a 4 page documentIt was issued Saturday on letterhead from Brnovic’s office.
Earlier on Election Day, polling place printers at 70 of the county’s 223 polling stations produced ballots in ink too thin to be read by vote counting machines, county officials said. . So voters were forced to line up, move to another location, or leave their ballots in a safe box to travel to downtown Phoenix and be counted there.
County leaders have yet to explain the cause of the problem and have said they will conduct a comprehensive review once the votes are tallied. A judge in Arizona reached the same conclusion. Deny Requests from Republicans to extend voting hours on Election Day in light of mechanical errors.
But the election day issue, now highlighted by the state’s chief law enforcement officer, is likely to fuel Republican efforts to challenge the outcome of the election, especially the extremely thin margins in the race for attorney general, both said. Most of them spoke on condition of anonymity to share their candid assessments of ongoing legal issues, according to the top attorneys associated with the law. .
Democrat Chris Mays leads his Republican opponent Abe Hamade with just 850 votes as of Sunday in the Attorney General race, which is set to be recounted. Hamade promised to “lock up” those involved in the 2020 elections. His campaign is working with Republicans nationwide and advisers at Kali Lake to consider legal options, according to people familiar with the situation. The Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lake, was predicted to lose the election last Monday, trailing him by more than 17,000 votes as of Sunday.
Lake refused to acknowledge, citing widespread printer glitches to claim her supporters were “disenfranchised.” We have posted video testimonials from people, but some have concluded that they were able to vote.
A Washington Post analysis found that polling stations affected by the problem were not overwhelmingly Republican-biased. was found to be virtually the same as the percentage of registered Republicans in the United States (35%).
Now the electoral integrity unit within Brnovic’s office is intervening. After the Democratic Party’s top-to-bottom victory in the 2018 midterm elections, the troubled unit created by Republican lawmakers faces criticism from election naysayers and the political right. Spotlight enough fraud and use public resources from the left to foment misinformation about voting.
In a letter on Saturday, the assistant state attorney general who heads the unit wrote that it had “received hundreds of complaints since Election Day related to the administration of the 2020 general election in Maricopa County.”
The letter is addressed to Tom Liddy, the county’s civil litigation officer. Request a report detailing printer issues, including which voting sites were affected and how county representatives determined that printer configuration settings were causing ink problems. Request a “comprehensive log of all changes” to settings.
Liddy declined to discuss the letter on Sunday, saying he needed to meet with county officials in charge of overseeing the election.
“Maricopa County is still waiting for a full report from the Attorney General regarding his ongoing investigation into the 2020 election,” Liddy said in a brief telephone interview. “I’m a little surprised he’s getting ready to start in 2022 when he hasn’t finished his first race yet, but I wish him all the best.”
Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the county’s governing board, declined to comment.
The Office of the Attorney General is also writing to seek information about people who are unable to properly check out of vote centers after encountering problems and may be preventing them from voting elsewhere. The letter raised concerns that ballots posted in a secure box known as “Door 3” may have been mixed with other ballots, violating legal guidelines. says there is.
County officials acknowledged isolated incidents in which different batches of votes were combined, but the protocol implemented with observers from both parties included the total number of votes cast against polling place check-ins. It includes checking the
The letter requires the county to respond by November 28, the deadline for certifying election results. State certification is set for his December 5th.
The Assistant Attorney General who signed the letter is Jennifer Wright, an attorney endorsed by Tea Party activists in her 2011 candidacy for Phoenix mayor. From 2010 until 2014, Wright served as co-chair of validating the Arizona vote, and he worked closely with True the Vote, a Texas-based organization.
Attorney General Brnovic confirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election despite pressure from then-President Donald Trump. emphasized his office’s work on the integrity of the United States, claiming he had expressed “serious concerns”. About 20 voter fraud cases were prosecuted.
Days before the November election, Brnovic made his most outspoken comments yet about candidates denying Trump’s defeat, calling them “clowns” engaged in a “huge crack.” The leader last week authorized proceedings against Brnovic’s office for alleged failure to file public records resulting from a state investigation into Brnovic’s office.
Since the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Republicans have been vague about potential lawsuits.
One legal expert said that Republicans’ attempts to use Brnovic’s letter to bolster efforts to challenge the outcome of the close race should have no effect on recognizing the outcome.
“Nothing legally,” says Tom Irvine, a retired attorney with 40 years of election law experience who represented Maricopa County in the 1990s and 2000s.
“There is no evidence that anyone was at a disadvantage,” said Irvine, a Democrat.
