Dear Executive Guidance Committee of the Maricopa County Republican Committee:

I am in receipt of your resolution dated August 4, 2022.  The resolution – which apparently^[1] passed by a vote of 13 in favor, 11 opposed, and 2 abstentions – censures me in my official capacity as the Republican-elected Maricopa County Recorder for my “specific actions” during the August 2022 Primary Election, my “disregard for the irregularities reported in the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 Election,” and my alleged “inaction on election integrity.”    

I use the term “in receipt” generously.  I first heard of the resolution after it had already passed.  I later saw the text of the resolution – complete with scribble marks on the document – on Twitter.^[2]  I have not received any formal copy of the resolution.  I was not afforded any chance to discuss the matter with the Executive Guidance Committee.

But I am not writing to challenge the process by which I was censured.

Nor am I writing to dispute your entity’s authority to do so.  Indeed, I support, and would defend, your ability as a private organization to ask me to wear a mask at your meetings, to require that I be vaccinated if in your employ, to refuse to officiate my wedding, or to abstain from baking me a cake.  I certainly support your ability to take a private vote.

Nor am I writing to ask you to reconsider.  Far longer-serving Republicans than I have recently been censured by local Arizona Republican bodies, and I daresay I can bear it as they have.

Instead, I’m writing to clarify a few points that might be of interest to you as we proceed to the November General Election.

1. The August 2, 2022 Primary Election

The resolution alleges “significant failures” in the administration of my duties, specifically relating to “late counting and delayed results” and the use of “felt-tip pen(s).”

Ironically, neither of these things are my statutory or delegated authority.  

Title 16 (Elections and Electors), Chapter 4 (Conduct of Elections) of the Arizona Revised Statutes^[3] makes it quite clear that Election Day operations and tabulation are the statutory responsibility of the Board of Supervisors of the county.  This was unfortunately on full display in Pinal County, where Election Day failures were laid at the doorstep of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors and its Election Director, not the County Recorder Virginia Ross, whom the County Supervisors have now asked to fix the situation.^[4]

Some county Supervisors have delegated these statutory responsibilities to the county Recorder, who is statutorily responsible for voter registration, early voting, and other components of election administration.  Maricopa County was one such county for many decades.  In 2019, however, at the encouragement of the Maricopa County Republican Party and many others, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors very publicly retook primary responsibility for its statutory responsibilities from then-Recorder (my predecessor) Adrian Fontes.^[5] 

Since that time, Maricopa County’s elections-related responsibilities have closely mirrored statute, but they have been specifically internally governed by the Elections Operations Agreement, a public document executed by the Board of Supervisors and the Recorder.^[6]   As is quite clear in that public Agreement, the Board is responsible for Election Day operations and tabulation.  

I relate none of this to defer responsibility.  We are one team at Maricopa County, and, though Election Day operations and tabulation are not my statutory responsibility, I worked at least 16 hours each day on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday alongside the Board of Supervisors’ designees and was consulted in all decision making concerning those processes.  I am proud of all parts of the election that Maricopa County ran.

Rather, I present the above as emblematic of a lack of knowledge of how Arizona’s elections operate, as well as a failure by the censure’s authors to do any research prior to writing the resolution.

IA. Tabulation

This failure of understanding and failure to research extends to the specific criticisms made regarding election operations in Maricopa County.  On page one of the resolution, the signees allege “late counting” and “delayed results.”  The actual facts tell a different story – that Maricopa County actually moved faster than past elections and moved faster than other counties in Arizona.

Arizona law prohibits counties from posting any results prior to 8:00 PM on Election Night.  At 8:00 PM, Maricopa County posted the results of 601,384 ballots.  This represented 69.4% of all eventual votes and included all early ballots that the County had received as of the Saturday (July 30) before Election Day.  Never in recent years has the County had all early ballots received through Saturday ready for tabulation.  

Early ballots are received in their sealed green envelopes and have a scannable barcode unique to each voter (which tells us that the person is a registered voter in the county’s voter registration database and has not already cast a ballot).  These envelopes must be imaged, must be signature verified, must go through a signature verification audit queue, and then must be extracted from the envelope by a bipartisan team that makes sure the ballot style is correct and the ballot is not damaged.   All actions are documented and reconciled at each step.  Only after all steps are completed can the ballot be sent to the tabulation room.  

