PHOENIX — Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Wednesday that his office has uncovered evidence of election fraud.
But he is providing no details.
Nor does the attorney general find any evidence that the 2020 election results were rigged or that Donald Trump actually won the popular vote.
Instead, Brnovich is using what he calls his 12-page “interim report” of his review of the 2020 election to propose changes to state laws and election procedures to prevent what he said were the kind of problems that he found occurred last time.
Among the recommendations are:
-Instituting new procedures verify that the people using mail-in ballots are, in fact, who they are;
-Requiring the Auditor General's Office, an arm of the legislature, to review future elections;
-Spelling out in law the procedures for transporting ballots from drop boxes;
-Increasing the penalties for election crimes;
-Providing more protection for whistleblowers.
Brnovich also took a slap at allowing counties to accept outside funds to help administer elections. But that is now a moot issue as state lawmakers already have enacted a prohibition against that occurring in the future.
The report comes as Brnovich, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has been the target of criticism of some in the GOP who have accused him of not adequately investigating allegations that the results of the election were tainted by cheating and other problems — and that Donald Trump really won the popular vote in Arizona. Some of his primary foes have accused him of dragging his feet.
Even Trump called out Brnovich by name at a January rally, saying he “anxiously waiting” for him to do his job.
But Brnovich also is using the report to defend not only speed of the inquiry, which now has stretched into six months, but his record in “vigorously defending Arizona's election integrity laws.”
Brnovich said he’s not just relying on the findings of the audit ordered by Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott. That included a hand count which determined that Joe Biden not only won the popular vote in Maricopa County but did so by an even larger margin than the official results. There also was no finding of fraud.
He said his agency's Election Integrity Unit has been doing its own work — and producing results.
“The EIU’s review has uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes,” he wrote. But he said the review is ongoing and he is limited to what he can disclose.
But much of what has already come to light falls into the area of individual actions and not wholesale fraud, like the charges brought against a Cochise County woman who pleaded guilty to voting the absentee ballot sent to her deceased mother.
Criminal charges or not, Brnovich said there are bigger problems.
“We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification,” he wrote. And it starts, Brnovich said, with what is supposed to be procedures to match the signatures on ballot envelopes with those already on file.
That, he said, is not taking place — at least not in a way to ensure compliance.
For example, he said that on Nov. 4, 2020, the Maricopa County Recorder verified 206,648 signatures on early ballot envelopes, at a rate he computed to be 4.6 seconds per signature.
“There are simply too many early ballots that must be verified in too limited a period of time, thus leaving the system vulnerable to error, fraud and oversight,” Brnovich said.
He said the evidence suggests that election officials in 2020, faced with an overwhelming number of early ballots, has been less than diligent in reviewing the signatures, pointing to a sharp decline in the number of ballots rejected due to mismatches.
His answer: More time to review the signatures, complete with spelling out the minimum amount of time that should be spent reviewing each one, as well as an objection and appeal process. But Brnovich makes no suggestion of how much time would be appropriate.
But in a joint statement, Bill Gates, who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and County Recorder Stephen Richer said there's a basic flaw in Brnovich’s premise. They said they gave the attorney general a list of more than 40 staff members who were involved in signature verification.
“Yet the calculations in the AG’s letter is based on one staff member working signature verification alone,” they said. “The bottom line: The AG has not identified even a single instance where a ballot was accepted with a non-matching signature, or signature that was later cured” by contacting the voter to explain any discrepancies.
Brnovich also is backing a measure already placed on the 2022 ballot by Republican lawmakers to require those casting early ballots to provide additional forms of identification like a driver’s license number and date of birth.
And he wants the laws to spell out that the election observers from each party have the time and opportunity to “meaningfully observe the signature verification process in real time and to raise objections if officials are not doing their jobs to actually and accurately verify signatures.”
Brnovich said he also found violations of election procedures by Maricopa County workers who were picking up ballots from drop boxes.
“This included missing audit signatures, missing ballot count fields, missing Election Department receiver signatures, missing courier signatures and missing documentation of security seals and of the two required seal numbers,” he said. “In other words, it is possible that somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 ballots were transported without a proper chain of custody.”
Here, too, Gates and Richer found the attorney general’s report wanting.
“We can account for every ballot that was delivered to the Elections Department, whether it was returned in a drop box, voted in person early, mailed back to us, or voted on Election Day,” they said.
“Maricopa County election workers followed the laws as they were written in 2020,” they wrote. “If the AG wants different laws, he’s welcome to advocate for them.''
Brnovich also wants specific penalties for anyone who tampers with or damages a drop box in a way that could alter the ballots. And he wants lawmakers to have stronger penalties for those who refuse to comply with a legislative subpoena or a demand for information by his office.
“The legislature should also consider increasing the penalties for election-related crimes and adding protections for whistleblowers,” he wrote.
While Brnovich also is calling for periodic audits of future elections, that may prove a non-starter at the legislature.
Earlier this month, the Senate killed a proposal to allocate nearly $4 million a year for the Auditor General’s Office to hire a staff of more than two dozen people to conduct an audit of virtually all elements of the elections in Maricopa and Pima Counties as well as two smaller counties that would be randomly selected. Two Republicans joined the 14 Democrats in killing it.
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