Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued an interim report last week on his investigation of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, which found “instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes,” and a couple of days later he learned some more possibly troubling news. Attorneys for Maricopa County told him ballot tabulators used artificial intelligence to determine whether voters’ ballot affidavit signatures matched their signatures on file.
During an interview with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Bannon’s War Room show, Brnovich broke the news. “We got another letter from their lawyer for the first time — and this is not in the report — admitted they are using AI to verify signatures,” he said. “And so the whole signature verification process, is something that I think that, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, it should be troubling and concerning that they are trying to verify hundreds of thousands of signatures so quickly. And of course that raises the question, how is that even humanly possible?”
Brnovich’s interim report found that the average time used to compare signatures was only 4.6 seconds, which he said was a serious flaw.
Signature verification software like Runbeck’s Verus Pro Automated Signature Verification, which is used in Nevada and might be the one used by the county, can be adjusted to allow for very loose matching. In that state, a journalist tested the AI signature verification system and found an 89% failure rate. He did it by having nine voters sign their names on the return envelopes copying his handwriting, not using their own (this didn’t violate any laws). Eight of the nine ballots were accepted.
Bannon asked Brnovich whether it was a big deal that the county used AI instead of humans to verify signatures. He responded, “I think it is, Steve. I will let people draw their own conclusions.”
Brnovich emphasized one of the key findings in his report, that around 200,000 ballots, or 20% of the total ballots in Maricopa County, lacked a chain of custody. The information missing included ballot count fields, missing audit and courier signatures, and documentation of security seals. This means additional ballots could have been added to boxes without being detected.
Brnovich said a big part of the problem with the 2020 election was the left changing rules in advance of the election while “Republicans were asleep at the switch.”
Bannon asked Brnovich if the reason no one is pushing hard against the establishment that controls Maricopa County is that they’re like the Mafia. He responded, “I don’t give two craps about the establishment.”
The Maricopa County Supervisors are mostly Republicans, and Brnovich reminded Bannon that he has gone after Republicans.
“I have stood up to the governor when he tried to do the lockdowns and he shut down the bars and restaurants. I filed a brief — no local or state elected official did — opposing his lockdowns,” he said.
In a reference to prosecutors going after Trump, he said, “I’m not like the clown prosecutors in New York that say crap or throw stuff against the wall and try to make a case after they’ve reached a conclusion.”
Brnovich came under criticism for not finishing his investigation quickly, and he addressed that.
“I do things methodically, sometimes not as fast as people like, but we get results, I get results,” he said. “It’s more important to get it right, than fast.”
Brnovich concluded his discussion of election fraud, “This is what the left does; they demonize and destroy anyone they disagree with.”
He warned, “Make no mistake about it, the left, the far left, the progressive left, the Democratic Party, they look at this as war, because they have this neo-Marxist vision for this country. They want to socialize our economy, nationalize our elections, and they’re doing everything in their power to concentrate that power in Washington D.C.”
Brnovich summed up the mood of Americans concerned about voter fraud, “It’s frustrating because I think we all know what happened in 2020.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
