Maricopa County's proposed election agreement won't change a thing
A proposed agreement to better clarify election duties between the Maricopa County recorder and the Board of Supervisors makes good sense.
How much of a difference it'll make is another question.
The updated agreement won’t change how things are fundamentally done.
Most of the key responsibilities are already defined by state law and by protocol outlined in the Elections Procedures Manual the secretary of state puts out.
The recorder oversees all things related to voter registration and early voting. The supervisors are in charge of in-person voting and vote tallying.
Supervisors would handle ballot drop boxes
The updated agreement is intended for clearer understanding of election oversight and accountability.
The most notable changes under the proposed agreement:
Supervisors would determine the locations for in-person early voting, a power that is presently also shared with the recorder.
Supervisors would oversee all matters related to drop boxes, including documentation of the chain of custody of ballots (the date and time of retrieving the ballots and the number of ballots retrieved, for instance). Currently, that duty belongs to the recorder "or officer in charge of elections."
The recorder and supervisors will stop jointly overseeing the county's Elections Department, whose director would now report to the supervisors.
Drop boxes became one of the many targets of election deniers. Among the myriad claims the state Attorney General's Office investigated in the 2020 election was the failure by the Maricopa County Elections Department to maintain proper documentation of dropped-off ballots as proof of fraud.
The AG’s Office concluded there was no evidence that the ballots were compromised or tampered with — findings that were infamously withheld by Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who was at the time running for U.S. Senate.
But its review did show that a number of the chain of custody logs were improperly filled out. Under the new agreement, the oversight shifts to the supervisors.
Separate teams won't change election messaging
The agreement also would end the practice of a shared team of spokespeople for election matters. Instead, the supervisors and the recorder will have separate communications teams.
It’s not as cosmetic as it sounds.
Though there was no public tension or spat, Recorder Stephen Richer and his staff were frustrated by the flak they took for printer woes that caused confusion and lines at some 30% of the polling places for the better part of Election Day last year.
Independent review says: County's printer problems not tied to fraud
There were diplomatic attempts by Richer and others to say, “Hey, this ain’t our fault.”
But most of that got lost in the messaging about efforts to correct the problem and to encourage voters not to stick around for tabulating machines that can’t scan their filled-out ballots.
That's not a knock on the recorder, supervisors
Nonetheless, separate communications teams wouldn’t have made a difference.
Nor would a clearer delineation on responsibilities between the recorder and the supervisors.
That’s not a knock on the parties involved. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Both Richer and the supervisors, led by Bill Gates, were a calming presence who provided access and transparency about election operations. They acknowledged mistakes were made and apologized for them.
There was no denial, no deflection of responsibility.
They did their jobs admirably.
The recorder, his staff, county supervisors, workers at the polls and those at the county Tabulation and Election Center are all cogs in the elections system — which makes them fair game, especially for the partisans and maligners who don’t differentiate their roles.
No elections shared services agreement, however well defined, would change that.
Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On Twitter: @abekwok.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County elections agreement won't change a thing
