Democracy is under attack. Here's how we know Arizona elections are safe and secure

Arizonans begin early voting on Oct. 12 in the 2022 midterm elections. We will choose a new governor, secretary of state and attorney general. We’ll decide who will be our next U.S. senator and newest members of Congress.

It’s an important moment.

We will participate in the right of all free people to choose the men and women who will lead us.

A democracy isn’t the bricks and mortar that create the U.S. Capitol. It isn’t the marble columns of the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s not the Stars and Stripes, nor the lovely setting sun on the state flag of Arizona.

A democracy exists in the minds of men and women who believe there is greater prosperity in our combined efforts than in splitting apart and going our separate ways.

The most fundamental principle of this shared ideal is the right to vote. It is the foundation of all free societies, and essential for any democracy to work.

In our democracy it is under serious assault.

Arizona's voting system is not rigged

Since the waning moments of the 2020 presidential election, influential Americans have tried to use the courts, the legislatures and the power of popular persuasion to sow doubt in our electoral system. Taken together, it represents one of the most sustained attacks in our history on American elections and democracy.

Many Arizonans will begin voting today in a system they’ve been told is rigged.

We are here to tell you with unflagging conviction that is a lie.

A shift: GOP candidates sidestep election fraud claims. Trump repeats them

Our journalists have followed no other story these last two years more closely than this one. We have covered every important development and dug down to get the facts behind every seed of doubt.

Not only is our electoral system safe and secure, it is a built upon a framework of accountability and transparency and professionalism.

This is our voting system.

It doesn’t belong to any political party or activist mob. It belongs to the people of Arizona, and consequently, we’ve designed it over the years so that no self-interested party can manipulate the ballots or the machines that tabulate them.

Elected leaders stand against these lies

Just as important, Arizona has elected leaders from both parties who stand against the rogues and charlatans who worked to reverse the 2020 results in Arizona and, in so doing, courted a U.S. constitutional crisis.

Leaders such as Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs have pushed back against these accusations at no small cost.

Hobbs, a Democrat, has faced a torrent of abuse. Richer, a Republican, has been called a sellout, traitor and fraud. He and his wife have been harassed and faced death threats. Angry activists have told him to take his “fake-Christian, Mormon a-- back to Utah.” He’s not LDS, nor does he consider that mistaken identity an insult.

Here’s what he is. A Republican. Not a RINO – a Republican in Name Only. He is a one-man trumpet section for conservative values and free-market economics.

In ninth grade, he was the only kid in his class who opposed government subsidizing the arts. In college he wore a black arm band for a week to honor the passing of conservative economist Milton Friedman.

“I’ve been very active in Republican Party politics since age 22,” he wrote. “I’ve since volunteered on at least 20 Republican campaigns and have donated to at least 40 Republican candidates. I’ve never donated to a Democrat. I voted for Trump.”

Your vote has layers of protection

But when Trump operatives and supporters were challenging the Maricopa County electoral system, Richer knew they were badly distorting the truth about Maricopa County’s election system, and he wouldn’t tolerate it.

As recorder, he knew:

• Tabulation systems are rigorously tested and certified by county, state and federal officials.

• County supervisors, Arizona’s secretary of state and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which in 2020 reported to Donald Trump, had to approve the tabulation software and hardware.

• The Arizona secretary of state, at the time a Republican, ran a “logic and accuracy test” to make sure the tabulation machines accurately read the votes.

• In the name of transparency, appointees from the Republican, Democrat and Libertarian parties worked in bipartisan groups of three to hand count more than 47,000 votes immediately following the 2020 election. Their count matched the machine count 100%.

• The county followed up with another, post-election, logic and accuracy test to ensure the machines had not been disrupted during the election. The results again were 100% in agreement.

• County supervisors had hired two professional elections technology companies with years of experience to analyze hardware and software vulnerabilities to hacking, malware and internet manipulation. That three-week assessment was entirely livestreamed and accompanied by state House, Senate and Secretary of State representatives. It determined the system was clean and honest.

The Big Lie simply doesn't hold up

That’s rigor and professionalism, the very inverse of what we saw from those accusing state and county officials of election fraud.

When Donald Trump and his lawyers launched their campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election, they carried arguments into court so poorly conceived and error-filled that judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats almost universally dismissed them.

So appalled were the courts that they ordered Trump attorneys to take remedial courses in the law and even suspended the New York law license of Trump's lead attorney after he made "demonstrably false and misleading statements.”

That lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani, even tried to invoke the widely discredited documentary “2,000 Mules” as evidence the election was stolen.

Don't believe Trump. Early voting is secure

On Sunday, however, Trump was at it again. “If you can,” he told Republicans in Mesa, “vote in person on election day, because it’s a lot harder for them to cheat.”

Trump never says who might be cheating because he can’t. Early voting in Arizona goes through the same rigorous checks that all votes go through. In fact, most Arizona voters would marvel at the extraordinary lengths taken to secure early votes.

• Only registered voters can request a ballot.

• The ballot goes through address verification.

• Every mailed ballot’s affidavit envelope is tracked using barcodes.

