Recall that Dr. Shiva’s team was prohibited from auditing ballot signature matches to records on file during his work performed for the county and presented last fall. Regardless, Dr. Shiva reported over 17,000 duplicates in the 2020 Election results in Maricopa County that he shared in his presentation in front of Arizona’s Senate in September 2021.
Moments ago, Dr. Shiva released a report and video describing recent results from a scientific study of the 2020 Election results in Maricopa County. This is the first study to calculate Signature Matching Rates and to provide a quantitative framework for assessing signature verification of early voting mail ballots (EVBs). Dr. Shiva lists the following key points discussed in his video presentation and report below:
- In Maricopa County, 1,911,918 EVBs were received and counted;
- The County reported no more than 25,000 of these ballots (1.3%) had signature mismatches and required review (“curing”); and of the 25,000, 2.3% in post-curing – 587 – were confirmed signature mismatches;
- The Pilot Study recruited three novices and three experts (forensic document examiners) to calculate signature matching rates on the same sample of 499 EVB envelopes. The purpose of this Pilot Study is to determine if the results warrant any further investigation;
- All six reviewers who were presented images of EVB envelopes to evaluate if the signatures on those envelopes matched with genuine signatures on file concurred 60 of the 499 (12%) EVBs as signature mismatches;
- Based on this study, over 204,430 early EVBs should have been cured vs. the 25,000 that the County actually cured; and, using the County’s 2.3% post-curing rate, 5,277 EVBs should have been disallowed;
- Though this Pilot Study is compelling on its own, an expanded study is warranted.
Dr. Shiva provided the following video discussing the results of his work in Arizona’s Maricopa County of the 2020 Election.
