experts, but they are trained.

Each signature is reviewed by at least 2 people. If those 2 people don't agree on whether the signature matches the signature(s) on file, at least one more person reviews the signature. Those people have no idea how the person voted, so there is no political incentive to approve/deny anyone's signature.

If the majority of reviewers don't think the signature matches the signature(s) on file, it goes to a curing process - meaning the voter is notified their ballot was rejected and has a limited amount of time to validate (e.g., show up with their picture ID as a main option) that their vote was a legitimate one.

Here, an audit was done, with at least two additional reviewers per signature of 15,118 signatures. so each signature was analyzed by at least 4 different people - and even more reviewers were brought in if there was doubt about the match. The end result was that only 2 out of 15,118 signatures shouldn't have passed the first test from the initial 2 reviewers.

Keep in mind that this also follows other voter identification validation methods before signature match on ballots even came into play. For example, if a voter requested an absentee ballot online, s/he had to provide his/her driver's license/state ID number. If s/he requested a ballot by mail, there was also signature matching done on the ballot *request* before s/he was even sent an absentee ballot.