Arizona court declares signature matching process illegal, a major victory for election integrity.
A judge has delivered a “massive win” for election integrity in Arizona by ruling that the state’s signature matching process for mail-in ballots is unlawful.
Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper issued a ruling last week (pdf) in a lawsuit against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes brought by public interest group Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), which alleged that Mr. Fontes broke the law regarding mail-in ballot signature verification procedures.
According to the lawsuit, the group argued that Mr. Fontes’ interpretation of “registration record” in the Secretary of State’s Elections Procedures Manual was unreasonably broad and increased the risk of false positives in signature verification.
“While state law requires county recorders to match mail-ballot signatures with signatures in the voter’s ‘registration record,’ the Secretary instructed them to use a broader and less reliable universe of comparison signatures,” said Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) in a statement.
Kari Lake, a former gubernatorial candidate who sued Mr. Fontes and Maricopa County officials over the signature verification process, celebrated the decision.
“A court just found that Arizona’s signature matching process is UNLAWFUL,” said Kari Lake.
“This is what happens when you don’t back down from a fight,” said the Kari Lake War Room account in a post on X.
Mr. Fontes’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Dispute Over ‘Registration Record’
Court documents show that Mr. Fontes argued that the legal definition of “registration record” is ambiguous and so he is entitled to provide guidance on its interpretation.
“Does the legislature’s use of the expansive term registration ‘record’ really mean the more restrictive (but unused) term registration ‘form’ for purposes of verifying a signature on an early voted ballot,” reads a motion to dismiss (pdf) the RITE lawsuit filed by Mr. Fontes’ attorneys.
“The answer is ’no,'” the attorneys argued, listing reasons that include the Secretary of State’s statutory authority to conduct elections fairly and impartially.
But the judge disagreed with the reasoning.
“This argument fails because there is no ambiguity in the statute,” Mr. Napper wrote in his opinion.
He added that the Arizona “statute is clear and unambiguous” in that it requires the recorder to “review the voter’s registration card” and not other documents bearing the voter’s signature.
Mr. Napper also noted that Mr. Fontes’ signature-matching process in the Election Procedures Manual “contradicts the plain language” of Arizona elections laws by allowing signature matching with documents that have “nothing to do with the act of registering.”
Accordingly, the judge denied Mr. Fontes’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
In a statement, Derek Lyons, CEO of RITE, called the decision a “huge victory toward securing the elections that Arizonans deserve, which are elections they can trust.”
“RITE will build on this victory to continue to fight in court for elections that are administered according to democratically enacted laws, not illegal partisan commands,” he added.
The group said in a statement that the ruling shows that Mr. Fontes must change his signature verification procedures before the next election to “protect the integrity of Arizona’s mail-in balloting process” or face further legal consequences.
It’s unclear whether the ruling will have any implications for Ms. Lake’s ongoing appeal against Mr. Fontes and Maricopa County officials over the signature verification process used in the previous gubernatorial election.
A judge in May dismissed Ms. Lake’s lawsuit, but she filed an appeal (pdf), which is ongoing before the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Kari Lake Angle
Election data from the November 2022 election shows that Ms. Lake was behind Democrat Katie Hobbs—who has since been declared Arizona governor—by about 17,000 votes.
Ms. Lake and her legal team argued that there was a flood of mail-in ballots in Maricopa County at a time when there were too few workers to verify ballot signatures properly.
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