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A Pennsylvania-based company claims documents provided by Maricopa County appear to show more than 19,000 mailed-in ballots were unlawfully accepted and counted for the 2020 General Election despite being received after the state’s statutory deadline.
About 1.9 million Maricopa County voters returned their cast ballots prior to Nov. 3, 2020 through the USPS or an official county drop box. Arizona law required all those ballots – including those through the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) – to be received by the county recorder’s office prior to 7 p.m. on Nov. 3 in order to be “counted and valid” regardless of postmark.
But Verity Vote’s report, issued May 25, contends U.S. Postal Service delivery receipts obtained through a public records request show about 20,500 ballots were received by Maricopa County on Nov. 4, 5, and 6 with no indication that all were rejected for lateness in the final tabulation. The 2020 presidential race was decided in Arizona by only 10,457 votes.
“Maricopa County reported that they rejected only 934 ballots due to lateness,” the Verity Vote report states. “This leaves over 19K received ballots that show no evidence of rejection. According to Arizona law, these ballots should have been rejected.”
Verity Vote’s website describes the for-profit company as specializing in election integrity research and investigations. It’s May 25 report explains that the USPS did not actually deliver the mailed-in ballots to the county.
Instead, a Maricopa County Election Department employee drove from the county’s Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) to the USPS facility during the 27-election cycle to pick up ballot packets which were then transported to a private company, Runbeck Election Services (RES), for an incoming scan.
At RES, the incoming ballots packets were recorded on an MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery Form which includes fields for date and time of delivery, number of trays and estimated pieces, the signature of the County driver, RES recipient, and a security witness.
The report also states the public records request for Maricopa County’s Inbound Receipt of Delivery forms was submitted Oct. 5, 2021. County official made most of the documents available for inspection a few weeks later, including ones which show 1,000 and 1,500 ballot packets received from USPS on Nov. 5 and 6, respectively.
But there was no MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery provided for Nov. 4, 2020, the day after Election Day. The company says it made “numerous attempts” to obtain the missing Nov. 4 Receipt of Delivery forms from Maricopa County, even making a new public records request last month.
It was not until May 19 that the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office cleared Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to release the document showing an estimated 18,000 pieces picked up at a USPS facility on Nov. 4, the day after the voting ended in Arizona.
Verity Vote says the release of the Nov. 4 document after nearly seven months came with a big caveat.
“This document does not represent the complete universe of MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery forms from November 4, 2020,” Richer wrote. “We cannot be certain, but we believe that the remainder of these forms were transferred to the Treasurer’s Office to be stored and sealed with the ballots pursuant to ARS 16-624.”
A court order would be necessary for Treasurer John M. Allen to unseal the election records in a locked vault. Yet Richer’s letter fails to explain why he nor the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office did not seek such an order to fully process the records request.
According to Verity Vote, if Maricopa County did in fact have additional Inbound Receipt of Delivery forms for Nov. 4, 2020, then the number of USPS late mail ballots “could be much higher” than the 20,500 shown on the records which have been released.
It is unclear from the recent Verity Vote report whether all of the ballot packets accounted for on the Inbound forms were in fact completed ballots which voters mailed back through the USPS or if some of the counted items included the original early ballot packets being returned to Maricopa County as non-deliverable.
Richer was not Maricopa County Recorder in 2020; he defeated then-Recorder Adrian Fontes during the General Election. However, Richer has continually insisted there were no major problems with how Fontes or the county’s co-election directors conducted the election.
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