At the tabulation room, ballots are fed into tabulators under the watch of 24-7 live-streaming cameras and political party observers, who must confirm the number of ballots tabulated by the machine at the beginning and end of each shift.  Of the ballots sent through the tabulators, approximately 5.75% are sent for human review as required by law.  The majority of these reviews relate to write-ins – the tabulation machines cannot read handwriting, so humans must.  Other human reviews are prompted by overvotes and fully blank ballots.  This occurs when the voter fills out more ovals than allowed.  Only once adjudication is completed can the results of the batch be released.

After the initial posting at 8:00 PM on Election Night, the County next posted all ballots cast by voters who had a ballot printed at a voting location on Election Day and fed the ballot directly into the mini-tabulator at the voting location.  The County posted Election Night results faster than any recent August primary, and did so while ensuring the secure transportation, detailed tracking, controlled transfer of custody, and accurate counting of ballots.

Polls close at 7:00 PM.  That does not mean, however, that voters are gone by 7:00 PM.  Voters must be at the voting location by 7:00 PM.  Despite the 27-day early voting window, many voters choose to vote on Election Day, and they choose to arrive at, or right before, 7:00 PM on Election Day.  This has long been the case, and it is perfectly acceptable and lawful.  It does mean, however, that voters typically do not leave polls until 7:45 PM at many locations – even later at popular locations.  Tabulation devices cannot be shut down until all voters leave the voting location.  Only once voters leave are the memory devices from the tabulators securely removed from the tabulators, placed in secure packaging, logged on chain of custody sheets, and readied for transportation.

Maricopa County had 210 voting locations during the August 2022 Primary.  Memory drives from central Phoenix voting locations were delivered by bipartisan teams directly to the County’s tabulation center.  All other memory drives were first driven to a local receiving site.  At each of these receiving sites custody is securely transferred by scanning the barcodes of the tamper-evident seals and by filling out a chain of custody form.

The bipartisan team at local receiving sites waited for memory drives from all surrounding voting locations before heading in one police-escorted truck to the County’s tabulation center.  Some voting locations are a two-hour drive from the tabulation center.  As a best security practice, results were not transmitted by internet from the individual voting locations (although doing so would save a lot of time and driving).

Once the memory drives arrive at the tabulation center, the tamper-evident seals are broken under the watch of political party observers, removed from the secure packaging, and then loaded into the results server.  The server takes some time to load the results from the thousands of votes on each memory card.  Once loaded, the updated results are formatted and copied to two brand-new memory devices.  Only then are the memory devices taken outside the tabulation center to computers with external connections.  One device is plugged into a computer with a secure connection to our elections website.  The other device is plugged into another computer, which is only used to communicate with the Secretary of State’s Office.  After this is done, the results can be displayed online, and the memory devices are retained for 24 months and never used again.

Maricopa County loaded these results throughout the evening as the memory devices came in from the various receiving sites.  The County had results loaded from all 210 voting locations by 12:30 AM on the night of the election.  This represented the second-fastest completion in the County’s history and faster than all recent primary elections.  In August 2020, the County finished at 1:00 AM.  In August 2018, the County finished at 2:40 AM.  In August 2016, the County finished at 1:10 AM.  In August 2014, the County finished at 1:16 AM.  Maricopa County’s timing in the August 2022 Primary also compares favorably with other counties in Arizona and large counties throughout the United States.

Votes cast in-person on Election Day accounted for over 106,000 ballots.  Accordingly, by 12:30 AM on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, Maricopa County had tabulated 707,415 ballots – 82% of the eventual total.

At that time, the only ballots remaining to be tabulated were early ballots dropped off on Sunday and Monday, early ballots dropped off on Election Day, early ballots waiting for curing, and special ballots like Braille and oversize font ballots.

