By Tracy Beanz
A lot has been said about election integrity in the past few years. It’s been a divisive topic because the people who challenge election results are often the losers. The winner’s “side” can’t reconcile the fact that maybe, just maybe, their candidate didn’t win, so they embark on a quest of sheer cognitive dissonance, not caring that they, too, are disenfranchised by an election devoid of any shred of integrity.
They scream, “Grifter! No evidence!” They mock those who attempt to ensure one of our most sacred rights is protected for all people. The movement to “fix” our election issues knows that when fixed, everyone’s vote will count. I am consistently stunned at the vitriol with which the “other side” attacks those who seem to care more about their attacker’s vote being counted than the person doing the attacking does.
The 2020 election aside, I don’t think another election in modern history has been so transparently broken/stolen/mismanaged to the point of utter chaos than the Arizona midterm election in 2022. It was so clearly a mess that to deny such, in order to proclaim “there is no evidence, and a judge said so too!” you must literally twist yourself into a pretzel and bury your head in the sand. I will review just a few of the most egregious issues with the hopes that this may serve as a resource for those who still give a damn about living in a free country. This isn’t detailed or even fulsome; however, our more detailed reporting is linked throughout.
Improper Ballot Image Size and the Curious Case of the Heat Maps
In 2022, there were serious technical issues for voters. The majority of these issues occurred across Maricopa County, a county that represents 62% of the total population of the state. On election day, reports began flowing in that people could not get their ballots to scan once they voted. Arizona has print-on-demand ballots, so voters can go to any voting precinct, provide their address, and get the ballot representing their area. There were 7,000 ballots rejected by the machines every HALF HOUR in Maricopa County from 6-8 PM, never mind the rest of the day.
THREAD: I am traveling right now for business, and to do this proper justice I need to be on a device other than a tablet. However, I will state a few things off the bat and provide you the full decision. You can read it here: https://t.co/ORrtu22ZpM https://t.co/M523OIP9sg
— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) February 17, 2023
Voters were assured that their ballots would be counted if placed in a separate drawer. We later learned through election workers’ affidavits that no suitable procedure was followed to ensure those ballots were treated properly. We also learned that 19″ ballot images had been printed on 20″ paper, a problem the county knew about and was allegedly investigating, as it had also happened in the previous two elections.
The County supervisors didn’t tell anyone they were aware of this issue and were in the midst of a root cause analysis to figure out how it happened. They kept that from the public.
So, thousands and thousands of voters cast their ballots on 19″ images printed on 20″ paper. Those ballots needed to be duplicated to proper sizes and scanned to be counted. We later learned that Robert Jarrett, the elections director, could not produce a SINGLE duplicated ballot, and none of the processes was followed to have those duplicated ballots attached to the original. We learned that only because Kari Lake was granted the ability to have an expert (Clay Parikh) spend just a few hours at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) and look at certain batches of ballots.
Adding insult to injury, in what may have been the most obvious and blatant case of perjury we have seen in a trial of national significance in a long, long time, the “co-elections director” lied when testifying about these issues during the Lake v. Hobbs trial.
Additionally, Maricopa County had “heat” maps hanging in their offices. There were conflicting stories about these “heat” maps, which separated voters by their voting party. Officials from the Maricopa Recorders office said they were glorified wall art. Officials from the Maricopa County Elections Department said they helped the election office to prepare for elections. What no one could explain, however, was why those printer issues we have been discussing occurred almost exclusively in Republican “hot” zones.
We are being told that because a judge took Maricopa’s word for it, everything was on the up and up, and we should sit back and be confident they aren’t lying to us. They want us to believe that, as their witness lied to a judge while under oath and on the witness stand.
They said it wasn’t possible for a 19″ image to print on 20″ paper. When they were found out, they said that someone probably just bumped the printer, even though that happened exclusively in Republican-heavy voting areas, areas they had a map hanging on the wall to identify. When an expert debunked the theory that a printer could’ve been bumped or settings changed, they finally admitted the issue happened. When questioned further, they admitted that not only had it happened, but it had also occurred in two previous elections. They don’t know why, and they are still investigating the problem.
We went from “it is impossible that the issue you describe happened” to “yea, it happened, but only because a tech made a local error” to “yes, it happened on a wide scale, we can’t show you how we duplicated the ballots that were affected because we didn’t attach them as we should, and we are investigating this with a root cause analysis because it just seems to keep happening every election.”
Spare me, “no evidence” crowd. If this were your candidate, you’d be camped outside the recorder’s office with a bullhorn chanting “No Justice, No Peace!” at all hours of the morning. Be honest with yourself.
Chain of Custody Issues
Chain of Custody is one of the most important tenets of an election. Honest brokers do everything they can to maintain the Chain of Custody. The path of a ballot, its stops along the way, and who moves and counts them are critical to an honest election. There are pages and pages of procedure written regarding election-related Chain of Custody. We learned in this election that Maricopa didn’t follow its own policy.
🚨 Chain of custody expert on BOTH Runbeck and Maricopa County: "They weren't following the legal requirements for chain of custody" pic.twitter.com/0xtjcF7EVj
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 21, 2022
This column would become voluminous should we delve into the particulars of every Chain of Custody violation, so we will focus on the most egregious. Heather Honey, an expert witness for Kari Lake at trial, testified to numerous ways Chain of Custody procedures weren’t followed, including that Maricopa County called its vendor, Runbeck, to get an accurate tally of the number of votes cast. Maricopa County is supposed to know that at all times. Otherwise, anyone can insert ballots into the batch as it travels, and no one would be the wiser.
While covering this case, I was shocked when I learned that, yes, in fact, ballots were injected into the count. We know this because an employee who witnessed it told us so in a sworn affidavit. Additionally, Honey filed a Request for Information with Maricopa County asking for the Chain of Custody slips that were supposed to accompany each batch of ballots along the way. The County could provide none of those slips.
One of the judges that threw out the challenge to the election shenanagans claimed that ‘in court, statistics are not proof.’
Tell that to every murder case where DNA evidence is the basis for the conviction.
If it is a one-in-ten billion chance that it’s anyone but the perp, He DID IT.
I sat on a case like that.
DNA is considered proof even if it’s just a one-in-ten thousand chance.
So, the judge who threw out the case was just trying to find a reason to, he glommed onto one that could drag the appeals process out until it’s too late.
Not one that’s true.
If they aren’t outright crooked, they are too cowardly to face the repercussions of election fraud. Instead, they settle for the American voter getting screwed.
In some societies, isn’t that regarded as a crime? Why isn’t it punished here?
If we aren’t going to follow the rules, what the hell are the rules for? The same people that screamed about Georgia’s election laws (which increased turnout) perpetrated the voter-disenfranchising election fraud in Arizona. These aren’t mistakes or flaws in the system; this is a criminal enterprise.