Not even Kari Lake could have foreseen Pinal County's massive Election Day screw-up
Had you read the news from the Kari Lake War Room, you probably would have sighed and moved on.
But this was a report in the mainstream Arizona Capitol Times, picked up from the nonprofit news organization Votebeat.
The reporter is Jen Fifield, formerly of The Arizona Republic and respected for her detailed coverage of the state’s electoral system.
The picture she paints of the Pinal County election is not a pretty one. Imagine the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic.
It’s so crazy, so filled with intrigue, that in a time when everyone is seduced by conspiracy theories and the certitude that artificial intelligence is going to wipe out civilization, it manages to demand our attention.
What the hell happened in Pinal County?
Pinal County had a disastrous primary
The story begins after another disaster — the 2022 Pinal County primary election — in which election officials so mismanaged the logistics that they overlooked the little detail of supplying enough ballots to more than 20 precincts on Election Day.
That’s one-fourth of locations.
Long lines formed. Voters got tired of waiting. One supervisor went to polling places begging them not to leave, reported then Votebeat reporter Rachel Leingang.
Little did Pinal County officials know, things were about to get worse.
In Maricopa County: Election Day printer problems not tied to fraud
Fast-forward to the 2022 Pinal County general election.
Smarting from the debacle of August 2022, county officials brought in Virginia Ross, a Republican who had served as county recorder for nearly 10 years, to be election director. They tasked her with tightening up the operation.
She didn’t come cheap. As Fifield reported:
“The county paid her handsomely: more than $40,000 a month leading up to the election. That’s more than five times what the past two elections directors had made. Plus, she would get a $25,000 bonus if supervisors voted yes (approving the results).”
Supervisors paid a fixer but got chaos
And what were the Pinal County supervisors getting for their premium pay?
Bedlam.
Except by the time they signed off on the election and realized it was shot through with errors and incompetence, their election director was long gone, retired and living somewhere in a remote dirt water in East Texas.
Only Kari Lake could have cooked up something so preposterous.
Yet, file this story confidently under nonfiction.
Fifield further reported:
“Internal evidence” showed that “Ross had botched the count in a way that excluded hundreds of votes from the original results, enough to nearly overturn the outcome of a statewide race.”
The new tally nearly overturned the attorney general’s race.
Some half-dozen out-of-state election experts reviewed the problems and were shocked that Pinal officials “didn’t immediately hit the brakes.”
Said Jennifer Morrell, founder of an elections consulting firm: “I cannot even fathom seeing those reports, seeing how the numbers were off and not doing everything I could as a leader of the organization — the person that is ultimately responsible for the integrity of the election — to figure out what happened.”
Arizona needs answers immediately
The story is a jaw-dropper and raises fresh questions about election integrity in the state.
It demands stronger oversight to restore trust in Arizona’s electoral system.
Finally, if you’re looking for answers in East Texas, Fifield reports that Virginia Ross does not respond to requests for comment, has no working phone number or email and, according to county officials, can’t be reached with interview requests.
As they would say in Texas, this mystery is “hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch.”
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Pinal County botched its election, and we have no idea why