By law, the County cannot retrieve early ballots dropped off on Election Day until the voting location has closed and voters have left.^[7] 

Early ballot retrieval is subject to chain of custody documents and reconciliation statements at all phases and ballots are transported by bipartisan teams from voting locations to the County’s tabulation center.  As described above, Arizona law requires many actions before tabulating early ballots (scanning, image capturing, signature verification, signature audit queues, ballot processing, etc.).    

From approximately 8:00 PM on Election Night until 7:00 AM on Wednesday, August 3, we prepared, scanned, and imaged all of the approximately 122,000 early ballot envelopes dropped off on Election Day.  At 7:30 AM on Wednesday, August 3, we began signature verification of these early ballot returns.  Though we have increased the number of internal signature audits, we managed to review all 122,000 ballots by the end of day Thursday, August 4.  That pace – 122,000 early ballots signature-verified in the two days after Election Day – had never before been achieved by the County during a primary election.  It was made possible by process improvements, added personnel, and a committed workforce willing to work long hours.

This effort enabled the County to have 98.7% of all ballots tabulated within 72 hours (Friday night) of polls closing. That compares favorably with the County’s performance in previous midterm elections.  It compares favorably with other Arizona counties; it compares highly favorably with states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and it is on par with most major Florida counties – the state that many people seem to think has 100% of its ballots counted on Election Night (it doesn’t).  

The only thing that kept that 72-hour number (98.7%) from being 100% of ballots cast is Arizona law.  According to state law, Arizona voters have five business days (usually seven days) after Election Day in which to “cure” their early ballots.  Curing happens when both our first-level reviewer and manager deem the signature on the early ballot affidavit envelope to be non-matching.  In such instances, we attempt to contact the voter by phone, email, mail, and text message to cure the ballot and send it forward to tabulation.  Maricopa County cured over 10,000 ballots in the August Primary.

I vividly remember my own election in November 2020: I waited eight days before securing my lead against Adrian Fontes, and it took 10 days to complete the counting.  I also remember the August 2020 Primary, as campaigns I watched took into the weekend to determine who would take the lead owing to the closeness of the race (e.g. Joseph Chaplik vs. Jay Lawrence and Jerry Sheridan vs. Joe Arpaio; my own race was happily not close).  And I remember the protracted, very-close 2018 contests between Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema and Steve Gaynor and Katie Hobbs.

In November 2020, I understood the process; I didn’t complain even though I was significantly trailing my opponent Adrian Fontes after the first few releases.  I criticized^[8] Alex Jones,^[9] “QAnon Shaman” Jake Anthony Angelis Chansley,^[10] and others who caused commotion outside the tabulation facility and attempted to slow the tabulation process with their antics.^[11]  Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward also attempted to slow the process when she told the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, “We need you to stop the counting,” even as President Trump closed the margin with each successive release.^[12]

But waiting isn’t fun.  That’s why I’m proud that Maricopa County tabulated at a faster rate than past elections; we tabulated at a speed favorable to other Arizona counties and very favorable to most other jurisdictions in the United States (think about the Mehmet Oz vs. Dave McCormick race in Pennsylvania^[13]), and we tabulated at a comparable speed to the much-celebrated Florida.

If you want us to have 95% of returns ready to go at 8:00 PM on Election Night, then do what both my wife and I did: we returned our ballots as soon as we got them in the mail and then we went online a week later to confirm that they had been signature verified and sent to tabulation.  

IB.  Felt Tip Pens         

The censure also criticizes me for using felt tip pens at voting locations.

As mentioned, Election Day operations are neither my statutory, nor delegated, responsibility.  I nonetheless spent many, many hours recruiting Election Day poll workers, answering questions regarding Election Day operations, and visiting voting locations to check on operations and assist where needed.  I visited approximately 35 of the 210 voting locations.  I also tried to keep election-watchers informed as much as possible on the progression of the day’s events.

Maricopa County has used felt tipped pens at the polls for over 30 years.  I confirmed this with former Recorder Helen Purcell before writing.  Election Day has long been the only day in which Maricopa County^[14] voters can feed their ballots directly into a mini-tabulator at the voting location.  For this reason, on Election Day, we need the ink to dry quickly.  In our testing before the election and subsequent testing after the election, we found that our felt tip pens dry much faster than ballpoint and other pen types.  If the ink does not dry quickly, it can leave a residue on the mini-tabulator that, if accumulated in sufficient quantity, makes the mini-tabulator inoperable.  Voters who vote at home or at a voting location any day before Election Day can use any type of blue or black pen because those ballots are placed inside an envelope and sent to central tabulation and only tabulated after they have dried for many hours.

