Kari Lake’s trial is now underway after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled “incorrect[ly]dismissed signature verification fraud back to Judge Peter Thompson for further review.
Thompson dismissed the suit earlier on Christmas Eve, despite evidence of mass disenfranchisement of voters targeting Republicans and clearly false testimony at the December trial by County Elections officials.
The first witness called to the stand by Lake’s attorneys was Jacqueline Onigkeit, a level one autograph reviewer, who testified that they saw signatures on ballot affidavits that were different names and that many other level one reviewers “didn’t feel comfortable with what they saw.”
These ballots were returned to Level One reviewers by direct supervisors and full-time County employees, Tony, Michelle, Paloma and Cecilia, so that Level One approved the signature anyway, Onigkeit said. “If it’s a unique name you’re going to remember,” she said.
Onigkeit previously filed an affidavit included in Kari Lake’s initial 70-page filing. She testified that “nothing” stopped signature reviewers from approving fraudulent signatures “without accountability.”
From Kari Lake’s lawsuit:
Three signature verification officers have signed affidavits about their experience in Maricopa County during the 2022 general election.[4]These three witnesses testified that the rejection rates of them and their colleagues when verifying signatures ranged from 35-40% (Onigkeit Verkl. ¶¶ 19-22), 15%-30% (Myers Verkl. at ¶¶ 18, 21) , up to 35%-40% (Nystrom decl. ¶ 13). These numbers are consistent with the WPAA rejection rate discussed above, which equates to tens of thousands of illegal ballots being counted.
Each of these witnesses testified to serious deficiencies in the verification of ballots and/or Maricopa County’s recovery process.
Jacqueline Onigkeit reviewed about 42,500 ballots and rejected about 13,000 to 15,000, with rejection rates in the range of 25% – 40%. Her colleagues complained about similar rejection rates. Disagreement Dec. ¶¶ 23, 25.
Maricopa allowed any autograph reviewer to reverse ballot rejections without accountability using hardening stickers. Workers were able to get their hands on huge quantities of these stickers and use them to heal ballots without supervision. Onigkeit explained:
To carry out the curing process, we received a batch of stickers to stick on a ballot, including stickers with abbreviations. Some, but not all, of the voting 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 through the phone, and “LM” meant we called the dialer and left a message.
One of the problems with the stickers was that nothing worked a level 1, 2, or 3 to request and place a huge amount of “approved” stickers on ballots. Again, observers did not look at Level 3 work and did not look at most Level 2 work. After stickers were placed on the ballots, there was no record on the ballot or anywhere else as to who put the sticker there. We were told not to sign or initial the sticker, just date it. Accordingly, there was no way of knowing who had put “verified” stickers on ballots. The system was wide open to abuse and allowed possible false posting of “verified” stickers without accountability.
Disagreement Dec. ¶¶ 17-18.
At trial this morning, Onigkeit testified as follows:
We had so many issues with signatures and the rejections… them [level two reviewers] were overloaded with signatures and frustrated.
We went out during breaks or at lunch, and Andrew and Jeff complained about how much [signatures] they had to go through, and they didn’t think they could get through those signatures because there were too many and there weren’t enough. I do know there were times when rejected signatures I sent to them actually sent them back to us because they got so overloaded for level two. So, because we would ask, we would ask the manager, I just looked at this signature and I rejected it. Why do I see the same signatures again? And so they would say, the level two managers, they have too many to go through. So we just send them back to you to review and see if there’s nothing that matches.
Not only was I complaining, it was other people in my room complaining about how much because we kept having to call the managers to come and look at the signatures of you know how bad they were. They didn’t match and, you know, what am I supposed to do with this? So they would come over and just tell us to be very careful. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. And remember that whatever you reject or approve, you may be called to testify. And I think that’s why a lot of us asked them to come and watch, because there were so many bad signatures.
We had noticed that those we had already turned down were put back in line. So we asked, you know, I just did this half an hour ago. If it’s a unique name that you’re going to remember, and so many of us said why are we seeing this one? What’s up, and we’ve been told by Tony, or Michelle, Paloma, or Cecilia that they kicked it back because level two had too many to continue. They just wanted to make sure you know, for us to go back and really verify whether or not we could find a match.
I think we all felt very pressured when they returned what we had already reviewed. And we really didn’t feel comfortable approving what we had already rejected. We had already gone through that. 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 reject it again. And I did that because I didn’t feel comfortable approving something I had already rejected. We’ve already gone through them.
Especially for the newer people who hadn’t worked on the election, they were uncomfortable with what they saw and they complained.
We captured autographs from people who didn’t even belong in history. This means it’s a John Smith, and it was a woman’s name and this was not a married couple. These were completely different names. So they told us to write down the voter ID and the person’s name and give it to Jeff, the second-line manager, and he kept a spreadsheet of all those signatures, and we were told that they were going to clean up and go through the voter history to trying to get those out, because we wondered how these got into history? They’re not even the same. They don’t have the same name, they weren’t related. How did this happen? The addresses were different, everything.
She [others] complained a lot about many of the bad signatures.
The next day [after election day] we were bombarded with, I’m going to say, nearly 290,000 ballots that we have to go through. It was very overwhelming.
We would go through signatures and then we would notice one that we just skipped. That was reversed because level two got too overwhelmed by their crews. And so they came in and said we’re sending the level two manager queue back to you to just check again, check in a second time and make sure you don’t miss anything… Most of us rejected and sent them back to level two.
After a brief cross-examination by Maricopa County attorneys, attorney Kurt Olsen van Lake played a video of a signature verification clerk approving signatures by mail in less than two seconds each without comparing them to a voter’s signature.
The Gateway Pundit reported this video revealing the truth about Maricopa County’s fraudulent signature verification by showing a signature verification officer approving signatures submitted in less than two seconds each. Kari Lake’s lawyers plan to reveal more at trial.
See examples of fraudulent signatures previously accepted by Maricopa County here.
The defendants’ lawyers objected very strongly to the display of the video, as they know it proves the county’s signature verification is a sham! However, the judge allowed the video to be played and the witness to answer questions related to the video.
“There’s no way to click through that and verify from past history to verify that signature, regardless of whether you go forward through the 250 or backward through the 250. We were told to scroll down and make sure make sure we verify the current green affidavit with past affidavits. He didn’t spend time verifying the signature,” said Onigkeit.
Watch the trial live here!
SMOKING GUN: “This Election Was Rigged” – Kari Lake Attorneys Say “Clear Misconduct and Intent” Caused 260 of 446 Tabulators to Fail Election Day – INCLUDING FILES