An effort by the top members of the Arizona House Committee on Municipal Oversight and Elections (MOE) to understand the role a private company plays in the administration of Maricopa County’s elections was met this week with a resounding “move on, there’s nothing to see here” response.
It is becoming more common for public entities to enter into public-private partnerships and outsourcing contracts which call on private companies to assist in the performance of core government functions, such as elections.
One such company is Runbeck Election Services, which has a multi-million dollar contract with Maricopa County to handle myriad duties such as printing ballots, mailing out ballot packets to voters, and receiving mail-in ballots from the U.S. Post Office on behalf of the county.
The reliance on Runbeck for so much of Maricopa County’s election duties prompted MOE Chair Rep. Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) and MOE Vice-Chair Rep. Alex Kolodin to submit a list of questions and requests to Runbeck last month.
An Arizona Supreme Court decision involving the Senate’s use of Cyber Ninjas to audit Maricopa County’s 2020 general election concluded that some documents in possession of a private company can be considered public records under state law.
But Runbeck’s response dated July 17 provided the MOE Committee none of the requested records.
“Given our response here, any further request for documents would not be proportional to the purported purpose of the request,” the response signed by attorney Andy Gaona on behalf of Runbeck reads.
Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) called the letter an “eat sh*t” response.
Runbeck to Legislature: Eat shit. We may run elections but our chain of custody docs/security footage are not public records! Oh, also we don't care that the Court of Appeals said otherwise to Cyber Ninjas! We mention that our lawyer is related to Hobbs' deputy chief of staff? pic.twitter.com/9piTpLyJCN
— Rep. Alexander Kolodin (@realAlexKolodin) July 18, 2023
The Runbeck letter also seems to suggest legislators have limited oversight authority of the public-private relationship the company has with Maricopa
County. It is a position Kolodin found disturbing, in part due to the tone of Runbeck’s response to the committee.
“When a company is charged with helping to administer our elections, the last thing voters expect to see is a snarky and contemptuous response that the people’s elected representatives have no right to investigate their activities to see if voters are being adequately protected by existing law,” Kolodin explained. “If they have nothing to hide they picked a funny way of showing it.”
Among the items sought by the MOE Committee are chain of custody documents in the company’s possession related to Maricopa County’s 2022 General Election. There was also a request for security camera footage at Runbeck’s Phoenix facility and for information on the company’s Verus Pro artificial intelligence (AI) program available to elections officials.
Runbeck’s response also disputed suggestions that the company’s AI product was involved in the actual signature verification process, which requires comparison of the signature on the ballot envelope to voter registration records.
Maricopa County elections officials as well as Runbeck say the company’s Verus Pro software was used during the 2022 General Election to sort through the signature section of the more than 1.9 million early ballot envelopes to identify any that appeared to be missing the voter’s signature.
This allowed, according to testimony in some election lawsuits, for a quicker start to the curing process of ballot envelopes which appeared to have no signature.
The software also has artificial intelligence capabilities to compare signatures, although county officials and Runbeck’s letter insist the AI feature was never used by Maricopa County.
“The Verus Pro application—which Runbeck designed and produced—as used by Maricopa County in the November 2022 general election detects only whether a signature is present on an image of a ballot envelope,” Gaona wrote. “There is no artificial intelligence involved in this determination.”
Many current and former lawmakers saw Runbeck’s response as dismissive and disrespectful of the Legislature’s oversight responsibilities. They note the letter suggests everyone should simply take Runbeck’s word that there were no irregularities within its walls involving Maricopa County’s election.
Runbeck’s suggestion was also soundly criticized by Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has claimed roughly 36,000 cast ballots were somehow introduced into Maricopa County’s 2022 General Election at Runbeck’s facility.
“Runbeck, the third-party vendor that @MaricopaVote delegated our elections to, just gave our legislature the middle finger. These people run our elections in back rooms with no oversight & expect no accountability. We cannot allow this corruption of our sacred vote to continue,” Lake wrote.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee reacted to Runbeck’s response by retweeting one of its tweets from earlier this summer.
“The more Maricopa County Government turns over partial control of the administration of elections to Runbeck, Dominion, USPS, & other PPPs, the less We The People play a role, on the front end, the back end, & anything & everything in between,” it read.
The Legislature is expected to end its summer break on July 31. It is unclear whether the MOE Committee will submit a public records directly to Maricopa County for the requested records from Runbeck, or pursue the option of having a legislative subpoena issued.