In the March 2020 Presidential Preference Election, the August 2020 Primary, and November 2020 General Election, Maricopa County used Sharpies on Election Day at the recommendation of the mini-tabulator’s manufacturer.  The Sharpies did indeed dry quickly and worked accurately.^[15]  But the heavy ink of the Sharpies bled through the ballot.  For tabulation purposes, this didn’t matter – ovals on the reverse side of the ballot are offset from ovals on the front side of the ballot.  But it did cause some voters to worry about the process.

For this reason, for the 2022 cycle, Maricopa County increased ballot paper thickness (from 80 pound paper to 100 pound paper) and, after much testing of different pens, selected the particular felt tipped pen offered during the August 2022 Primary because it both dried quickly so as to not cause residue in the mini-tabulators and had less bleed through than the manufacturer-recommended Sharpie.

Of the approximately 106,000 ballots fed into the mini-tabulators on Election Day, fewer than 600 were unable to be read by the mini-tabulators and had to be brought back to the central election facility to be tabulated.  That number represents approximately half a percent of ballots cast on Election Day – a historically low number for the County.  

IB.  How the Election Actually Went        

It is fitting to be writing this report about my first statewide primary.  It was actually the August 2018 Primary – the first statewide election of my predecessor – that piqued my interest in the office of the Recorder.  During that 2018 election, sixty-two voting locations failed to open on time,^[16] some voters were turned away from voting locations,^[17] other voters stood in long lines throughout the day and up to two hours at the end of the day,^[18] voting locations were understaffed,^[19] and, as mentioned above, Election Night tabulation did not end until 2:40 AM.  My predecessor even went so far as to ask for the extraordinary remedy of extending the hours of voting – something that had not been done in over 100 years.^[20]

Elvia Diaz of The Arizona Republic wrote, “Keeping Maricopa County polls open an extra hour is no fix for widespread election glitches.  This one is on Adrian Fontes.”^[21]  Laurie Roberts titled her piece, “Maricopa County delivers one hot mess of an election (again, that is).”^[22]  And Astrid Galvan of The Associated Press wrote, “Delays in opening polling locations disrupts Arizona primary.”^[23]  There were many, many more similarly titled stories.

That August election prompted the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to reclaim its statutory authority in elections and also launch two audits (yes, the Board has consistently believed in audits) – one internal^[24] and one by the professional Phoenix auditing firm Berry Dunn.^[25]  The auditor who led the internal audit is now co-director of the County’s Elections Department.

The framework by which The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Capitol Times, and The Associated Press criticized the August 2018 Primary are the standards by which elections operations should be assessed.  Judged by those standards, our friends and colleagues in Pinal County unfortunately failed in their recent primary – races were left off the ballot and some voters were turned away because the County ran out of ballots on Election Day.  

But judged by those standards, Maricopa County succeeded in August 2022.  Consider the following:

• More voters participated (866,924) than ever before in a Maricopa County primary
  
• We mailed out 1.4 million mail ballots on time and accurately printed  
  
• We accurately designed over 19,000 ballot styles to reflect all the different parties and overlapping jurisdictions
  
• We created more accurate voting lists after committing thousands of man-hours to voter list hygiene.  That resulted in the reduction of the active voter registration list by 120,000 registrants, despite being the fastest growing county in the United States.
  
