Attorney general's report on election in Maricopa County questions procedures, doesn't allege wrongdoing

Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s probe of Maricopa County’s 2020 election thus far has found “serious vulnerabilities” in procedures but no crimes, according to an initial report released Wednesday on the monthslong investigation.

Investigators with the office's Election Integrity Unit suggested the county lacked adequate methods to verify voter signatures on early ballots and found holes in its chain of custody for ballots deposited in drop boxes.

The report also raised questions about other election procedures, including the use of private grant money to help stage the election during a pandemic, and promised further investigation into election-related matters.

"We have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona," Brnovich wrote in the report.

Overall, it made no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of any individuals and did not cite specific instances of possible crimes, though it notes that the "investigation is still developing in material ways."

While it details potential flaws in the process, it does not provide any evidence that the election outcome would have been different. Joe Biden won Maricopa County, putting Arizona in his column and helping to seal his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.

Bill Gates, chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and County Recorder Stephen Richer released a rebuttal statement, saying the report contained "no new evidence, nothing that would have changed the results, and nothing that should lead people to question the overall health of our electoral system."

The report arrived a week after pressure from Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa and chair of the Senate Government Committee, to give lawmakers some sense of what the attorney general had uncovered, so they could craft corrective legislation.

It was delivered to Senate President Karen Fann, who had asked Brnovich to investigate the findings of the ballot review the Senate’s contractor, Cyber Ninjas, produced six months ago.

"We've wanted an entity with prosecutorial authority to validate the missteps our audit revealed, and this interim report does just that," Fann said in a statement.

"The AG's findings of failures, fraud, and potential misconduct during the 2020 election in Maricopa County are not surprising, given the lack of compliance and cooperation Maricopa County elections officials displayed from the start."

The only mention of fraud appears in reference to prosecutions that the attorney general's Election Integrity Unit has done previously, many of them involving issues in other counties.

The release of Brnovich's report unleashed criticism from county recorders current and past, as well as Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. They lambasted the report as speculation, noting Brnovich did not provide any evidence of wrongdoing, but instead suggested things didn't look right.

Richer, a Republican and a critic of the Senate's election review, criticized Brnovich on social media, saying the letter mischaracterized his office's "extreme cooperation" with investigators.

He wrote on Twitter that the report showed "suggestions of some imperfect ballot transportation documentation" and a "suggestion that signature verification happens too quickly."

"But most importantly, it, rightfully, doesn't say anything about a stolen election or unlawful acts by election workers," Richer wrote.

Hobbs, in a statement, said the report is further proof that Brnovich is trying to curry favor with election deniers who support former President Donald Trump.

"Instead of simply following the evidence, he speculates. Instead of clarity, he provides conjecture," Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, wrote. She accused him of wasting taxpayer dollars to "chase Cyber Ninja conspiracies."

And former County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who oversaw the conduct of the 2020 election, said the report was long on speculation and short on facts.

“He’s just saying, ‘It doesn’t seem right,'" Fontes said. "Nobody cares what you think Mr. B. We want to know what you know.”

What the Brnovich report says

Brnovich's letter describes the county's signature verification system as "insufficient to guard against abuse," noting the short amount of time election workers have to look at signatures on ballots.

The Maricopa County Recorder's Office verified 206,648 signatures on Nov. 4, 2020, averaging out to just 4.6 seconds for each verification. That fast pace leaves the system "vulnerable to error, fraud and oversight," the report states. However, it does not explain how it arrived at the 4.6 second figure nor does it refer to any kind of standard or guideline for how long a signature check should take.

The number of early ballots rejected in Maricopa County because of problems with their required voter signatures has decreased in the past three election cycles, his office found.

For example, the number rejected because of signatures that don't match went from 1,451 in the 2016 election to 356 in 2018, the same year that Pima County — which received a total of 302,770 early ballots compared to Maricopa County's 1,184,791 early ballots — rejected 488 for the same reason.

Brnovich also raised concerns about the transporting of early ballots from drop-off locations to county's election headquarters, and said it put at risk nearly 20% of the ballots delivered via drop boxes.

His recommendations mirror many of the measures lawmakers have introduced this session, including the need for tighter signature verification on mail-in ballots.

But the report also has an echo of the Cyber Ninjas' findings, which were at times hedged with an acknowledgment that there could be other reasons for their conclusions.

Brnovich was suspicious of the decline of mismatched signatures on mail-in ballots and suggested it could have been because the county became "less diligent" on signature checks after 2016. That's the year that Fontes, a Democrat, was elected. However, the report conceded that this was just one explanation and "there could be others."

In their rebuttal, Gates and Richer said the report doesn't include a single example of a ballot that was accepted without a proper signature.

On the question of chain of custody, "records confirm that tamper evident seals were secured on every drop box," they said. "We can account for every ballot that was delivered to the Elections Department, whether it was returned in a drop box, voted in person early, mailed back to us, or voted on Election Day."

Election staff have worked "day and night" to gather the information Brnovich has requested in both civil and criminal inquiries while also running two local elections at the same time, they said.

"Unfortunately, the attorney general made no mention of the many areas of the election process that his investigators reviewed and found satisfactory, including the preservation of election files and the absence of internet connectivity," Gates and Richer wrote, adding that election workers followed the law as it was written in 2020.

"If the AG wants different laws, he's welcome to advocate for them."

Will report satisfy Trump supporters?

Brnovich, who is running in a competitive Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, has faced a barrage of calls from former President Donald Trump and his supporters to finish the investigation.

Part of the report seems written to push back on their criticism about his office not doing enough.

The report outlines the Attorney General Office's defense of an "onslaught of attacks in 2020" naming six lawsuits on which the state prevailed, including the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of the state's "ballot harvesting" law, although that case did not speak to instances of ballot harvesting in 2020.

His office is "vigorously defending" election-related lawsuits against the state this year, he said, including two federal complaints filed last week against the state that target House Bill 2492, which tightens up proof-of-citizenship requirements when registering to vote. Gov. Doug Ducey signed the bill March 30.

Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, one of the state's most fervent supporters of 2020 election conspiracy theories, was not happy with Brnovich's update, calling it out on social media as "flaccid" and "slow."

"Our nation burns and people write damn letters that don’t do a damn thing!" she posted on Twitter. "WE WANT ARRESTS NOW."

But Townsend, who will face Rogers in a GOP primary in August, said the report breathes new life into election-related bills she introduced, only to see many of them fail.

"Nothing's dead until we sine die," she said, referring to the Legislature's closure of the 2022 session.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona attorney general releases report on Maricopa County election