Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer was more stringent when conducting signature verifications of early ballots in this month’s primary election compared to his predecessor Adrian Fontes. Or Fontes used a significantly lesser standard in 2020 when in office.
Or both, assuming that Maricopa County voters did not simply become sloppier the last two years when writing their signatures.
Those are some of the possible takeaways from a review of Maricopa County’s 2022 Primary Election canvass report which shows Richer’s staff rejected 3,364 ballots for “bad” signatures, meaning a positive match could not be made with the signature on the affidavit envelope to the voter’s registration file.
That resulted in a rejection rate of .00441.
But when Fontes was county recorder during the 2020 General Election, his office only rejected 587 ballots for bad signatures out of more than 1.9 million early ballots, giving Fontes a rejection rate of .00030.
The data shows Richer had a rejection rate more than 14 times higher than Fontes.
Claims that Fontes ordered his staff to deviate downward from standards of signature verification were included in some lawsuits filed in connection with the 2020 General Election. It was also a topic during the Arizona Senate’s audit in 2021, but one difficulty at the time was a lack of reliable comparison data.
All the courts had to look at was Maricopa County’s 2020 Primary Election during which Fontes reported kicking out 323 of 808,895 ballots for bad signatures, a rejection rate of .00039.
Maricopa County’s recent primary election canvass report now provides more data for comparison, showing that if Richer’s 2022 rejection rate was applied to the 2020 General Election, nearly 7,800 fewer ballots would have been counted.
“Clearly Adrian Fontes lowered the standards to push thousands of additional ballots through in the 2020 General, so can we please stop claiming this was the most perfect election ever run?” asks veteran political consultant Constantin Querard. “And it is perfectly logical to suspect foul play with a guy like Fontes because not only did he trash the signature standards for mail-in ballots, he also tried to illegally mail a ballot to every voter in the county in 2020.”
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett was one of the Senate’s audit team members who heard from Maricopa County employees about concerns with what was described as “relaxing” the signature verification standard during the 2020 General Election.
Bennett told Arizona Daily Independent that while it appears something “is afoul” between how Fontes and Richer oversaw signature verifications, there could be multiple explanations.
For instance, Richer may have been cognizant of the problems with how signature verifications were conducted by his predecessor and thus “spent time on training and emphasizing diligence” with his staff, Bennett said. However, he heard too many stories of problems about Fontes’ tenure to say Richer has simply been stricter on verifications.
“Something happened in 2020,” Bennett said. “They were getting behind in the Recorder’s Office and several people said the standard was relaxed to nearly nothing. These new canvass numbers seem to back that up.”
Like Bennett, Senate President Karen Fann says she is not surprised by the signature verification data from Richer given all that was said about how Fontes conducted that part of his statutory duties.
“Citizens working the 2020 election told the Senate about how they were first instructed to only comply with half the signature verification process and then, a few days later, they were instructed to not check any signatures because the process was not going fast enough,” Fann said. “Since the faulty signature verification process was a corner-pin in the audit, it seems logical the new recorder would pay special attention to this phase in light of the public’s heightened awareness of audit procedures.”
But Querard believes Maricopa County’s latest canvass information should be enough to get the attention of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich even if Richer’s recent rejection rate shows the county is now taking signature verification seriously.
“Fontes wanted us to believe there were less than 600 mismatched signatures out of more than 1.9 million early ballots in Maricopa County’s 2020 general,” he said. “It was horribly improbable then and Maricopa County’s recent 2022 primary canvass seems to confirm everyone’s doubts about what happened in Fontes’ office in 2020. How else do you explain a rejection rate roughly 14 times higher in 2022 than in 2020? It is something the Arizona Attorney General should look into.”
View Maricopa County Canvass – August 2022 here