On Tuesday, the Arizona Senate subpoenaed the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors seeking records related to and explanations for the County’s botched Election Day. Across Maricopa County, printers at 70 of the 223 vote centers were not in working condition, leading to long lines and potential voter disenfranchisement.
Chair of the Senate Government Committee, Sen. Kelly Townsend, gave the County until November 28, at 9:30 a.m. to respond to the Senate’s demand for information.
“Today, I issued a subpoena to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to request answers to many questions that I have regarding the 2022 General Election,” Townsend told the Arizona Daily Independent. “The subpoena is time-sensitive due to the nature of the requirement to canvas, and although it is a large amount of material required, I am confident they will be able to submit that to my office prior to the deadline on Monday morning. Transparency is crucial when it comes to voter confidence, therefore, providing the answers to these questions will be a major healing step and is important regarding the upcoming legislative session, and writing effective election reform law. I look forward to their answers.”
The Free Enterprise Club, a taxpayer advocacy organization that has worked this past year to restore confidence in the election process, blasted the County on Tuesday for its failures on Election Day and its response to questions about how those failures could have occurred.
“Maricopa County dropped the ball. They botched the election, and there is simply no way for politicians to gaslight their way out of it. After years of fear mongering from the media and the left that election integrity measures would suppress and disenfranchise voters, it turns out no one suppresses and disenfranchises voters quite like politicians and bureaucrats in Maricopa County,” argued the Club. “Rather than taking accountability for their failures, they have rubbed their incompetence in the faces of frustrated voters, smugly downplaying their failure and patting themselves on the back, asserting that they made a “remarkable effort.”
The Arizona Attorney General’s Elections Integrity Unit has also demanded a response from Maricopa County “pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election.”
The Attorney General’s demand follows “statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of Title 16,” according to Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright.
Gates admitted on Twitter that over 6 percent of Election Day ballots were impacted by printer issues but denied that the failure resulted in voter suppression. Accounts from Republican attorneys appear to contradict that claim:
AZ General Election Roving Attorney Report (redacted)SENATE SUBPOENA:
YOU ARE COMMANDED TO PRESENT TO MY OFFICE IN WRITING (HARD COPY) AND DELIVERED TO FRONT DESK SECURITY BY NOVEMBER 28, 2022 AT 9:30 a.m., with answers to the below questions and/or documentation requested as follows:
- Provide, in detail, the exact locations of day-of voting centers that experienced issues with tabulators accepting ballots.
- Describe, in detail, the exact reasons for the issues with the tabulators and why they could not receive/tabulate the ballots. Describe if this was a uniform issue or if there were various issues at the locations experiencing problems. Did the County experience any issues with the printers or tabulators prior to election day? If so, what were they, where did they happen, and what was the remedy?
- For any election-day tabulation issues that were caused by a problem with the ballot printer, describe how those ballots were printed, when, and where (i.e., ballots were printed onsite the day of or before, or were printed at a third-party vendor). Give details regarding the nature of the problem, if it was a uniform problem or if there were different issues, depending on the location. Is there a main control that handles all the settings for the printers remotely? Could the printers be accessed simultaneously to correct a problem, or would you have to appear in person to fix any issues they were having?
- When exactly did the problems become known to the Elections Director?
- When was the solution of putting problematic ballots in “drawer 3” created, who created it, and when & how was it communicated to the voting centers? Please provide copies of all of the Precinct Ballot Reports (PBR) and all other chain of custody records of the control slips, the documentation from poll workers, number of misread ballots, number of door/box 3 ballots, number of spoiled ballots, number of unused ballots, number of total ballots printed, and number of check-ins at the voting center on election day for all vote centers.
- Were ballots that were collected in “drawer 3” kept separate from the on-site tabulated ballots, or where they co-mingled with other ballots? If they were co-mingled, who gave the direction to do so, and why?
- Who (to include contractors) had access to the tabulation machines and printers and their settings, beginning 72 hours prior to the General election and ending 7 days after the election? Did they use unique login credentials, or shared credentials?
- Provide the FOB logins for who went into the building where the control of the printer settings are, beginning 72 hours prior to the General election.
- Please inform my committee as to the corrective actions taken regarding the calibration issues experienced in the 2020 election to ensure that the 2022 General Election did not experience the same problems.
- Please provide detailed information regarding the number of adjudicated and duplicated ballots in the 2022 General election, both early ballots as well as day-of ballots.
