In a few minutes, a Maricopa Cty Superior Court judge will continue hearing testimony in a case that seeks to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote win in AZ.

Here's a recap of what has happened so far, including yesterday's court proceedings: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/03/arizona-republican-party-lawsuit-overturn-election-results-goes-trial/3794819001/

Public call-in line: 877-309-2074

Access code: 421-374-415

Plaintiffs finished going through all their witnesses yesterday, so this morning will be devoted to witnesses called by defendants (Arizona's 11 Biden electors) and intervenors (Secretary of State, Maricopa County.)

First is Dr. Linton Mohammed, a forensic document examiner.

I do need to clarify something I misheard yesterday: Mohammed was the handwriting expert retained by the defendants for signature verification. Rey Valenzuela is with Maricopa County Elections Dept. (All testimony about Valenzuela was accurate; I just incorrectly cited his role.)

Attorney right now is going through Mohammed's extensive CV to establish his expertise. Decades of experience, has testified in more than 150 times in court, gave workshops in eight different countries, etc.

What's the professional standard for determining whether a signature is genuine?

You have to compare the signature in question with at least 10-15 signatures, he says. Number may increase if writer is ill/elderly or has some other characteristic that could affect handwriting.

How much time does it taketo make that determination as to whether a signature is genuine?

'3-4 hours.'

And that's to determine that with a high degree of certainty?

'We start as inconclusive. Then we look at evidence in each direction. Sometimes it can take even longer.'

Are you ever not able to make a conclusive determine about whether a signature is genuine?

'Yes, sometimes you have a poor quality copy of the questioned document, or you may have poor copies of specimen signatures (for comparison).'

What does it mean when you say your finding is inconclusive?

'Whether one signature matches another...I can't tell one way or the other.'

Does it mean that there's a suspicion of forgery?

'No.' It means there's not enough evidence to show it's genuine, he says.

Mohammed now discussing participation in signature verification review for 100 mail-in ballots. 'I found no evidence of simulation (forgery).'

Is it fair to say that your expertise as a doc examiner includes determining whether signatures have signs of forgery/fraud?

'Yes.'

Does the fact that you found some signatures inconclusive indicate some kind of problem with Maricopa County's signature matching system?

'No ... I found no evidence that any of the inconclusive signatures I looked at should have been rejected.'

In election context, have you studied the systems/processes of various jurisdictions and how they do signature matching?

'Yes, I have done reviews of systems in 10-15 different states.'

Any observations?

'In some cases, (other places) have rejected ballots that would have actually been genuine. So, they were false rejections ... Of all the states I've looked at, Colorado and Arizona seemed to have the best systems.'

What, if anything, is the common problem or issue with laypeople reviewing signatures for matching?

'Most laypeople don't understand the principle of natural variation. You'll never sign exactly the same way twice.'

In your professional opinion, did you see any reason why any of those 100 ballots you reviewed - based on the signature alone - should not have been counted?

'No.'

Tom Liddy, an attorney for Maricopa County, has a few questions for Mohammed.

Would you agree standard for signature examination done with purpose of advising law enforcement is different than the standard for government entities in an election context?

'Yes, it's a very different process ... The standard of proof is much higher (for criminal cases.)'

You mentioned national variation. Could you comment on how age, stress, illness, shortness of time available for individual to sign affect signature?

Mohammed gives Parkinson's as an example. Both the disease and the medication taken for it can affect handwriting.

Cross-examination from Jack Wilenchik, lawyer for Arizona GOP.

He's asking Mohammed if he noted the results of Rey Valenzuela's signature match determinations made during the review of 100 mail-in ballots earlier this week. (He did.) Did Valenzuela reject any? (No.)

Would you agree that the laypersons who are conducting signature review at the county are not doing so to a professional document examiner standard?

'They are not, but that's not the purpose (of election signature matching.) '

Onto next witness, which is being called by Secretary of State's Office: Bo Dul, state election services director.

Were you the chief architect of the current Election Procedures Manual?

