Election integrity is crucial for our Constitutional Republic and is rooted in the understanding that all legal votes will be counted. Our American elections should be secure, transparent, and honest.
Arizona voters are currently in a situation where Democrats are fighting against efforts to allow lawful votes from being counted in what has turned out to be the closest statewide race in Arizona history, the Attorney General race between Republican Abe Hamadeh and Democrat Kris Mayes.
Sometimes when voters go to the polls, they are required to use a “provisional” ballot but are promised by law that their vote will still count. Shockingly, there are currently over 9,000 provisional ballots that were never counted in the Attorney General race. This race is separated by just 280 votes out of 2.5 million votes, and Arizonans deserve to have every vote counted. Many of these voters are high-propensity voters that have voted in previous elections, but their votes are being erroneously disenfranchised from the voting process. Provisional ballots have been ordered by the courts to be opened and counted in the past and should be in this case as well. In some cases, these voters were strangely registered in a county other than their county of residence without their knowledge or intent.
To make matters worse, back in late December, the legal team for Hamadeh discovered that Gov. Katie Hobbs, (then Secretary of State) withheld valuable evidence regarding vote totals being incorrectly tabulated in Pinal County. There is good reason to believe that had this been known to the judge overseeing Hamadeh’s December trial, he would have ruled for a proper inspection of the ballots to ensure every legal vote was being counted, including the provisional ballots.
Why they weren’t counted in the first place remains a mystery. Some say it was purposeful. There are claims that since the election was down to a 280-vote margin for Democrat Mayes and falling fast, the Democrat Secretary of State and Democrat Recorder just decided to stop counting before the results flipped.
The same individuals who argued to have ALL votes counted (not just legal votes) prior to the election taking place are the same individuals who now refuse to count the outstanding provisional ballots.
Since the provisional ballots were breaking 70% Republican on Election Day, the race was within moments of flipping to a Republican victory had they not stopped counting. Whatever the reason that the counting stopped, what is undoubtedly true is that ALL the ballots need to be counted.
When this is added to the latest news last week from Pinal County (see stories regarding the Pinal County elections director knowingly seeing glaring errors and inaccuracies in the votes, cashing out and fleeing the state), this appears to at least be a case of gross negligence. Clearly, the uncounted provisional ballots should be counted.
Understanding precedent is also important here. This would not be the first time in Arizona’s history that an election was overturned after an election lawsuit. In 1916, the race for governor was ultimately overturned and the legitimate winner rightfully took office 13 months after the election. Similarly, in the 1996 race for Yuma County Board of Supervisors, the election was eventually overturned after nearly a year of litigation.
The future of our Constitutional Republic depends on it, and the Arizona Republican Party will continue to fight for ELECTION INTEGRITY. The best course of action is undoubtedly to clean up the voter rolls. However, in the interim, it is imperative that we count all provisional ballots. Everyone should be demanding the same from our government: Let ALL of the voters be heard by letting ALL of the votes be counted.
Jeff DeWit is the Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Previously, he was the Chief Financial Officer for NASA and the elected State Treasurer of Arizona, as well as C.O.O. & C.F.O. of the Trump Campaign in 2016, and C.O.O. again in 2020.
The former secretary of state of Ohio has come to the defense of embattled GOP candidate Abe Hamadeh, claiming that not all legal ballots were counted in the 2022 election.
Hamadeh shared the remarks from the former Ohio official: Ken Blackwell, who currently serves as Center For Election Integrity chair for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Blackwell disputed Maricopa County’s claim in their recent report that all legal ballots were counted. Blackwell further called out Gov. Katie Hobbs for her work as secretary of state, claiming that she purposefully overlooked significant discrepancies revealed by the recount.
“There is testimonial evidence of people who did not have their votes counted,” stated Blackwell. “And in a legal case brought by Arizona Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh, evidence shows that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs knew the recount showed discrepancies and failed to disclose those relevant facts to the court in a timely manner before the court made its ruling. This failure to do so is either gross incompetence or a cover-up.”
Blackwell also criticized Maricopa County for not troubleshooting their printers well enough prior to Election Day.
“Common sense and basic competence would dictate election officials assess the capability of the printers BEFORE Election Day. They didn’t,” said Blackwell.
The Maricopa County report characterized the problematic printers as “old printers.” However, age wasn’t the issue, but the original intended functionality of those printers. By the county’s own admission, a certain model of printers were retrofitted to be ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers. These retrofitted printers, the “Oki” model, had a heat setting that printed the ballot markings either too lightly or in a speckled manner.
. @MaricopaVote : the faulty printer setting causing widespread tabulator issues occurred in one of two types of printers: the one retrofitted to be a ballot-on-demand printer, "Oki." County expressed confusion with its failure since stress testing went well. 71 sites impacted. pic.twitter.com/jZEmQiZXQn
The outsourced county report recommended replacement of the Oki printers, as well as reverting to shorter and lighter-weigh ballot paper.
