Signature Verification Software Used by Maricopa County Says Low 10% Threshold Is “High-Confidence” Match

Since Kari Lake’s legal complaint alleging systematic signature verification failures in Maricopa County was remanded by the Arizona Supreme Court to trial court, a closer examination of the signature verification software used by the county reveals a strikingly low threshold for signatures to qualify as “high-confidence” matches.

Lake continues to contest the election results in court, arguing that there were ballot chain of custody and signature verification issues in addition to thousands of Republican voters disproportionately disenfranchised on Election Day due to voting machine errors in nearly 60% of the voting centers in Maricopa County. Lake has requested that the election results be invalidated, or that she be declared the winner.

The Verus Pro application for signature verification, which is owned by election technology vendor Runbeck, ranks signature matches on a scale of 0 to 100. However, only those scores “lower than 10” are “not marked as Accepted by Verus Pro,” according to an email from a Maricopa County official. According to a 2020 contract between Maricopa County and Runbeck, signatures with a score of 10 or higher are routed to a high-confidence manual signature verification queue, while signatures with a lower score are routed to a low-confidence signature verification queue.

Maricopa County has yet to respond to follow-up questions about what voters must do to confirm or cure their signature or what the county uses Verus Pro for since its current contract with Runbeck says it’s for signature verification.

Shelby Busch, the cofounder of We the People AZ, said how Maricopa County uses software for signature verification is “absolutely pertinent” to Lake’s case.

“The county leans on signature verification as the last line of defense,” viewing it as a “failsafe” that assures “the election is safe,” Busch said.

Related Articles