'Yes, I oversaw the drafting of the 2019 Election Procedures Manual, which is the one that's currently in effect.'

What guidance does EPM provide for signature verification?

'County recorders offices are required to compare the signature on the early ballot envelope to the voter registration record.' She explains officials are unsatisfied with match, voters have opportunity to 'cure' ballot.

'Signature verification is not an end in itself. Its function is to aid the county in identity confirmation. The county uses signature verification to do that, but they also rely on additional information that's available.'

'...So an inconsistent signature is not a basis to reject the signature or disenfranchise the voter. It just triggers additional follow-up as provided on the under the law.'

Are counties required to use handwriting experts for signature verification?

'No.'

'We anticipated an increase in early voting (due to COVID) & anticipated counties would need to onboard additional staff to perform signature verification as part of that process, so the SOS this year coordinated signature verification training for all the counties statewide.'

'We retained a forensic expert to instruct during those trainings,' Dul says. 'It was a three-hour training. We provided multiple sessions.'

'(Counties) are also not required to apply that same standard that a handwriting expert would apply, for example, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody committed the crime of forgery,' Dul says. 'Our voters are not on trial. It's not a comparable process.'

Roopali Desai, attorney for SOS, asks Dul to read an excerpt from Election Procedures Manual.

'When conducting signature verification, it is important to keep in mind that everyone writes differently, and no one signs their name exactly the same way twice...'

She continues: Ballot affidavit signatures should not be rejected because they don't look exactly the same as the signature on the voter registration record.

Onto ratios of poll observers to adjudication boards/stations, a point Wilenchik made throughout the day yesterday to suggest there was an insufficient number of observers to identify mistakes and get them corrected.

Dul testifies that 'there is nothing in the law or in the Procedures Manual that requires that there be an equal ratio.'

'That would be operationally difficult for a number of different reasons,' she says, 'especially this year in light of this COVID-19 pandemic.'

Dul also testifies that ballots must be kept under seal by counties unless a recount is ordered, or a court orders an inspection (as happened in this case.)

Cross-examination from Wilenchik is only one question.

He has Dul read this portion of the Election Procedures Manual.

Onto Rey Valenzuela, Maricopa County elections director for early voting. County attorney is having him go through his credentials. Valenzuela says he's worked for county for nearly 30 years, under various recorders.

Signature verification process is three-tiered, Valenzuela says.

Tier 1: Temporary employees who get that 3-hour training. They cannot reject a signature outright. They can only 'exception' it (say it doesn't match under the protocols and send to Tier 2 manager).

A 2% random sample of signatures that Tier 1 employees accept are also audited daily.

That helps county ensure they don't have a Tier 1 entry-level individual who's not understanding the process, Valenzuela says.

More senior Tier 2 employees review exceptioned signatures to look at additional information on file.

'We are looking at all possibilities to verify the veracity of that signature, but we have other resources,' Valenzuela says.

If Tier 2 agrees with Tier 1 that signature doesn't meet standard, voter may be emailed/called to allow them to 'cure' it.

'We never make a signature bad until the cure period is over.'

For early ballots, signature verification process starts immediately upon receipt to prepare ballots for tabulation later, Valenzuela says.

~2.1 million ballot packets were mailed by Maricopa County.

~1.9 million were returned.

~20,000 went through additional layer where county reached out to voter.

'We had 587 ballots that we were not able to validate or have the voter contact us back,' Valenzuela says. 'It pains us to have to reject any voter's vote.'

Quick 10 minute recess. I'm going to go caffeinate.

We're back. Liddy is now asking Valenzuela about Linda Brickman, vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, who testified yesterday. https://twitter.com/mpolletta/status/1334633178267455488?s=20

Was she reprimanded?

'She was.'

Was she reprimanded for complaining there were problems with duplication equipment?

'No, she was not.'

Why was she reprimanded?

'She was taking photos of signatures during the signature verification, which is obviously not allowed.'

Back to logistics. Liddy is having Valenzuela take the court through signature verification for a specific example ballot (which is under seal, so I don't have a ton of info on it.)

