A trial began on Thursday over a lawsuit Kari Lake filed against Maricopa County objecting to its refusal to allow her to use public records law to inspect ballot affidavits, which are signatures from voters on the mail-in envelopes for their ballots. A significant portion of Lake’s ongoing election lawsuit alleges that ballots were counted without adequate signature verification. Much of the testimony consisted of going over other ways signatures are public, such as on recorded deeds.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Hannah, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, refused to allow any of Lake’s three proposed witnesses to testify. Deputy County Attorney Jack O’Connor said they “will bring up falsehoods.” He added, “It’s a low bar for relevant evidence, but they don’t even pass that bar.”
Hannah dismissed Shelby Busch, co-founder of We the People AZ Alliance, which has conducted extensive investigations into the 2020 and 2022 election problems. She presented testimony about its findings to the Arizona Legislature. He described her as a “medical office manager” who is “so obviously unqualified” and “not even in the ballpark,” so her testimony is “irrelevant.”
Hannah said he “wasn’t sure” how Chris Hansel, who worked on the Arizona Senate’s independent ballot audit of the 2020 election, was relevant. Lake’s attorney, Bryan Blehm, asked if he could testify as a lay witness, but Hannah refused. He did not indicate why he would not allow Erich Speckin of Speckin Forensics to testify. Speckin, whose expertise is in document examination and handwriting analysis, testified during Lake’s second election contest trial that signatures were reviewed so quickly they could not have been adequately compared.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times