Pinal County Elections Director Geraldine (Geri) Roll quit her job, leaving the county once again without a leader on election administration.
Roll alleged that politicization of the office had created a hostile work environment left unchecked and even welcomed by County Manager Leo Lew and the Pinal County Board of Supervisors (BOS).
Roll’s quitting comes six months after she first assumed the position: last December. Less than a week prior to her resignation email, Roll provided updates on the county’s latest election administration efforts during this most recent BOS meeting. This included an upgrade to the ES&S management system for software; the rollout of electronic voter check-in and verification tablets known as Poll Pads; and the pausing of their manual tabulation exercise in order to work with the state on improving it.
On the morning of last week’s BOS meeting, Pinal County GOP Chair Belinda Rodriguez emailed the board with concerns that Roll was undertaking actions independently that she and other county GOP leaders believed would jeopardize the integrity of future elections. Rodriguez cited their exclusion from a hand count exercise in May while Pinal County Democrats were included, as well as Geri’s move to cancel a contract for GPS tracking on ballot transports.
“I’m sure Geri was a great attorney in both Maricopa and Pinal County,” wrote Rodriguez. “However, I have some reservations that her knowledge and skills can lead us to a successful election without its integrity being compromised or challenged. I am concerned that we are heading towards another botched election.”
The BOS heeded Roll’s advice and canceled the GPS tracking contract during last week’s meeting (Item 8H).
The following is Roll’s email to the county manager:
With no regrets, I quit.
When you no longer respect those you work for, it is time to leave. I have watched as you idly stood by when I was attacked. I cannot work for an individual who does not support me. The environment fostered by your team and the Board of Supervisors is toxic.
I believe the Elections Department should not be politicized. You relegate impartiality, common sense and dedicated work to irrational, extremist political party views and rhetoric. It is a far reach to see how you will deliver clean elections when you bend to a faction of the Republican party. Clearly, politics are the value this administration desires in a place where politics have no place: elections administration.
In my career, I have never been subject to the ridicule, disrespect, intimidation and attacks on my reputation and ethics that I have endured in these past months.
Really, Not Respectfully,
Geraldine Roll
Lew responded with thanks to Roll for taking on the position as long as she did.
“I want to thank Geri for her service during very challenging times and for the improvements that she identified and began to implement in the Elections Department,” stated Lew. “Although I disagree with her assessment, she has been an impactful public servant, and I wish her the best and know that she will continue to do great things in her career.”
In a December report, Roll attributed disparities between the official canvass and the recount results to administrative neglect.
“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,” said Roll.
In a January BOS meeting, Roll again admitted that the canvass was done “prematurely” and that the county “certainly” had time to address pressing questions about elections administration prior to the deadline for certification.
“Again, I believe the canvass was done prematurely[.] I think we had enough to have raised a few questions and we should have taken more steps before we canvassed,” said Roll. “No opportunity was taken to really look at those numbers carefully.”
Prior to serving as the elections director, Roll worked for ten years in the county attorney’s and public fiduciary’s offices. While a civil deputy county attorney, Roll advised the Pinal County recorder and elections offices. Prior to Pinal County, Roll worked as a deputy county attorney for the attorney’s offices in Maricopa and Graham counties, and as an assistant attorney general for the state.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
From their pulpit at press conferences, they shrugged off questions and concerns about the potential for long lines on election day and whether they would have their voting centers properly equipped. For weeks, the mainstream media blasted out to Arizonans that they are competent election officials, about to implement the “safest, most secure” election in history.
Then it all came crumbling down in what was one of the worst election days in recent history. Long lines, yes. But more importantly, critical equipment failures resulted in the complete inability to tabulate ballots at dozens of voting locations for several hours. It didn’t stop there. The issues persisted in the coming weeks for Maricopa County, who responded to requests for information with hostility. And then, we found out Pinal County (following major problems in their primary election) had miscounted hundreds of ballots, shrinking the already miniscule gap between the candidates for attorney general.
Two months later, these issues are still being litigated. But regardless of how the election contests being pursued by Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh turn out, nothing changes the fact that Maricopa and Pinal Counties bungled the election.
Going forward, Arizona must learn from what happened, craft meaningful solutions, and focus efforts on productive goals ahead of 2024…
An appeal may be underway in the case challenging the attorney general race results after Pinal County reported undercounting hundreds of ballots.