Wilenchik cross-examining Valenzuela.

How much time do Tier 1 workers spend reviewing a signature?

He estimates one minute and notes all the verification work that happens on the front end before a voter even receives a packet.

County calls Scott Jarett, director of Election Day and emergency voting back to stand to rebut Linda Brickman's testimony. Liddy recaps part of Brickman's testimony where she discussed ballots where voters both filled in the oval for Trump and wrote in Trump's name.

Jarrett testifies that if voter fills in Trump oval AND writes Trumps in, ballot would go thru adjudication and be counted for Trump, given 2019 election procedures change. (This is diff than if someone fills in Trump oval & writes in non-Trump name, which would be an overvote.)

If a ballot filled out that way were duplicated, would an observer be able to follow that ballot to the electronic adjudication board and see the results of that ballot being adjudicated?

'No, they would not.'

So they'd have no way of knowing, if they were at the duplication station, whether that ballot ultimately was adjudicated for the president?

'That's correct.'

Liddy's attempting to dismantle testimony from Brickman re ballots with Trump oval/Trump write-in having vote tossed.

Wilenchik calling a witness briefly to rebut. Liesl Emerson, identified as a signature verification observer who served at MCTEC.

She said she observed two employees in the Tier 1 verification room.

'One employee...was spending one to two seconds on each signature. I actually counted how many signatures he did at that pace until he would pause to look at one more closely and six separate times... he clicked through ten signatures at the one to two second pace,' Emerson says.

'The most I counted him clicking through before he would pause to look more closely at a signature was 28 signatures ... The second employee that I was able to observe that day was clicking through signatures every three to four seconds. He was doing it slightly more slowly.'

Could you observe whether the county workers were looking at more than one signature on file?

'Yes, occasionally they would look at more than one signature. But at that pace, most of them, they were just looking at one signature.'

Both sides have rested. Oral arguments are up next. Judge says he would like to issue a ruling this afternoon.

Ward has already said she will appear to the state Supreme Court if he doesn't rule in her favor.

Wilenchik is up first, as burden of proof is on plaintiff. He's repeating request to inspect all duplicate and adjudicated ballots statewide. 'Humans are always subject to error, and this is significant in this election because we have here 2 candidates who are only 0.3% apart.'

'The ballot duplication process resulted for sure in flipping of the vote,' Wilenchik says (this was found once in the 1,626 ballot sample.) 'Even one ballot like that is significant, and that's what we've seen here.'

Now hearing from attorney for named defendants, the state's 11 Biden electors.

'3.4 million Arizonans have cast their votes, and by a margin of over 10,000 votes, Joe Biden won this election. There's nothing that you heard over these last two days that would change that.'

'The plaintiff is seeking a truly extraordinary remedy. She's asking this court to order that the will of those 3.4M AZ voters be overturned. She's asking for a court order requiring Arizona to send a different slate of electors to the electoral college than the AZ voters chose.'

'This is a very significant demand. Arizona law and, frankly, common sense make clear that it should only be granted under the most extraordinary circumstances that plaintiffs haven't even come close to establishing.'

'What we've seen over the past couple of days is that there's nothing but garden-variety errors, at best, that plaintiffs have been able to point to.'

'What we know is that, of the sampling that has been done, there was an error rate of about one half of 1%. With respect to duplicated ballots, some of those votes that were not duplicated correctly were intended for Trump, and some were intended for Biden.'

'These types of errors occur, unfortunately. We would like to have a perfect system. They happen in every election in every jurisdiction, all over this country, and they clearly do not provide a basis to overturn an election.'

'(Ward's) complaint didn't really specify which laws or policies were supposedly broken. It didn't say who broke them or how or why ... But they have a bigger problem than their pleading, and that's that the actual evidence they presented didn't explain it either.'

'You heard witnesses say there were some discrepancies in the prefill software...but you also heard Scott Jarrett testify that (officials) were aware of these issues...&that the entire job of human duplicators was to override those &to ensure the ballot was duplicated correctly.'

