Shaw: Questionable claims of voting problems bear scrutiny

I am respectfully writing in response to Robert Blake’s letter complaining about his voting experience (“Blake: Primary voting process rife with errors,” Aug. 5, 2022, YourValley.net).

From the accounting of his experience it would appear that his polling place had inexperienced poll workers and/or was short staffed. I’m not going to question his story — but do have a few comments.

I have voted by mail since moving to Arizona in 2005 and always have received the correct ballot in my mailbox a month before every election — my individualized (bar coded) ballot is tracked from before it’s mailed out until it’s received back by the County Recorder and my signature is verified. I get text and email notifications at each step.

It sounds like Mr. Blake was possibly an Independent and requested a Republican Party ballot at the poll — hence the need to print it. While I don’t need to make such a party election myself, an Independent voter can make this election easily if they are on the early voting list — and again receive their desired ballot a month before the election (they do need to meet the time guidelines).

As to firing off a complaint to the Secretary of State’s Office, currently overseen by Katie Hobbs (Democrat), Mr. Blake incorrectly places blame with her office. In fact, our elections in Arizona are run by each county, so any complaints should have been directed to the office of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, the same place where one signs up for early voting and subscribes to the aforementioned text and email notification process. Ms. Hobbs office receives the certified results from each county.

Lastly, while admittedly frustrating, Mr. Blake’s experience seems to have been an isolated incident, unlike the widely publicized debacle in Pinal County. I have not read of any wide-scale problems in Maricopa County, outside of stolen pens and the conspiracy theory over pens that was duly addressed by our County Attorney on Election Day.

How this isolated incident translates to Mr. Blake’s distrust of the 2020 results is a mystery to this reader. If Mr. Blake would venture to mail-in voting that the majority of voters in Arizonans enjoy (and overwhelmingly employed in 2020 during the pandemic), I am confident that his experience would have been different. And as to his reference to the 2020 election results, those results were dissected and examined through the six unmerited lawsuits and the exhaustive and time-consuming Cyber Ninjas audit that has cost county taxpayers around $5 million.

Mr. Blake did not recount his voting experience from November 2020, so I can only assume that it went smoothly. AG Brnovich just refuted the dead voter conspiracy theory, and to date has only found 9 instances of voter fraud, completely ignoring the fake Arizona elector scheme that was hiding in plain sight, which attempted to hijack our duly elected electors for Joe Biden, as certified by Gov. Ducey, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and AG Brnovich himself.

I am just guessing that Mr. Blake has not watched any of the Jan. 6 Commission hearings. I have, and am mortified at how close the 2020 election came to being subverted, and the extent of criminality perpetrated by the fake Arizona electors, and collaboration in their plot by Lesko, Biggs and Gosar, all of which has gone unpunished to date.