Outgoing election administrators in Pinal County lost 25,000 votes for running a smooth election despite reporting significant inaccurate final results, including nearly 500 uncounted votes in the contested Attorney General election. Got a dollar bonus.

Former county registrar Virginia Ross, who was brought in to oversee the election on a short-term contract, failed to catch or disclose the errors before the results were certified in November, county officials said. I didn’t.

inaccuracy is published last week As part of the results of the statewide recount, officials attributed most of the problem to human error during election day ballot counting. This week, new election officials indicated that Ross may not have taken steps after the election to make sure the results were accurate.

Ross was brought in specifically to fix the post-election county elections. miserable primary County officials made mistakes they later said were easy to prevent, such as not ordering enough ballots from polling places. For four months of service, Ross received a huge paycheck of $175,000 and a conditional bonus of $25,000.

County supervisor Kevin Kavanaugh said at Wednesday’s supervisors meeting that he wanted to consider whether it would be possible to cancel Ross’ bonus. Several residents who spoke at the meeting called for it.

“If the board had known about the error, we probably wouldn’t have investigated it,” Kavanaugh told Votebeat before the meeting, adding that the director’s Nov. Mentioned. “Without our investigation, Virginia Ross wouldn’t have been able to receive her $25,000 bonus.”

Votebeat was unable to reach Ross for comment. A county spokesperson said there was no immediate way to contact her.

County officials assure voters that poll results are accurate. But county supervisors still have questions about how and why the results changed.

This inaccuracy may affect the outcome of at least one race in 2022. The revised election results for the Attorney General narrowed an already tight gap even further, splitting winner Democrat Chris His Mays and Republican opponent Abe Hamade with just his 280 votes. Hamade’s lawsuit challenging the election results was dismissed last month, he is now seeking a retrialsays the new information from Pinal’s recount provides new evidence that the election was inaccurate.

“Unfortunately, the recount has identified even more problems in an election already plagued by process failures,” said his new trial motion. “This further indicates that the vote totals are likely to be inaccurate, and that thousands of Arizonans’ votes were not counted, raising even more questions about the actual results. .”

When did county officials learn of the problem?

Pinal County supervisors say they learned about the uncounted votes only after voting to prove the results. At Wednesday’s meeting, they said they needed a better picture of what happened and how to fix it.

Geraldine Rohl, an attorney at the county attorney’s office who took over as the new election administrator in early December, said in a report on last week’s recount that 424 votes from 10 polling places were out of control, among other issues. I explained that it was not tallied. in the first result.

In Pinal County, ballots cast in person by voters on Election Day are not counted on the spot. Rather, they are safely transferred to county headquarters, where a team of workers puts them into a tallying machine and counts them. Did. Some of the errors, Roll believes, may have been caused by the people who were running the machine not properly handling paper jams and other problems.

Cavanaugh told Votebeat it was clear that workers were not well trained.

It is unclear exactly what Ross knew about the matter before presenting the initial results to the supervisor for the required certification. Rolle told the commission she believed county officials had enough information to at least question the results before they were certified. It said it had to delay the vote to certify it while it was being held.

“We had enough to raise some questions, and we should have taken more steps before investigating,” she told the supervisor. “We certainly had time.”

A vote to certify the results took place on November 21, one week ahead of the county’s state certification deadline.

Ross told a local reporter in an article published Nov. 22 that he knew workers did not follow proper procedures when ballots were not properly scanned.

“There were some instances where polling officers needed a little more training on how to handle that scenario.” Ross told Maricopa.com.

Proper training of poll workers was one of the requirements for Ross’ bonus.

Ross became the election director after the county fired the previous election director, David Frisk, following the failed primary. For four months he earned a salary of $175,000, well above that of his predecessor. Frisk earns about $100,000 a year, compared to about $97,000 for former campaign manager Michele Forney.

Ross’ contract promised a $25,000 bonus under the following conditions: Polling places are open on time and properly equipped. Properly trained polling place workers; Consistent and accurate messages delivered to voters; Tests on the county tally machine were successful and all reports were submitted in compliance with the statute. Board-certified results. Coordination with city and town clerks and all relevant jurisdictions.

Best practices for reviewing results are not followed

The county typically has some checks and balances in place to ensure that all votes are counted, but it is unclear whether or how Ross checked before the election results were finalized. Unknown.

Rolle told supervisors that Ross compiled the final election results “within about 30 minutes” after officials finished counting the votes.

“Virginia was pulling the canvas out of the election software and sending it to the oversight board,” Rolle said. “I haven’t had a chance to look at these numbers carefully.”

County election officials can verify the accuracy of vote counts by comparing voter check-ins to the total number of ballots cast at each polling place. Additionally, the constituency model used by Pinal County allows the total number of ballots printed in a constituency to be compared to the total number of post-voted, unused and voided ballots.

There is no state law requiring this kind of settlement, but it is one of the best practices the Secretary of State is emphasizing for counties in drills, state elections director Cori Rorick told Votebeat last week.

Forney said Pinal County had been very active in implementing such settlement checks before Ross took over as elections director.

Forney said he will spend several days after the election using the process of checking the results in several different ways, including examining the total number of printed ballots, ballots counted and voter check-ins. said.

For example, days after the 2020 election, this detailed process helped identify dozens of uncounted votes from a single precinct, according to Forney. The county, under the supervision of party leaders, recounted precinct ballots to ensure the results were accurate before they were finalized.

Forney said she wasn’t sure if the county was still enforcing these practices. .

“I wouldn’t have left my position as elections officer until it was over,” Forney said.

The county began preparing for a recount shortly after the election was approved. It was formally ordered by the court on December 5th.

Meanwhile, according to county spokesman James Daniels, Ross retired on December 2 and moved to Texas the next day.