We go ahead and do that since we’re on the subject of chain of custody and storage well one of the things that we subpoenaed that has not been provided is the chain of custody that should have been created when ballots were received by maricopa county and while they were going through the
Process of the election if you go to uh chapter 8 i think it’s v 5 roman numeral 5 subsection e storage and security of ballots it reads that official ballots must be inventoried upon receipt and prior to dis distribution to voting locations uh item three well item two is they must be accessed
By election staff only to the extent necessary to perform their authorized task a key one though is third they must be stored in locked secured location that prevents unauthorized access as we have done and in that number three it says it must be documented with a written log or with electronic keypad access
That indicates the date time and identity of the person accessing the ballots fourth must be witnessed by two or more election staff members of different political parties if possible when being moved or transferred which includes an inventory of the ballots before and after the move or transfer and then the last item is
Very important as well since we use ballot-on-demand printers in many of the counties around arizona that the officer in charge of elections shall also implement reasonable security procedures for auditing and accountability of blank ballot stock for use with on-demand printers so part of what we have been trying to get in addition to
The ballots themselves is a chain of custody from the very beginning of the process when the county uh took ballot stock and or pre-printed ballots from their vendors and a chain of custody ever since then which is still forthcoming that was on the original subpoena and we have not received it
Madam president just if i may uh mr bennett what’s been the response when you’ve asked for that when you what what did they what did what what did the county tell you uh they’ve provided us what they’re going to provide us with okay so they’re are you saying they’re
Refusing to give us that information at this point um they every time i’ve tried to interact with the folks at the elections department i’ve been told that i need to deal with the county attorney’s office and most of that time i’ve received kind of the answer that
We gave you everything we’re going to give you okay i’m trying not to be flippant but that’s we appreciate that can you um as the past secretary of state i know you’re familiar with the handling of ballots um i know that you know a couple months ago senator peterson and i
Had our first update briefing and there were some things mentioned about bags that are sealed at some point and apparently unsealed at some point there were boxes that you opened and there were broken seals at the bottom could you explain to the best of your ability how are ballots supposed to be handled
And treated from when they’re at the voting centers or at the polling stations and and how when you receive those ballots and you open those boxes what did you find could you walk us through what we should be looking for well in in many of the boxes we found pretty much a
Very little existence of any ballot batch sheets that would describe how many ballots should be found in their batches maricopa county processed the election in 2341 excuse me 10 341 batches most of their batches were right around 200 but they had 20-some batches that were one ballot
Per batch and they had other batches of ballots mostly from the voting centers that were around a thousand in a batch some of the boxes you would see a batch number on the outside of the box identifying it as election day so it came from a polling location and
If there was just one number then you would infer from that that there’s only one batch in there and it was a large batch from a voting location as as ballots are processed at the voting locations i think maricopa had 171 i believe voting centers when those are processed they’re bagged
And locked in sealed bags and sent down to the central county location they are opened again there and when they are put in the boxes we found some of the cut seals and things like that so the fact that we found some cut seals was probably
Um it was easier to throw them in the bottom of the box than throw them in the trash can somewhere and it doesn’t speak to anything violative of state law or election procedures manual but that apparently is the way that some of the people disposed of the of the seals it came
From the bags at the voting centers the ballots that are handled at the central count which is the vast majority of the ballots in maricopa county’s situation of the 2.1 million or actually 2 million 89 563 ballots that were processed approximately 1.9 million were processed through the mail and therefore at central count
Locations and about 168 000 ballots were processed at the other at the 171 polling locations when when those ballots are put in those boxes um in some cases we found pink sheets we and they maricopa county called in that would say below this pink sheet there should be 200 ballots but two were
Taken to duplication and so there should be 198. as was reported earlier and i think doug may speak to it again there were some discrepancies or quite a few discrepancies found but it was later discovered that the county has blue sheets that are used at a different point in the process to identify
A time in their process where ballots are again sent to duplication and so the blue sheets explain that the pink sheets would go from 200 to -2 to 198 a blue sheet might get you from 198 to we sent in another six or seven to duplication so that
The number would change again but madam president mr mr bennett to that point what uh were you given the blue sheets have we been given the blue sheets we were not given the blue sheets by maricopa county but we were able to get the blue sheets through one of the assistant liaisons
Organizations audit usa out of tucson who requested by public records request the blue sheets and then provided those uh to the audit and i think they’ve been helpful uh doug may speak to that a little further as to uh explaining some of the discrepancies that are not entirely explained by the
Pink sheets that we sometimes found in the box sometimes we would open a box and all the pink sheets would be stuffed down the side vertically and you really at that point had no idea of where you would insert those pink sheets in between batches of ballots to
Account for the sum of the ballots in the box i think a lot of this may stem from standard procedure where we’ve not done many audits and most counties have put things in boxes knowing that they’re going to be sealed up put on pallets shrink-wrapped and put in
A warehouse for 22 months and then destroyed and usually nothing nothing or nobody’s ever been looked at or looking at them in this case i think we have discovered that we could probably use a little beefing up in our election procedures manual and or state statutes as to how things are documented and
Stored in an organized consistent fashion in boxes in case other audits are done in the future but there’s no i can find no election procedures manual manual directives or state law that says you have to put them in the boxes in this specific way but that may be something that we need
To look at anything else that you want to add at this point um well the only other thing coming back with you if you do nearly yeah the only other thing i guess that i was personally involved in on a couple of not the only other thing but another thing that i was
Called to one of the counting tables is when we started opening duplicate ballots um there was almost one whole palette of ballots that were called original slash damage ballot sent to duplication and then there was quite a few boxes mostly on one pallet but scattered amongst three or four other pallets
Where the duplicates were supposedly there for the duplicates that were sent to duplication so if a ballot gets damaged and has to be sent to duplication there is a very specific process in the election procedures manual chapter 10 roman numeral 2 section 3 procedures for duplicating the ballot
This stems precisely from ars 16 621a which says that they are to record an identical serial number on both the original and duplicate ballot including spoiled duplicates this ties the ballots to together and creates a paper trail as required by the statute ars 16 621a we found
I would have to say thousands of duplicate ballots where those serial numbers are not on them and so it has created great difficulty to try to match up a duplicated ballot to its duplicate um and on thousands of the ones that a serial number was put on they were put on by a
I guess you would call it um like a dot matrix printer very very light and unfortunately they ended up being printed on the ballot on the top usually top right part of the ballot where the black square alignment marks are on the ballot and so if a very light gray number
