Arizona 2022
New film documents issues with last year's election. Plus updates from GA, ID, TX, NY and around the US.
When the Arizona Senate ordered an audit of the 2020 election, I went ahead and bought a t-shirt with the Arizona flag on it. It was a token of support for the effort to bring transparency to that infamous election.
Unfortunately, that audit effort was crushed by politics. The auditing firm was ridiculed for its name and its lack of experience. Big media focused in on only one item the audit produced - that the recount of the ballots actually showed Biden had a few more votes than the original count.
The public has learned a great deal about our elections since then. So, when Maricopa County again became the center of controversy after the 2022 election, it was more closely scrutinized with more experienced eyes. A summary of issues found became the subject of the film ‘State of Denial’.
The film covers the following areas of concern:
The rejection of ballots by a large number of tabulators throughout the county: A county supervisor and the county recorder did a press conference early on election day acknowledging that ballots were being rejected at a number of its voting centers. The issue seems to stem from a 19in ballot image being printed on a 20in ballot, throwing off the timing marks and making the ballots unreadable. At the 50:45 mark in the film, it shows what looks like perjury by a Maricopa election official over this matter. These unreadable ballots were put in a ‘door 3’ slot on the tabulators, transferred to the county facility and either scanned there or duplicated. Meanwhile, long lines formed and it is difficult to estimate how many people were truly disenfranchised who gave up trying to vote.
Chain of custody issues: Maricopa County contracts early ballot processing via Runbeck, a private company. Because the count of ballots sent to Runbeck is not maintained by the County, there is an accusation based upon estimated batch counts and quantities that more than 30,000 ballots came back from Runbeck than were sent to it originally, which could have changed the outcome of multiple races.
Signature verification issues: The time it takes to adequately evaluate an absentee signature to assure it matches with exemplars on file should take more than 2 seconds, but analysis shows that more than 300,000 absentee ballot signatures were verified in less than 2 seconds.
These lingering questions form the basis of on-going lawsuits. Abe Hamadeh, who lost the AG race by 280 votes, continues to contest his election and has filed a new suit over the signature verification problems.
I searched for any big media response to the film and its assertions but have been unable to find anything at this point. Maricopa’s Board of Supervisors, Recorder and other election officials have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
GA: SEB Ponders SecState Investigation - It was an historic meeting where the State Elections Board (SEB) heard from the public and debated investigating the Secretary of State over irregularities from the 2020 election. The Board opted to get clarification from the legislature as to whether they had the power to launch such an investigation, delaying the decision for the time being. At the same meeting, the SEB voted to recommend elimination of no-excuse absentee voting. A local group’s summary of the meeting can be found here.
US: Trump and 14th Amendment Update - If you are having a hard time keeping track of which States are trying to remove Trump from the ballot and which States have not, this link provides a graphical scorecard for more easy digestion. A quick summary is that both Colorado and Maine are set to remove him from the ballot if approved by the US Supreme Court, otherwise he remains. Election timelines may also force the decision to print ballots with Trump on them if the SC does not weigh in.
ID: Latah County Hand Counts Nov Election - Clerk Julie Fry indicated the hand count was done before machine counting the ballots in order to address concerns of the public with machine counting. The result showed a minor discrepancy that did not impact any of the elections.
TX: Gillespie County to Hand Count March Election - In contrast to Latah County Idaho, the Chicken Little forces are up in arms over Gillespie County Texas opting to ditch its machines and hand count its March primary. While I am not a hand count advocate, the fact is hand counting is done now in many small counties that have no machines. Idaho had 7 hand count counties out of 44 in the 2020 election. Two counties in Idaho that have machines do not use them in off year elections when turnout is low and, more importantly, when there are just a few races. These clerks have made the call based on what is easier to do. Charges of inaccuracy have shown to be overblown. The hand count process does need to have some error prevention mechanism. In Idaho, over 20 hand counts done in the past couple of years shown no significant difference from the machine counts. In juxtaposition of the fear of machine counting, the fear of hand counting has led to ill-advised legislation to prevent it, which will only fuel the fire of mistrust against machines. So, Gillespie will be one to watch come March not only to see whether the election went smoothly, but to see how the legal hyper-ventilation unfolds. I’m also watching these hand counting experiments to see if these counties decide whether it is worth it to continue (PS: Latah has indicated they will not).
NY: Another Absentee Voter Fraud Arrest - This time, a man requested and obtained absentee ballots on behalf of over 100 people and falsely turned them in. If such situations always resulted in the culprit being caught, that would be comforting, but testimony from court cases have revealed that absentee fraud happens far more than it is caught.
And the Republican March caucus will be hand counted!