With 25,000 Mysterious Votes And Missing Documents, Maricopa’s 2022 Election Process Marked By Chaos And Uncertainty

The GOP and conservative media are largely moving on from Arizona’s gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, and the systemic failures This occurred in Maricopa County on November 8, court testimony, and eyewitness reports were from the Lake trial include allegations that Arizona’s largest county violated state law by failing to implement chain-of-custody documentation for Election Day ballots, resulting in a mysterious 25,000 extra votes added to Maricopa County’s official tally within a 24-hour period — more than the margin of victory between Lake and gubernatorial victor Katie Hobbs.

It was about 10:00 on election night when Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation vendor, Runbeck Election Services, received its first truckload of Election Day drop box ballots. Runbeck received seven truckloads of ballots, the last one arriving at 5 a.m. on the morning after the election. However, Runbeck staff found it strange that the deliveries didn’t arrive earlier in the day. But that wasn’t the only glitch. It was a departure from the usual procedure that there were no chain of custody forms included with the ballots.

Denise Marie, a Runbeck employee, said that drop-box ballots were used prior to Nov. 8. “delivered in red bins with a chain of custody form” From the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, which lists how many ballots have been delivered.

But on election night, “instead of receiving the ballots in red bins, the ballots from the drop boxes had been placed in mail trays and loaded onto mail cages. MCTEC did not include the Maricopa County Delivery Receipt forms with any of the Election Day drop box ballot deliveries. There were no chain of custody forms with the ballots and no count of the number of ballots that were delivered,” Marie wrote the following in a sworn affidavit.

Maricopa County Co-Director of Elections Reynaldo Valenzuela even testified that while the county’s election workers count drop box ballots and record the counts on documents as required by law prior to Election Day, they did not count the ballots retrieved from drop boxes on Election Day itself. Valenzuela answered the court when he was asked if Maricopa County officials knew the exact number drop box ballots available for Election Day. “On Election Day, no, because we’re not doing drop box courier process at that time. It’s a different process for Election Day.”

Kurt Olsen from Lake attorney says that this is in direct contravention of the Constitution Arizona state statuteThis requires that the county recorder keep records that track the chain of custody for the ballots “during early voting through the completion of provisional voting tabulation.”

Per Arizona’s Election Procedures ManualWhen ballots are removed from drop boxes they must be either counted at the local poll center or placed in secure ballot transport containers that can be returned to the county for tabulation. The county recorder or election official must count all ballots in the container and take a retrieval form.

Maricopa County tabulators received a greater number of Election Day drop-box ballots than any other county.

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