• County voters had more voting options than ever before with 210 vote-anywhere locations on Election Day, in addition to robust in-person early voting locations, mail voting, and ballot drop off locations
  
• Voting locations opened on time and stayed open throughout the 27-day voting period

• Voting lines were non-existent for all of early voting and for most of Election Day until the very end of Election Day at a handful of locations (Surprise and Anthem)

• More people than ever before tracked their ballot using our text message service (text “JOIN” to 628-683) or BeBallotReady.Vote
  
• We had more political party observers than ever before for all stages of the voting process (early voting, Election Day voting, signature verification, ballot processing, ballot tabulation)
  
• We had a massive amount of communication with leadership of the three recognized county parties (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian)
  
• We responded to e-mailed voter inquiries in under 30 minutes, and our average wait time for our call center on Election Day was under eight minutes
  
• We launched a new website for the first time in over 20 years to allow voters to more easily access accurate information
  
• We tabulated more ballots and at a faster speed than previously (see previous section)
  
• We implemented more ballot-security measures (additional chain of custody documentation, more signature verification audits, etc.)

• We worked more closely with the media than ever before to better inform voters

• We accurately tabulated the ballots, as verified by the political party hand count audit, the pre-election logic and accuracy test, and the post-election logic and accuracy test

These successes are reflected in the surveys we sent to voters.  Of the 43,379 voters who responded to our e-mailed election survey:

• 70.02% said they had an “excellent” voting experience,
• 17.91% said they had a “very good” voting experience,
• 9.27% said they had a “satisfactory” voting experience,
• 2.80% said they had a “bad” voting experience.

When asked specifically about early voting, 30,201 surveyed voters responded as follows:

• 80.10% said they had an “excellent” voting experience,
• 13.02% said they had a “very good” voting experience,
• 5.74% said they had a “satisfactory” voting experience,
• 1.13% said they had a “bad” voting experience.

When asked about waiting in line for in-person voting, 5,787 surveyed voters responded as follows:

• 68.52% said they waited 0 minutes,
• 27.44% said they waited 1-15 minutes,
• 2.59% said they waited 16-30 minutes,
• 1.45% said they waited over 30 minutes.

Regarding the overall in-person voting experience, 5,745 surveyed voters responded as follows:

• 51.71% said they had an “excellent” voting experience,
• 22.73% said they had a “very good” voting experience,
• 17.74% said they had a “satisfactory” voting experience,
• 7.82% said they had a “bad” voting experience.

These are numbers I would have happily taken in the private for-profit sector; they are numbers I am proud of in this role, and they are testament to our performance in the August 2022 Primary.  But we won’t rest on our laurels; we will continue to improve.

2. My actual performance

My aspiration for this office is simple: leave the Recorder’s Office a better place.

Regardless of whether you thought the Recorder’s Office was terrible or wonderful on January 1, 2021, I hope you think that it has improved by December 31, 2024, and I hope you have more confidence in the process.  

As shown above, the August 2022 Primary Election represented a material improvement over the August 2018 Primary and an improvement over the August 2020 Primary.

But it is just one of many improvements we have made in the last year and a half.  Many of our improvements are things that I addressed on the campaign trail and might be of interest to the Executive Guidance Committee:

• Strengthening Personnel (recruited and retained many talented employees including new division directors for recording, voter registration, and technology).

• Reopening the Office (after being closed for over a year for COVID)

• Voter Registration Database Improvements (system redesign for improved accuracy, over 200,000 new registrations, but a decrease in total registrants by approximately 120,000 since November 2020 as a result of list maintenance effort in accordance with state and federal law)
  
• Expansion of Voter Communications (redesign of Elections.Maricopa.Gov website, partnership with USPS for informed delivery, quarterly reports, monthly statistics releases, newsletters, JustTheFacts.Vote, expanded election facility tours, faster and more-thorough customer responses on e-mail inquiries, increased presence on social media platforms, improved call center response, informational videos)

• Chain of Custody Enhancement (increased documentation at all stages)

• Signature Verification Improvements (enhanced training, added audit queues, text-2-cure)
  
• Rebuild of Remote Kiosk Recording System

• Enhanced Security of Physical and Digital Assets
  
• Legal Compliance (no injunctive relief actions from the Arizona Attorney General to prevent us from exceeding our statutory authority; no rebukes from the Arizona Supreme Court, etc.)