Pinal County added to their count over 500 more ballots, effectively halving Democrat Kris Mayes’ lead from 511 to 280. Republican Abraham Hamadeh gained 392 votes, while Mayes gained 115 votes.
BOMBSHELL REPORT:
I am still fighting to get to the bottom of this botched election. Every voter deserves to know who legitimately won and to have every vote count.
In a statement, Pinal County dismissed the missed ballots as “human error” that mainly impacted Election Day votes. The county pointed out that it had a 99 percent accuracy rate, based on the fact that the 500-odd vote discrepancy amounted to a .35 percent variance within 146,000 votes.
“[T]he recount process did what it was supposed to do — it identified a roughly five hundred vote undercount in the Pinal County election attributable to human error,” stated the county. “[I]n light of threatened litigation and rumored appeals, Pinal County can make no further comment at this time.”
The county also speculated that election workers mistakenly believed certain tabulators were counting votes when they malfunctioned.
Prior to the recount and throughout the lawsuit against them, the county admittedly knew the major vote discrepancy existed. The Board of Supervisors’ new chairman, Jeff Serdy, toldArizona Daily Independent that their officials hadn’t said anything because they weren’t sure what they were allowed to say. Yet, their board of supervisors certified the election in late November anyways.
The Pinal County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved canvassing the County's Election results for the November 8, 2022, Election.
Pinal County wouldn’t have had the first board to reject election results over concerns of improper election management or malfeasance. Former Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller said in a statement to AZ Free News that she and fellow supervisor Steve Christy refused to certify the 2020 election due to concerns about her county’s administration of the election. Miller noted that she and Christy had “just cause” per statute to do so.
“I felt certain that a vote approving the canvass would have not only been malfeasant but fraudulent,” said Miller.
Miller opined that signing off on faulty election results may constitute a felony, citing the recent debacle over the Mojave County Board of Supervisors’ initial refusal to certify their election results.
“We heard from the Mojave County supervisors this year that they voted in favor of the canvass under duress. They claimed they were warned by the County Attorney’s Office that if they failed to certify this year’s election before the statutory deadline they would have invalidated all Mohave County elections and failure to approve the canvass may have represented an act of malfeasance,” stated Miller. “They said they would be at risk of committing a Class 2 misdemeanor under Arizona statute. Not only is the legal advice they received disputed, for some of us, it would be a felony to sign-off on an election that was not completely fair and free from shenanigans, or substantial human error.”
The massive discrepancies across the board spurred Secretary of State-Elect Adrian Fontes to remark that the variance was problematic. He said that a recount should yield only single digit differences — not hundreds. Fontes said that the county didn’t “step up” by training or preparing properly, and indicated that increasing funds and resources would remedy the issue.
“It is absolutely, really problematic to see the number of ballots in Pinal County that weren’t tabulated,” said Fontes. “If we’re not funding, training, and staffing these departments, we’re going to have these kinds of problems.”
However, Fontes didn’t hesitate to congratulate Mayes on the victory.
The county’s Democratic and GOP parties issued a joint statement on Friday calling the recount a success and issuing their support for the recorder.
Thank you @PinalCounty and @PinalGOP Party Chair for believing that facts matter and for your continued support to our county Recorder and Elections officials. Some things go beyond party politics and become a matter of fallacies and facts. Facts win every time.@azdempartypic.twitter.com/4Z6S9uJdRv
Pinal County has been beset with problems throughout this election year. In August, former Elections Director David Frisk resigned after back-to-back issues ahead of the primary. The county faced several lawsuits after mailing about 63,000 voters incorrect early ballots. Then on the day of the primary, the county failed to have enough ballots on hand for voters. Workers were forced to disenfranchise those voters.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona taxpayers are tired. It’s bad enough that our state has been getting crushed by the highest inflation rate in the country, but during this past November’s election, the government tried to swoop in and take more of your hard-earned dollars out of your wallet. This time, Arizona voters said enough is enough. Not only did they reject several tax increases, but they ensured victory for one key protection against future tax increases.
Arizonans Reject Prop 310
Prop 310 aimed to increase the statewide sales tax by 0.1% to fund fire districts throughout Arizona, and its proponents used the oldest trick in the book. Just like we’ve seen with past education or transportation tax increases, they tried to convince voters that Prop 310 would only cost them a penny when they buy coffee or a dime when they buy dinner.