Maricopa County launched the investigation into the printer errors in January. Poll workers testified in November, following the Election Day fiasco, that election machines were having issues prior to Election Day. These testimonies conflicted with the county’s reporting that their stress testing prior to Election Day didn’t reveal either tabulator or printer issues.
In several weeks, Hamadeh will present oral arguments in the Mohave County Superior Court to challenge the validity of the 2022 election results. Hamadeh has challenged the exclusion of thousands of provisional votes from the final tally, hundreds of which he has said he can definitively say should have been counted. Last month, Hamadeh stated that he had over 250 affidavits from allegedly disenfranchised voters.
This Maricopa County voter was told repeatedly her driver’s license was registered to “multiple voters”
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He also claimed his team found 750 high-propensity voters whose registrations were canceled. Of those 750, only 176 reportedly showed up to vote last November.
There were also a majority of 269 voters who told Hamadeh that they checked in on Election Day with mail-in ballots, but their votes weren’t counted. 149 were Republicans, 53 were Democrats, and 67 were “other” voters.
Those claims, combined with an analysis of the uncounted provisional ballots, make a compelling case that Hamadeh overcame the 280 vote gap between him and Mayes. It’s possible more legal votes exist, considering the original vote gap between Hamadeh and Mayes was nearly halved following December’s recount.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting on Wednesday included over an hour of public comment on Election Day issues. The majority of the public who spoke expressed frustration over the county’s handling of the election. BOS Chairman Bill Gates asked the crowd repeatedly not to clap, cheer, or issue commentary.
The main takeaway from several commenters and the BOS was that voters dissatisfied with current election processes needed to petition their legislators to change election law.
Several individuals thanked the BOS for their handling of the election. Among them was Ann Wallach, former Maricopa County Democratic Party Chair. Wallach said she doesn’t believe widespread voting suppression or election fraud are occurring. Wallach suggested that those dissatisfied with elections processes petition their legislators. Wallach said that mail-in voting doesn’t increase fraud, prompting angry cries from the audience.
“If there are people that are unhappy with our present system, I suggest that they take a look at the legislature and see if there’s action taken there that they don’t like,” said Wallach. “We’re all Americans and I think we all want to win fair and square.”
Several poll workers questioned election processes. One poll worker said the election needs to be nullified because of all the problems she witnessed. Another poll worker claimed that her location had 200 more ballots than voters that had checked in, located in Box 3 storage — where Election Day voters dropped ballots the tabulators failed to read. That same poll worker also claimed that the 17,000 voters affected by Election Day tabulation failures was a low estimate.
Another citizen expressed concern about the impartiality of the county officials, considering that Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer supported a PAC to defeat Trump-backed candidates.
“It’s not just a conflict of interest, it’s a specific agenda and a pre-bias going into it, so at the very least you should’ve recused yourself from any part of this election having opened that in 2021,” stated the woman.
Multiple citizens also expressed frustration with how they felt the officials brushed off the Election Day issues.
Martín Quezada, who lost in the treasurer’s race to Republican incumbent Kimberly Yee, thanked the BOS for their administration of last week’s election.
One voter proposed that the county have a runoff to provide a remedy for those who were prevented from voting due to mass tabulator failures and delays. He also questioned why Gates promised 99 percent of votes would be counted by last Friday, then announced on Thursday that the goalposts had shifted.
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 16, 2022
BOS Supervisor Steve Gallardo defended the county’s handling of the election, commending the workers. Gallardo added that the voters expressed valid concerns but indicated that these weren’t pervasive. However, he said nullification of an election has no legal pathway under current law.
“Our election system is safe, secure, and accurate,” stated Gallardo.
BOS Supervisor Thomas Galvin thanked the poll workers for sharing issues they’d experienced. Galvin said that the state legislature had been “sitting on their butt” when it comes to establishing election law, hence why it takes so long to count the votes.
“We’re all very disappointed in what happened and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Galvin.
Vice Chairman Clint Hickman added that Arizona couldn’t count more quickly like Florida because this state’s laws are different. Hickman told the citizens he was grateful that they behaved better than some anticipated.
“There were certain people and groups that want us to believe that you will come and act up and be ungracious and unhumble. That is pathetic, but we were girded for that,” said Hickman. “I want to thank you guys for coming here and speaking your voice.”
Gates said that their conduction of elections only took 8 days rather than the historical average of 12 days. Gates said he was disappointed that the audience kept interrupting him.
“It’s important people know the facts,” said Gates.
Gates promised they would publish a canvass of the votes soon.
