The judge presiding over Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge dismissed the case Dec. 23 without knowing that Pinal County would admit a few days later to mishandling hundreds of ballots that contained votes in the Attorney General race.
Instead, numerous Pinal County officials –including the board of supervisors, County Attorney Kent Volkmer, and two elections directors– kept the substantive information from Mohave County Judge Lee Jantzen, the candidates, and voters across the state.
It is the latest in a series of questionable decisions related to Pinal County’s elections. In August, then-Elections Director David Frisk lost his job after a botched Primary Election.
Days later, County Recorder Virginia Ross resigned to temporarily take over the beleaguered and understaffed elections department. Her four-month contract the county approved for Ross included $175,000 in salary and the potential for an additional $25,000 if the General Election ran smoothly.
ELECTIONS DIRECTOR FIRED:
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Roll, an attorney who previously worked for Volkmer, recently became elections director when Ross departed.
District 5 Supervisor Jeff Serdy takes over as Pinal County’s board chairman on Sunday. He told Arizona Daily Independent he and others were “unsure of what we could and couldn’t talk about” related to the county’s election problems once a statutory recount for the AG and Superintendent of Public Instruction races was ordered in early December.
Serdy’s first board meeting as chairman on Jan. 3 will include a discussion of the 2022 election cycle. The agenda notes this will include follow-up by staff about what happened as well as issues moving forward.
“We’re going to be an open book,” Serdy said, adding it is very frustrating to see voters have doubt in the county’s efforts.
But a growing number of voters are calling on the board to issue subpoenas and take sworn testimony as to who knew what and when. It is an option District 1 Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh says he could support.
“I am advocating for a very trustworthy election that our voters can count on,” Cavanaugh said Saturday after acknowledging there appeared to be problems with the county’s General Election before the canvass vote was held to certify the results.
Instead, those concerns were “kept in-house” while a push was made by some staffers and officials to conduct the canvass sooner than later under Ross’s leadership of the elections department.
That canvass took place Nov. 21, even though the county had until Nov. 28 to complete the task. Cavanaugh recalls thinking at the time it felt rushed.
“I didn’t understand why we were doing it so soon,” he says.
It is now known that multiple issues were identified with the tabulation of ballots prior to canvassing. Volkmer was notified, as was the county’s election system vendor, ES&S. There was also concerns raised about the accuracy of the vote count when staff and volunteers conducted the mandatory post-election hand count audit.
“One factor underlying this disparity is that the canvass was filed prior to taking an adequate opportunity to investigate any possible anomalies we could discern from polling place returns,” new Elections Director Geraldine Roll wrote to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. “Unfortunately, before the analysis was completed, the canvass was downloaded and filed.”
Further errors with Pinal County’s election were discovered during the statewide mandatory recount of the AG and Superintendent’s races. As a result, the county issued a recount report to the secretary of state showing 392 more voters for Hamadeh and 115 more for Kris Mayes that what was included in the Nov.21 canvass.
RECOUNT REQUIRED:
Counting Of Arizona Votes Complete, Three Automatic Recounts Required
Roll added in her Dec. 21 recount memo that the county believes the recount vote report for the two statewide races “to be accurate and the discrepancies between the recount and the canvass were the results of human error.”
On Dec. 29, Maricopa County Judge Timothy Thomason announced the results of the recounts from all 15 counties. The judge declared Kris Mayes the new attorney general by a margin of only 280 votes out of more than 2.5 million counted in the race. Mayes entered the recount 511 votes up on Hamadeh.
But separate of the recount, Hamadeh filed an election challenge on Dec. 9 in Mohave County seeking to put forth evidence that ballot tabulation errors cheated him of votes. The Pinal County board as well as the county recorder were named as defendants along with the other counties.
As a named defendant, Pinal County took a nominal position which meant they would not make arguments in the case but agreed to comply with any orders of the court. However, several attorneys who are not involved in the election challenge say nothing prevented Volkmer, the county attorney, from briefing Judge Lee Jantzen about the county’s tabulation problems.
And if Volkmer was truly concerned about violating any confidentiality order in the recount case, he could have asked Judge Thomason for permission to brief Jantzen.
Instead, Pinal County officials stayed quiet while Hamadeh’s lawsuit was dismissed. Hamadeh has announced he is considering appeal options.
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It is unclear whether Ross received the full payment authorized in her contract, and if so, who authorized it.