• Smooth Elections (May 2022 Litchfield Park, March 2022 Tempe Election, November 2021 Jurisdictional Election with 1.4 million eligible voters, May 2021 Cave Creek Election, March 2021 Goodyear Election)

• New Countywide Voter Registration Cards (after decennial redistricting)

• Dramatic Improvement in the Speed and Breadth of Public Record Request Fulfillment (despite a sextupling of annual requests)

We completed this non-exhaustive list of improvements despite facing pressures, challenges, and obligations never before placed on this office.

I am proud of this team.

If you ask any national gathering of election officials about Maricopa County, you will learn that Maricopa County and its leadership are highly-respected.

If you ask anyone who parks in the main county garage about my performance, they will tell you I am always at the office trying to make it better.^[26]

I hope you can take some solace in that.

3. The Cyber Ninjas

The resolution also censures me for my “general disregard” for the review of the November 2020 General Election (just two contests – President and U.S. Senate) done by the Cyber Ninjas at the behest of Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann.  By no means did I disregard the Cyber Ninjas.  Quite the opposite.  I oversaw the thousands of staff hours that went into delivering electronic and physical materials to the Cyber Ninjas, reviewing the Cyber Ninjas’ allegations, and, ultimately, producing a 93-page response to the Cyber Ninjas.^[27] 

In fact, I couldn’t “disregard” the Cyber Ninjas.  I received my first of multiple death threats when the Cyber Ninjas alleged that we deleted electronic files relating to the November 2020 General Election – files the Ninjas later acknowledged to have,^[28] files that Special Master John Shadegg’s report confirmed weren’t deleted,^[29] and files we can still produce today.  One of those death threats recently resulted in the arrest of a man from Missouri who called my personal cell phone.^[30]  Others are being investigated.  With the exception of Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett, nobody from the Cyber Ninjas or the Arizona Senate ever apologized or condemned the utterly predictable result of such a reckless allegation.

I supported an audit of the November 2020 General Election.  So too did the Board of Supervisors, just as they did following the August 2018 Primary Election (see above).  Professional audits play an important role in election administration.  We also thought that additional^[31] audits of the November 2020 General Election might stem the rising tide of theories about Dominion Voting Systems.^[32]  For that reason, the Board of Supervisors enlisted, with my input and assistance, two long-standing professional elections-technology companies with excellent reputations in the industry to run two separate audits to do everything needed to assess if the County’s tabulation equipment had been manipulated, or had been connected to the internet, or was not performing as designed.  The assessments took four weeks.  

Those two audits,^[33] along with all later professional audits like the ones done by Special Master Shadegg^[34] and PacketWatch,^[35] identified no deleted files, no internet connectivity, and no problems with the tabulation equipment.

I did not, and will never, support “audits” done by reckless amateurs with no prior experience in election administration who used unsubstantiated methods linked to conspiracy theories in an effort to support President Trump’s stolen election theories.  And for that reason, I did not support the Cyber Ninjas.

Even former Cyber Ninjas enthusiasts are now embarrassed by the effort.  The Cyber Ninjas have gone bankrupt.^[36]  The CEO, Doug Logan, and his wife are in contempt of court and owe over $5 million in legal fines.^[37]  Logan is at odds with his attorney.^[38]  And the Cyber Ninjas have not produced public records that were requested a year ago – despite multiple court orders commanding their production.  Logan is also under criminal investigation for allegedly unlawfully accessing Michigan voting equipment.^[39]  Cyber Ninjas-subcontractor Shiva Ayyadurai (“Dr. Shiva”) slammed Logan as being an incompetent “self-serving grifter.”^[40]

And for a total societal cost of at least $15 million (and counting), all the Cyber Ninjas produced was an inane document of “questions” and “concerns” that simply punted any real work to the Arizona Attorney General.  The absurdity of conducting a six month review only to say “here Attorney General, you do it,” is truly remarkable.  As for the Attorney General, that Office’s review of the Cyber Ninjas has so far led to one possible instance of individual voter fraud (“After spending hundreds of hours reviewing these allegations, our investigators were able to determine that only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of election.”)^[41] 

The Cyber Ninjas will continue to cost Arizona taxpayers many, many dollars as legal disputes (that do not involve the County) continue.  But the embarrassment to Arizona for what has to be one of the dumbest endeavors in state history will long outlast the legal fees.

