Other than checking for watermarks and folding of mail in ballots I wonder what else they’re checking. Signatures for example?
Part of the audit was to call people who “voted” according to the voter rolls, and ask them if they voted.
The “no signature required” absentee system is what Georgia used to advantage.
I would guess they are looking at the ink used on the ballots. AFAIK the ballots and envelopes are separated. No way to know how a person voted even if the signature was not a match.
They are doing different things, including looking for sequence of ballots. I don’t know the exact numbers but if 2.5 million people voted in Maricopa, and Biden won by 11,000 votes, then for the most part you won’t expect to see a string of say 10,000 Biden or 10,000 Trump ballots in a row.
And if they did find even 500 or 1000 ballots in a row all marked the same way, they would then check to see how they were filled out, what kind of ink, when were they scanned in, etc.