'I respectfully submit that if the garden-variety errors that were identified are grounds to overthrow an election, we are going to have a real problem on our hands moving fwd...No witness from the plaintiff testified they felt that the errors were anything other than mistakes.'

'We can't show that any errors with duplicated ballots could have possibly changed the results of the presidential election.'

'Let's turn to signature matching. The complainant also had a theory that not enough signatures were rejected, which resulted in too many ballots being counted ... They submitted the testimony of Laurie Hoeltzel, who ... has been discredited by a number of courts.'

'In any event, she didn't really help the plaintiff meet her burden...She didn't see any evidence of forgery. She felt immediately confident that 94 (of 100) signatures were accurate. She wasn't sure about 6 of them &that was on the basis that she didn't have enough comparisons.'

'None of the testimony ... supports finding that there is a significant, systematic problem with signature matching ... There was no evidence about misconduct, no evidence about fraud, no evidence about illegal votes.'

'At the end of the day, we have a plaintiff that is... asking to upend the results of a presidential election. That has never been done before. It would seriously undermine the democratic system that the state and this country is built upon.'

Onto argument from secretary of state's attorney.

'There were 100 affidavits (mail in envelopes) that were reviewed, and not a single person testified that the signatures appeared or were made by somebody other than the voter.'

'With respect to the category of duplicated ballots, 1,626 were inspected, and only nine mistakes were identified, which resulted in a swing of six votes for the office of president.'

'This trial is being used, just like the inspection was used, to try to discover, find and hunt for even newer theories of misconduct,' Desai says. 'They do not exist.'

'Certainly, the entire election cannot be annulled or set aside. Further, there is no basis to declare that the Trump electors had the highest number of votes, and plaintiffs cannot get a recount ... It is time for this to end.'

'Elections administrators are impartial and care about delivering fair and accurate elections. In fact, they did. The facts show that this was an election with record turnout, which means our democracy is strong.'

'While not everyone's favorite candidate won, there is no reason to reverse the will of the voters and declare that the candidate with fewer votes is the winner,' Desai concludes. 'The certification of the election must stand.'

Finally, Tom Liddy for Maricopa County.

'Plaintiff alleges that Maricopa County didn't do its job, and therefore, the votes should all be thrown out. Sound kind of stupid? Does to me.'

'We went through, as the plaintiff requested and as the court asked us to, a review. First day, on Tuesday, 100 ballots. Then plaintiff came by and asked if we could look at more - a lot more, 2,500 more.'

'I came to this court in good faith & said the BOS would be happy to do it...We got rolling. We started that review process at 2:30 & just after 6:30 in the evening, we had an additional 1,526 ballots that had been reviewed. More than enough for a meaningful statistical sample.'

He says county had to stop there in order to prepare witnesses for hearing the next morning. 'Any insinuation, intended or otherwise, that we fell short of our obligation of complete review ... is bunk.'

'We heard witness after witness after witness come forward and tell us in great detail all that they were allowed to observe...Sometimes, they observed mistakes being made by humans. The vast majority of the processes were done with astonishing accuracy.'

'Evidence clearly shows that Maricopa County has one of the best signature verification processes in the U.S. ... Not a single witness that came before this court said that any one of those randomly sampled 100 signatures should have led to a voter being disenfranchised.'

Of 99.5% accuracy rate found during this week's inspection, Liddy says: 'If that were my kid, he wouldn't be getting grounded. He wouldn't be getting his cell phone locked up in the drawer for a week. He can get pizza. Probably some ice cream, too, or cake. Whatever he wants.'

'It's not always a pretty process, not always a perfect process ... but there is no way that any of this evidence could justify throwing out the votes of the people of Arizona.'

Back to Wilenchik for last word. 'There is evidence here of erroneous count ... There is evidence here of votes that were flipped (1), of votes that were discounted (8 total: 6 for Trump, 2 for Biden).'

'We have brought this case for good reason. This is the process under law for getting to the bottom of the election,' Wilenchik says. He notes 'most of the time, candidates concede' but argues 'there's nothing wrong with people bringing their claims the court.'