• Signatures are reviewed by trained staff who must undergo a certified training from the Associated Forensic Laboratory, LLC.

• Further checks include a multi-tier signature verification process, manager review of all questioned signatures or blank envelopes and a 2% daily audit of all good signatures before any ballot is sent to a bipartisan board for processing.

• “Robust tracking reports and logs” are produced through each step, preventing the insertion of illegitimate ballots.

• Elections departments only count verified ballots.

• Once verified on the affidavit envelope, the ballot is authenticated and opened by a bipartisan board and sent to be counted.

• State law requires all ballots be kept secret, so once the ballot is separated from the affidavit envelope, it can no longer be tied back to the voter.

Compare that with the Senate's so-called 'audit'

Compare those safeguards with the so-called audit the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate ordered in 2021 to investigate Maricopa County’s 2020 election results.

The Senate hired a Florida firm with zero experience in auditing elections and whose CEO destroyed all credibility when he parroted claims of election fraud before the review had actually begun.

The Arizona Republic interviewed a number of professional accountants. Virtually all told us the Arizona election review is not a genuine audit because it doesn’t follow generally accepted auditing standards.

At that time, Laura Long, a former auditor for the Arizona Office of the Auditor General, said, “I’ve been calling it a partisan recount.” And so it was, so brazenly partisan that its organizers allowed conspiracy theorists to film on location a movie called “The Deep Rig.”

In the end, the thoroughly discredited exercise concluded that, in fact, Joe Biden had won the presidential election in Arizona.

Every allegation can be debunked

But the damage had been done.

Election deniers had worked to discredit Arizona’s electoral system with outlandish allegations and crackpot theories.

All were knocked down by hard facts. Among the most prominent:

Sharpies: On Nov. 3, 2020, the day after Election Day, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich reported that his office had received “hundreds of voter complaints regarding the use of Sharpie brand markers.” A rumor had spread that the markers could bleed through ballots and ruin votes on the other side. Elections officials ensured that the controversy was unfounded, that Sharpies posed no threat to the ballot, because the ballots were “offset” in a way that makes it impossible to spoil a vote on the other side. Further, there are systems in place to count all votes regardless of what instrument was used to mark it.

Internet: Conspiracy theorists, including those involved with the Arizona review of votes, alleged that hackers could access the Maricopa County tabulation machines. A trio of technology experts overseen by a special master, John Shadegg, a Republican former congressman, found no evidence of any internet connection. According to Shadegg’s report, there is no electronic connection between the ballot tabulation center and the county’s Tabulation and Election Center, “either wired or through a wireless protocol. There are no routers in the tabulation center,” the report states. “There were no Splunk logs to track internet activity because there was no internet connection.”

Bill Gates, a Republican who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said, “The unanimous conclusions of this expert panel should be a final stake in the heart of the Senate’s so-called ‘audit.’ ”

Dead voters: Merissa Hamilton, a Republican activist, said she and her volunteers had found evidence that people who were deceased had voted in the 2020 election. They referred their evidence to the attorney general. That evidence did not point to any conspiracy or organized effort to game the system, Richer noted. It did, however, lead to the indictment of a single person, a Scottsdale woman who had illegally sent in the ballot of her mother who had recently died. That Scottsdale woman is a Republican who has contributed to Republican causes.

There were two other arrests stemming from the 2020 election. Two women, both Democrats, were convicted of ballot harvesting in the 2020 primary in the border community of San Luis. Attorney General’s investigation records showed that fewer than a dozen votes were involved and would not have affected the outcome of local races, the Associated Press reported.

Duplicate ballots: Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward argued in a court filing that witnesses had observed duplicate ballots that did not reflect the original ballot. “The Court ordered that counsel could review 100 duplicate ballots. Maricopa County voluntarily made another 1,526 available,” Richer wrote. “Of the 1,626 ballots reviewed, 9 had an error in the duplication of the vote for president. That represented an accuracy rate of 99.45% for duplication. Additionally, the 9 errors did not all favor one candidate – there were mistakes that favored Biden and some that favored Trump. That very minimal amount of error played no role in the outcome of the election and is completely typical for human processes.”

Matching signatures: Ward also alleged that Maricopa County was “not sufficiently skeptical in their comparison of signatures on the mail-in envelopes/affidavits.” The judge allowed review of 100 signatures by experts for the plaintiff and defense. Neither found evidence of forgery or simulation.

How do you counter this madness? Vote

In the 2020 election cycle that favored Democrats, Stephen Richer cut against the grain and won. Given his attention to detail, the new Republican county recorder knew well the election requirements of his office.

But he had to get behind the counter to understand just how robust and secure the system is, he said, with its cameras, bipartisan teams, multiple layers of signature review, signature review audits, preelection mailings, security badges, intelligent barcodes and chain-of-custody codes.

“They were more significant than I imagined.”

In short, Arizona voters can depend on the security and professional handling of their ballots. Those who would undermine our electoral system are lying for selfish reasons.

Don’t give into them. Don’t be demoralized.

Your best response is both simple and profound.

You vote.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona 2022 election is secure. How to know without a doubt