- Please produce all communications including texts, emails, and voicemails to and from Stephen Richer, and to and from Scott Jarrett, regarding election issues from 72 hours before 11/08/2022 to 7 days after that date.
- It is impossible to know how many voters were turned away due to frustration or time constraints due to the issued experienced on election day. What is the County’s remedy to address the voter disenfranchisement that was experienced on that day? How many complaints has the county received to date regarding the 2022 General election? Please provide all of the records reflecting the communication to and from the hotline on election day. Please provide the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that were checked out by the hotline and all notes or documentation related to checking them out.
- Were any of the irregularities reported to law enforcement, the County Attorney, the Arizona Attorney General, or the Department of Justice?
- Please provide all the records reflecting the number of applications to work all job roles in the election at both the Recorder’s Office and Maricopa County including how many applicants were hired, how many were rejected, and how many were not responded to. Please detail for all voting centers and all departments what level of capacity by percentage was covered throughout the election including on election day and thereafter.
- Please provide all the records reflecting the number of technicians hired to after the printers and tabulators, who hired them, how many were available at each location, their names and job IDs, and for what hours they worked.
- Please provide all the records reflecting the audit process to verify the accuracy of adjudication as well as how you tracked chain of custody of each adjudicator to the ballots they processed.
- Please provide all the records pertaining to the provisional ballots and the reasons for why you rejected or approved the provisional ballots.
- Please provide all of the records reflecting the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that checked into the sitebook and dropped off a ballot in an affidavit envelope on election day but it was subsequently voided.
- Please provide all communications between Maricopa County or the Recorder’s office and the Election Official Legal Defense Network (https://eoldn.org/) between Jan 1, 2021 and November 22, 2022.
- Please provide all of the records reflecting the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that checked into the sitebook but had one or more ballots spoiled and identify how many ballots were spoiled per voter on election day.
- Please provide all of the records reflecting the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that checked into the sitebook but did not cast a ballot at that voting location on election day.
- Please provide all of the records reflecting the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that checked into the sitebook and submitted a ballot into Box 3 on election day.
- Please provide all of the records reflecting the voter ID numbers and names of all voters that checked into a voting center that had previously checked into a different voting center on election day.
- Please provide all of the training and instruction documents provided to all poll workers including inspectors on, before, and after election day. Please identify who received the documentation and at what date/time. Please include what instructions inspectors received on how to check out voters from the sitebook, who specifically received these instructions, the date and time they received it, and what the documents that were included as the instructions.
- Please provide a comparison of the check-in data for the vote centers on election day, the cast vote record for the imagecast precinct tabulator, and the post-election day imagecast central count tabulator records in the cast vote record.
- Please provide all the records reflecting the printer configurations, testing process, and setup procedures for the General election in all voting centers. Provide a comprehensive log of all changes to the BOD printer configuration settings (to include the identity of individuals making changes). Please report with specificity the role Runbeck played in the set up and maintenance process regarding the day-of voting process, tabulation machines, printers, or any other action needed to proceed with the election. Please provide all communications between Runbeck and Maricopa County related to the printers used on election day in the General election on election day.
- Please provide all communications between Maricopa County or the Recorder’s office and Secretary Hobb’s office the day before election day, the day of election day, and the day after election day pertaining to voters checking in or out of the sitebook, the functioning of printers, the functioning of tabulators, provisional ballots, the hotline, or communications to the poll workers.
- Pursuant to Arizona law, Maricopa County was required to complete “reconciliation of ballots cast against check ins” at the voting locations before leaving the voting location, not at central count. (See A.R.S. §§ 16-564(A), -602(A), -607(A), -608(A),(B), -614, -615(A),(B), and – 616; see also 2019 Elections Procedures Manual, Ch. 9 (VIII).) Please provide pertinent documentation that this statute was followed and executed correctly. If a different course of action was taken, describe in detail what that was.
- Provide a copy of each voting location’s Official Ballot Report to include discrepancies experienced and what remedies were applied. Explain to this committee the “reconciliation” that appears to have occurred at central count on or around November 16, 2022.
- Please provide the following chain of custody documents:
- The UOCAVA ballots (to include how many were cast)
- All drop box ballot chain of custody documentation
- Any chain of custody documents or other paperwork regarding all handling of images of adjudicated and/or duplicated ballots. Include a description of what media the images are stored on and what security measures/chain of custody is involved with that media.
- Please provide the following:
- Images of the duplicated and adjudicated ballots that show the corresponding serial numbers on both ballots, per A.R.S.16-621.
- Images of all UOCAVA ballots