Watch the BOS meeting here:
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Pinal County shared that the secretary of state’s office supplied them with a faulty formula that led to Tuesday’s ballot shortage across about 25 voting precincts. The county implied that unique voter behavior phenomena exacerbated weaknesses in the formula that caused the shortage.
Pinal County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey McClure and Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer spoke on behalf of the county to address the issue.
Volkmer said that the secretary of state’s office attempts to help counties with a formula to project in-person voter turnout. However, he said that didn’t help in this election due to reports of a substantial number of voters spoiling their mail-in ballots in order to vote in-person, an increased number of “independent” voters requesting Republican ballots rather than Democrat ballots, and a 10 percent population increase since the last election.
“Quite frankly, we underestimated. That’s what happened. There were more people that showed up than we thought were going to show up,” said Volkmer.
Volkmer added that the process of estimating in-person ballots was guesswork, attributing the election night fiasco to “human error” and “training errors.”
“Every elected official is embarrassed about what happened,” said Volkmer.
Unlike Volkmer, McClure couldn’t speak to why the ballot shortage occurred.
McClure said that he wasn’t “entirely sure” how the ballot shortage happened. The county’s elections director, David Frisk, is tasked with ordering the proper number of ballots. McClure relayed that Frisk would likely be removed from his position over this “major screw-up.” However, as one reporter pointed out, Frisk was still overseeing primary election ballot counting, which continued after Tuesday. McClure assured the reporter that the county has “lots of eyes,” implying that they were watching Frisk at work.
Volkmer said that approximately 2.5 percent of ballots were impacted potentially, or about 750 votes. However, the county attorney said that was an estimated guess at best. Of the over 900 ballot types at 95 active polling locations, there were 25 types that either ran low or ran out. Volkmer added that the county’s reporting system for election issues doesn’t allow for differentiation between shortages and total depletion.
“We can’t tell you the exact number [of precincts] that ran out,” said Volkmer. “The actual number of people impacted, we have no way to purely assess. It would be speculation for us to guess the number of people, we can only base it on feedback.”
The county attorney said that just under 300,000 voters were notified of these shortages through their notification systems. Volkmer said a redo of the election wasn’t possible without court intervention.
State Senator Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) informed McClure and Volkmer that ballots never came for a number of constituents attempting to vote for her. Townsend, who lost Tuesday to State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) by about 5,000 votes, clarified that she was at peace with the election results.
Townsend asserted that her voters were disenfranchised because they came in the afternoon rather than the morning. She suggested an injunction for those who never got to cast their votes.
“This election has been so flawed and has Fourteenth Amendment issues. How can we proceed forward and say, ‘Oh well, sorry guys’?” asked Townsend.
Volkmer said there was nothing they could do, but reiterated that voters who remained in line were given the opportunity to vote.
State Representative Neal Carter (R-Queen Creek) notified Volkmer and McClure that he attempted to file an injunction on Tuesday as soon as he heard about the ballot shortage. The court system is still processing the injunction.
Volkmer assured Carter that the county attempted to print ballots at a faster pace, but that their machinery was too antiquated to print quickly.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs issued an indirect response to Volkmer’s press conference remarks. Hobbs made it clear that counties hold sole responsibility for determining ballot numbers.
“Counties are responsible for calculating how many ballots to order. Under Arizona law, counties should review their voter registration statistics by precinct and party (for the Primary) to determine how many ballots to order,” tweeted Hobbs. “The Secretary of State determines which candidates and issues qualify for the ballot at the federal, state, and legislative level.”
Did you know? The counties are responsible for calculating the number of ballots to order for early voting and voting locations. The Secretary of State determines which candidates and issues qualify for the ballot at the federal, state, and legislative level. #TrustedInfo2022pic.twitter.com/X3wHKFhfpE
— Secretary Katie Hobbs (@SecretaryHobbs) August 4, 2022
While Pinal County was struggling with their ballot shortage, Hobbs attended her victory party for her gubernatorial campaign.
#BREAKING: Democrat @KatieHobbs just defended Pinal County's handling of the election today.
Absolutely unacceptable. While Katie Hobbs is at a party, Pinal County still has reported ZERO election results. WATCH:#AZGOVpic.twitter.com/g4wLsDYaiM
On the night of the election, the county attributed the shortage to “unprecedented demand.” They assured voters that they would be eligible to vote so long as they were physically in line by 7 pm.
Pinal County encountered a serious issue with its elections last month as well. The county mailed about 63,000 erroneous ballots, which they resolved by sending supplemental, or “Municipal Only,” ballots. Voters were required to use their original ballot to vote on federal, state, and legislative contests, then use the supplemental ballot to vote on races absent from the original ballot.
Similar to the county’s apologies about the ballot shortage, Frisk attributed the tens of thousands of erroneous ballots to “human errors.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
