‘s the deal with Arizona? // (Scott Johnson)
John A. was a man I admired and respected. Jack Clifford was a lawyer who represented the adverse parties in an intellectual property case many years ago. Merchant & Gould is Jack’s counsel. P.C. P.C. It’S VERY COMPLETE AND LOUD. is the latest AP story about Arizona’s happenings. Jack writes:
I hope you are well. I am writing from Maricopa County in Arizona. This is where I have lived, worked, and voted since 2014. I write for myself and not for any client or law firm.
First, Maricopa County is huge. Arizona’s entire state has only 10 to 11 counties, while Minnesota has 87. It takes about an hour to drive 70 miles per hour in any direction to reach the county line. Any registered voter can cast an in person vote anywhere in the county, for reasons that aren’t clear (I think convenience is what the excuse is). This sounds great, until you realize that not all voters have the same ballot due to local school boards, water boards, or other local issues.
My school district is one of only ten in the Phoenix metro area. Rural areas also have their own school districts. We had 64 different ballots used in the 2020 election in Maricopa County, thanks to school bond referenda. Although I haven’t seen the 2022 number, you get the idea. After a voter has identified himself, the authorities print ballots on-site. The plan is to print the correct ballot for the voter and send it off for him to fill in the bubbles.
To allow the scanner to identify which form is being scanned and to count it, the ballots should have registration marks. I don’t know if your printer is at home, but I can tell that I have many hiccups from my tiny print shop at my desk. Did the polling station use the right paper, ink, or gave the voter a pen that can be seen from the other side? What level of quality control is being implemented? Some voters claimed that the felt tip pen was not as sharp as they thought. What could possibly go wrong? I used a ballpoint pen.
However, the problem arose again this year. The system was too complicated for it to work smoothly. After a year with low turnout, a lot of bureaucrats saw an opportunity to save money and reduced the number of polling stations. We are certain to be in the turtle races this year if we add a layer of CoVid-excused modifications. They were told by the IT guys that this should work. We got it. We got this.
Some ballots were rejected by scanners and some voters were advised to try again at another polling location. They were informed that they would not receive another ballot if they had already checked in at the previous location. It makes sense, but it is not true if your first ballot was thrown away. This brings me to “drawer 3”.
Some of the unscanned ballots were apparently placed in a “secure lockbox” where authorities basically said that they intended to scan them somewhere else at a later date. Who is to believe that the ballot will scan downtown, since it won’t scan where it was filled out? Anyone hand tally?
Remember that Katie Hobbs, our Secretary of State, is responsible for overseeing the running of a free and fair election. However, she is also running for governor and is locked into a tight battle with Kari Lake. They believe that the only standard is to appear impropriety. Covid has closed the SOS’s office for two years, and the team was working remotely via Zoom. It seems unlikely that all those scanners and printers were checked out via Zoom.
I took a great picture of the vote totals from the SOS’s office yesterday morning. Katie’s picture is located in the upper left corner of the SOS office. Her picture is also lower down on that same page, next to her vote total. It isn’t the exact same image, at least. It doesn’t seem to me to be kosher. The optics are terrible.
She didn’t quit or step down. Perhaps she needs the income. She ran for office claiming she was an Uber driver and needed the money in order to support her family. OK.
These are new problems? They are not new problems. They all occurred in 2020, but they were mostly ignored because anyone who “saw something, then said something” was subject to whipping posts.
We are here. My wife and me are on the “permanent postal in ballot list” and receive our ballots approximately one month before each election. This is permitted in our country and is very common. Even though they have moved away, I still receive ballots for my children. What could possibly go wrong?
My wife and I have to decide when and where we will return our ballots. Do we risk the US Mail? Do we give it to an unsecure drop box?
They can be returned anywhere in the county. You risk having them reported to the media by someone reporting that there are “heavy early votes coming in from Republican areas.” We gave them in at city hall, where early in-person voting was taking places. We placed them in the box that the poll worker instructed us to. It was “drawer 3,” I hoped. Three days later, I received a text stating that my ballot had been “signature Verified and Scanned.” I hope that it means what it says.
Keep watching. According to the “big guys”, 95 percent of ballots will be counted by Friday’s close. Will they be honest about what they show or how old they are over the weekend?
Jack updated his report late last night:
As of Thursday, the county had approximately 17,000 “drawer 3-” ballots to process. They are now lowering their expectations to say that they will only have a few remaining ballots to count in Maricopa. It appears that the process is moving slowly if you look at the live webcam.
A reminder that the ballots you receive if you vote in person in your hometown are likely to be preprinted on suitable paper. On-demand printed ballots can be used for voters who live far away but still vote in the county or those who have run out of preprinted ballots.
