accepted by Maricopa County here.
The Defendants’ attorneys very strongly objected to the video being presented because they know that it proves the County’s signature verification is a sham! The Judge, however, allowed the video to play and for the witness to answer questions relating to the video.
“There is no possible way to click through that and be able to verify from the past history in order to verify that signature, regardless if you’re going forward through the 250 or backward through the 250. We were told to scroll down and make sure that we verify the present green affidavit with the past history affidavits. He didn’t spend any time verifying the signature,” stated Onigkeit.
Watch the trial live here!
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
