In a letter dated November 19, 2022, addressed to Mr. Thomas Liddy, Civil Division Chief, Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Jennifer Wright, Assistant Attorney General, Arizona Attorney General’s Office is requesting Maricopa formally respond to and address concerns that have been raised regarding the General Election of 2022. This must be completed on or before November 28, 2022, the date Maricopa County is required to submit its official canvass to the Secretary of State.
Assistant Attorney General Wright clearly identifies three areas of concern:
- Election Day Ballot-on-Demand Printer Configuration Settings
- Election Day “Check-out” Procedures
- Ballots Deposited in Door 3 and Statutorily Required Election Board Close Out Duties
The fourth largest county in the United States can’t/won’t get voting right. Can’t equals performance, won’t equals conduct. Which do you think it is, are they incompetent, or are they complicit? There is a human resource theory by Dr. Sidney Fine that says all jobs come down to three components: things, people, or data.
Things: Equipment did not work
Election Day Ballot-on-Demand Printer Configuration Settings
- Sixty (60) voting locations had issues related to some ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers
- Tabulators couldn’t read the ballots printed by the BOD printers
- Ultimately, ballots went into ‘Door 3’
People: Poll Workers stated they were not trained on the procedures
A.R.S. 16-584(D)
If the voter’s name is not signed on the roster and if there is no indication that the voter voted an early ballot, the provisional ballot envelope shall be opened and the ballot shall be counted. If there is information showing the person did vote, the provisional ballot shall remain unopened and shall not be counted.
Data: Ballots Deposited in Door 3
What’s behind ‘Door 3’? Data. Lots of it. Maricopa’s response to malfunctioning things (equipment) and poorly trained employees (people) is to mess up the votes (data). Many people were unable to tabulate their ballots on Election Day using on-site tabulators. Instead, voters were instructed to deposit their ballot in “Door 3”. Door 3 ballots were transported to Maricopa County Tabulation Center to be tabulated there. And….., once again Maricopa County appeared to have failed to adhere to statutory guidelines.
In the end, it appears that Maricopa County did not comply with Arizona Revised Statutes. It is the recommendation of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (and many Arizona County Chairmen) that the election is not certified.
No big surprises here; it comes down to Things-People-Data. Dr. Fine knew it in 1940 and Arizona knows it in 2022.
But, Don’t Lose Site of Everything Else Going On
- Congress needs to pass a budget by December 16, issue another Continuing Resolution, or shut down the government
- Since 2010, 47 Continuing Resolutions have been enacted
- The average length of a Continuing Resolution is about 3 months
- FY 2023 Appropriation bills passed by the lower house
- Commerce-Justice-Science – Increase $7.6B
- Interior-Environment – Increase 17%
- Transportation – Increase 12%
- Labor-HHS-Education – Increase 14%
- Debt Ceiling – Currently set at $31.40 trillion (right now at $31.27 trillion)
- Over the past two years (2020 – 2021), federal pay has averaged $99,622 with benefits of $44,021 that gives the average federal employee compensation of $143,543
- Roughly .5% of federal employees are fired annually for performance and/or conduct
- Roughly .1% of the Senior Executive Service employees are fired annually in federal government
- Moscow’s most important war partner is IRAN.
- 300 Deadly IRANIAN drones have targeted Kiev; the Iranian drone program said to be one of the most successful in the world
- SHAHED-136 is a suicide drone carrying an explosive warhead. It flies at 115 mph with a range of over 1,500 miles, about 12 feet long/8 feet at its widest. Moscow has ordered no less than 2,400 of them
- Russia has conscripted 82,000 soldiers; 218,000 are in training—double the total troop figures massed on the Ukraine border at the start of the war
- China is seeded as the number one military threat to the United States over the next decades
- The Marines have unveiled “Force Design 30” to redesign Marines for naval expeditionary warfare
- North Korea has issued a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons
While we have been very involved in our elections, there has been a great deal of activity in our government. Whether it is things (drones), people (salary, fire rates), or Data (federal pay and compensation), the government has continued to work while we continue to vote and count.
There will be a recount in the Attorney General’s race. What does that mean for Pima County? We will likely have the Logic and Accuracy testing December 7-8; begin tabulating December 12-15, and a hand count the week of December 18. That means we will have a need for observers the week of December 12-15 and people to participate in the hand count the week of December 18. We are not done yet.
Join me to ensure a fair and transparent election; there’s more work to do.