While political polling is an art, statistically rigorous polls are generally within the ballpark—yet Arizona 2022 election results don’t make sense (See here, here, and here). For those seeking integrity in elections, the Arizona midterm election is a hill worth dying on.

Maricopa County, Arizona, was problematic in the 2020 election. Maricopa County officials stymied legislative and court oversight. The Board of Supervisors and others allegedly obstructed Arizona’s Senate 2020 election audit: “In every way imaginable, the county refused to cooperate with the Senate’s designated auditors, the Cyber Ninjas.”

A lawsuit prevented the Cyber Ninjas from directly reviewing any signatures. However, months later, the Senate retained Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai to test a scientifically selected sample of 499 signatures from Maricopa County. A panel of six individuals (including three forensic document examiners) examined the signatures and unanimously found a 12 percent error rate. When that rate is applied to all mail-in ballots in the county, it suggests that there may have been over 200,000 highly questionable (or phony) signatures in the election—not 587.

According to the Gateway Pundit, Maricopa County had another problem in 2020: It lacked proof of chain of custody for at least 740,000 ballots.

Why? What is Maricopa County hiding?

The Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs race for Arizona governor was very close, with Hobbs leading by less than 0.6%. There are many irregularities, including Hobbs’s refusal to recuse herself, even though she was responsible for the election as Secretary of State. Therefore, a real forensic recount/audit is necessary regardless of what Maricopa County may say.The least of which was that 20% to 30% of the vote tabulation machines failed, forcing people to submit their ballots via “Door 3,” which then led to reports that Door 3 ballots were comingled with counted ballots. However, an election judge reported that the tabulation machines were working the night before. These machines must be isolated/quarantined. The log files must be examined before they can be altered.

In Maricopa County, in both the 2020 election and 2022 election, some polling places reportedly required felt pens to mark ballots. Felt pens can cause irregular or enlarged “bubbles,” or bleed through to the other side, so the ballot gets rejected when scanned.

It’s unclear if Imagecase Adjudication, which is a part of Democracy Suite 5.5B, is used in Maricopa County. Under that system, the rejected scanned digital image is sent to a person for adjudication. This person can make changes. If a change is made, a new digital image is overwritten on the first image of the ballot.

 Image: Maricopa County’s election official, Bill Gates. YouTube screen grab.

The Arizona Attorney General opened an inquiry into Maricopa County 2022 election irregularities. Several counties delayed certifying the election but were forced to certify under threat of felony charges being filed. Kari Lake filed a suit in Maricopa County for election records (Complaint) and threatens more suits.

A principal concern in Maricopa County is ballot harvesting affecting the integrity and validity of early voting ballots. Another concern is whether the county properly certified and secured the voting machines.

Ballot Harvesting, Related Integrity and Validity Issues:

In Arizona, with few exceptions, it is illegal to ballot harvest, a rule the US Supreme Court upheld. Ballot harvesting can swing the vote when the vote margin between candidates is small, e.g., one party can seek out early vote ballots of low-propensity voters in favor of their candidates and trash the ballots for the opposing candidates. When the voting rolls are not purged regularly, phantom or floating ballots are likely to occur. ERIC, a third-party vendor, appears to be problematic in this regard:

Cleta Mitchell of the Public Interest Legal Foundation reported on the 31 states who use ERIC, which was an originally Soros-funded entity, providing virtual food and clothing to phantoms. ERIC is a totally faked-out entity giving both Republican and Democrat governors cover for keeping phantoms on the voter rolls.

When early ballots are allowed to trail in over several days, it’s not rocket science to figure out how many ballots are still needed to swing the vote from one candidate to another.

As in 2020, there is video evidence again of mules dropping harvested ballots in the 2022 election. As usual, though, the media are downplaying “nothing to see here folks” with disinformation through “fact checks.” The Associated Press, in its Style Manual, maintains “[T]here was no widespread fraud in the election, as has been confirmed by a range of election officials across the country. . .”

In fact, Maricopa County was overwhelmed by early voting ballots dropped in the 2020 election. The signature verification standard was lowered several times and dropped altogether because the County was running so far behind. The effect is potential fraudulent ballots will slip through (See ref to ERIC above). Was there a repeat in the 2022 Election?

Lake’s campaign had roving RNC Attorneys monitoring Maricopa Voting Centers who issued this report:

. . . 72 of the 115 vote centers (62.61%) we visited had material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots, causing voters to either deposit their ballots into box 3, spoil their ballots and re-vote, or get frustrated and leave the vote center without voting. . .

However, many ballots were not able to be tabulated by the tabulators at all, no matter how many times the voter inserted the ballot. The percentage of ballots that were not able to beread [sic] at all by the tabulators ranged from 5% to 85% at any given time on election day, with the average being somewhere between 25 percent and 40 percent failure rates.

The stated cause of the failure, according to Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, was that printer ink settings were too light and the vote scanner tabulators could not read them. These tabulating machines must be immediately isolated/quarantined to check the log files to ensure the software was not altered or manipulated.

Lake previously filed a suit to prevent Pimas and Maricopa electronic devices from casting or counting votes. The federal judge dismissed the suit, calling it full of “conjectural allegations of potential injuries.” “In a blistering 30-page opinion, [the] federal judge ordered sanctions against the attorneys of Kari Lake and Mark Finchem in their lawsuit against voting machines, hoping to deter what he characterized as “similarly baseless suits in the future.”

One of the attorneys involved on behalf of Lake was noted constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz, who adroitly replied:

“I have never challenged the results of any Arizona elections,” Dershowitz wrote. “I have provided legal advice about the future use of vote counting machines by companies that refuse to disclose the inner workings of their machines. . .”

Ron Wright is a retired detective having served thirty-five years with Riverside PD, CA. Ron earned a BA in political science Cal State University, Fullerton & masters of administration University of Cal, Riverside. Facebook at Ron T. Cop.