4. The 2020 Election

I did not administer the 2020 Election.  I was simply a candidate on the ballot.  In fact, I was one of only two Republican candidates in all of Maricopa County to unseat a Democratic incumbent.  And I believe I am the only Republican in the Twenty-First Century to unseat an incumbent Democrat in Arizona in a race with over 1 million voters.  The Arizona Republican Party immediately celebrated and took credit for my victory at the exact time it was absolving itself of all blame for the losses of President Trump and Senator McSally.^[42]   

I have previously written why I am certain that the Maricopa County 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump (or anyone else, including my Democratic predecessor and opponent).^[43]  And the County has spent thousands of hours debunking various wild-eyed allegations about the 2020 election (“bamboo fibers!” “Korean planes,” “Italian satellites,” “fractional voting,” “the routers!” “phantom voters,” etc.).  In the 22 months that have elapsed since the November 2020 election, authorities have identified fewer than 200 potential election fraud cases^[44] (out of over 3.42 million votes in Arizona – and the fraud cases haven’t been all for Democrats), and only one election administrator in the entire United States has been criminally indicted: Tina Peters, a Mesa, Colorado county clerk was charged with identity theft and criminal impersonation in an effort to assist My Pillow-magnate Mike Lindell prove his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.^[45]  “Perp-walks” indeed.  

Every single court in the United States that has heard a stolen election theory has rejected it.  Yes, that includes many courts that had evidentiary hearings.^[46]  Continued insistence that the election was stolen would imply that federal judges, state judges, federal law enforcement, and state law enforcement colluded together along with the bipartisan election officials from over 3,000 election jurisdictions.   And nobody has come clean.  Such a theory would make even the Pizzagate progenitors blush with embarrassment.

But this is not the place to rehash the absurdity of the stolen elections theories.

If my refusal to embrace the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump is sufficient grounds for censure, then so be it.  But by that same token, approximately one-third of registered Republicans deserve to be censured by this body,^[47] including:

• Ivanka Trump,^[48] 
• United States Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,^[49]
• United States House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy,^[50]
• Former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney,^[51] 
• Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr,^[52] 
• Former Trump Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen,^[53] 
• Former Trump Acting Attorney General Richard Donoghue,^[54] 
• Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton,^[55] 
• Former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway,^[56] 
• Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien,^[57] 
• Former Trump director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency Chris Krebs,^[58] 
• Former Trump campaign data expert Matt Oczkowski,^[59] 
• Former Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon,^[60]
• Former Trump Associate White House Counsel James Schultz,^[61]
• Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,^[62]
• Arizona Governor Doug Ducey,^[63] 
• Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer,^[64] 
• Former Republican Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell,^[65] 
• Former Solicitor General (under George W. Bush) Ted Olson,^[66]
• Benjamin Ginsberg, attorney for George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore election litigation,^[67]
• All current and past Republican elections directors in the state,
• And many, many other prominent Republicans.

Additionally, it is bizarre to make my one “transgression” sufficient for censure when belief in the stolen election conspiracy is not in the Party’s platform.^[68]  And even if it were, the Party has generally looked past one-off deviations from Party orthodoxy, such as in 2019, when several Arizona Republicans, including State Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward, promoted a sales tax increase^[69] – something that I did not support.

The Party has also ordinarily been forgiving of “transgressions” better categorized as moral failings. Our current slate of candidates for state legislature includes an individual convicted of domestic violence,^[70] as well as an individual who – while married and serving as a pastor – exchanged nude and intimate messages with a junior legislative staffer.^[71]  And there are many, many more transgressions that can be added to that list without doing any real research.  None of these people have been censured.

5. Those Who Voted “No”

To the 11 people who opposed the resolution: thank you.  I am sure that voting “no” took courage, and I know that some of you have suffered online harassment as a result of your vote.  I’m sorry that you too have now faced the ugly hate that is so readily embraced by some in our Party.  

I suspect that many of you “no” voters are people who I’ve interacted with as workers in, or Party observers of, the election process – that is, people who understand the election process.  I look forward to our continued partnership and friendship.

Thank you.

Stephen Richer

Maricopa County Recorder

September 19, 2022