Maricopa County has reported that more than 855,000 of its nearly 2.5 million voters cast ballots in the Aug. 2, 2022 Primary Election. Roughly 14,000 of those ballots were still in the pre-tabulation process as of Saturday, including 7,500 which were awaiting curing by voters no later than 5 p.m. on Aug. 9.
On Saturday, representatives of the political parties in Maricopa County completed a state-mandated hand count audit of four contests (including governor and U.S. senator) on 5,000 early ballots as well as ballots cast at five randomly selected voting centers.
The hand count audit for the 2022 Primary Election is complete. The hand count boards confirmed the results match the tabulation equipment! https://t.co/JX4KWmiGyu
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) August 7, 2022
With the hand count finished, there should be no problem completing the canvass of Maricopa County’s election results by the Aug. 12 statutory deadline. Canvassing is the act of officially certifying the election results, and is expected to be uneventful for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
The same cannot be said for Pinal County, which fired its Elections Director within hours of the polls closing. There is a possibility that legal action stemming from multiple problems could keep Pinal County’s board of supervisors from being able to do its canvass by the deadline.
As AZ Free News previously reported, Pinal County administers municipal elections for its 11 incorporated cities and towns. Due to “human error,” roughly 63,000 of the county’s 275,000 registered voters received incorrect early voting ballots last month.
Elections Director David Frisk accepted responsibility for the fact thousands of voters in Apache Junction, Casa Grande, Eloy, Mammoth, Maricopa, Queen Creek, and Superior received ballots without local races listed. Several thousand other voters who lived in unincorporated communities were incorrectly sent ballots which listing municipal races they were not eligible to vote in.
(Parts of Apache Junction and Queen Creek are in Maricopa County which reported no problems getting the correct ballots to its voters.)
Frisk and Pinal County officials assured the public the mistake could be resolved by not counting votes in mayor and council races if cast by non-municipal residents. The county then sent out supplemental ballots to affected municipal residents to use in additional to their original ballot which included federal, state, and legislative contests.
Yet just when county officials thought they had the early ballot snafu handled, reports began circulating the morning of Election Day that two of Pinal County’s 90+ polling stations did not open at 6 a.m. as required.
Those two locations were finally opened by 10 a.m., but by then Frisk and his staff were overwhelmed with reports that more than two dozen polling stations ran out of preprinted ballots. The ballot supply was also a responsibility which fell on Frisk, who was hired by the board of supervisors earlier this year with no experience in Arizona election laws or procedures
As Frisk was being fired, Pinal County Recorder Virginia Ross quit her elected position on Thursday and accepted an appointment as Elections Director, a responsibility she previously had as Recorder from 2013 to 2017 before a new Elections Director position was created going into the 2018 election cycle.
Pinal County can announce that David Frisk is no longer in the position of Elections Director and is no longer employed by Pinal County.
Virginia Ross is the County's new Elections Director, having resigned her role as County Recorder this morning. 1/2
— Pinal County – Government 🌵 (@PinalCounty) August 4, 2022
Ross’s shuffling of jobs created a vacancy in the elected office of County Recorder, which the county board of supervisors filled Friday by appointing Deputy County Recorder Dana Lewis to serve out Ross’ term through the end of 2024. Lewis previously worked in the Elections Department before Frisk was hired.
County officials then regrouped with their new leadership and announced plans to update elections results every night around 7:30 p.m. “including over the weekend” until all valid ballots were tabulated. And in a major announcement, the county publicly confirmed rumors of an ongoing problem in trying to process about 10,000 early ballots.
The problem also prevented a large number of voters from being able to track their ballot’s status online. But just hours after taking over their new roles, Ross and Lewis were able to fix the problem with assistance from the Pinal County IT team so those affected ballots could get tabulated.
— Pinal County – Government 🌵 (@PinalCounty) August 6, 2022
The only other reported Election Day problem came out of Cochise County, where a few dozen people claimed that when they signed in to vote they were listed as previously signing in.
The problem appears to stem from the fact the poll workers and election observers signed in during a recent training session to understand how the system worked. The voting database was not purged by the Elections Department staff before official in-person voting began.
Some voters reportedly were given provisional ballots to cast while others were allowed to vote once the error was realized.
