As we approach the second week following the bungled midterm elections, there are mounting calls for the Arizona general election results to be voided in light of fresh claims that the defective voting equipment used on Election Day was never certified.
On Saturday, Republican Josh Barnett tweeted the devices were NEVER authorized. They were not licensed per state legislation! The entire election should be voided on this basis alone!
Democrat Jevin Hodge won Arizona’s 1st Congressional District in the general election by just 3,102 votes over Republican incumbent Rep. David Schweikert.
The former Republican candidate cited a letter from the election’s integrity section of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office requesting a response from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office regarding problems relating to the 2022 General Election administration in Maricopa County.
The letter documented several voter concerns, including extensive faults of voting machines and printers that suspiciously spat out mistakes and rejected votes on November 8.
The Republican cited ARS 16-442 (b), a state election law that states any machine or device used in an election for federal, state, or county office must be certified for use in this state. In addition, these devices can only be used in this state if they have been tested and approved by an accredited laboratory under the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Barnett said on Sunday that the election was tainted.
According to state statute ARS 26–442(b), the machines were never properly approved by the authorized qualified business, he stated. Therefore, every vote cast using these devices is unlawful.
The Maricopa County Recorder, Stephen Richer, was accused of lying by Barnett. He stated that Richer said the machines were certified but neglected to clarify that an unaccredited organization issued the certification.
According to the letter provided by the election’s integrity section of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the voting machines were inspected the night before the election on November 8. Still, they began failing suspiciously on Election Day.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright stated in a letter dated Saturday, based on sworn reports made by Maricopa County election workers, the BOD printers were tested on November 7 without obvious difficulties.
Despite the successful testing the night before, several election workers claim that issues with reading ballots produced by the BOD printers occurred shortly after voting began on November 8, 2022.
The state Attorney General’s Office stated that it had received a “plethora” of complaints from election officials, poll observers, and voters, in addition to a “complete documentation” of all modifications made to printer settings before Election Day.
“Based on sworn allegations… poll workers complained that they were not instructed and/or not given instructions on how to execute ‘check out’ processes” for e-Pollbooks when a voter abandoned a problematic polling location for another, the letter stated.
“Maricopa County has admitted,” according to Wright, that it did not follow statutory guidelines regarding “segregation, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots” — ballots that could not be properly scanned and were therefore placed in a secure slot on a vote tabulation machine to be counted later.
Barnett stated that by haphazardly mixing ballots, election officials had laid the ground for forced adjudication of votes, a potentially fraudulent procedure. He tweeted, “2020 election, it was sharpies.” “The election of 2022,” Door 3, “corrupt and unlawful.”
Rep. Mark Finchem, who was behind Adrian Fontes in the Arizona secretary of state race by more than 120,000 votes, tweeted on Sunday, “WE NEED A NEW ELECTION.”
Finchem tweeted on Monday that the most recent election debacle proved that we must resort to paper ballots because voting machines are unreliable.
This is just another reason why we must protect our elections with paper ballots that are watermarked and counted by hand in each precinct on Election Day,” he stated. Other countries worldwide do it, so he does not want to hear it’s impossible.”
Regardless of one’s political leanings, no one can examine what transpired on Election Day in Arizona and be 100 percent convinced that the results were not tampered with, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Our elections have become a farce and will remain so until the entire system is cleaned up.