by Steven Richards and John Solomon
"Alarming concerns": A congressional memo was one piece of evidence the FBI used for a subpoena to review Maricopa County, Arizona election records in recent days. The issue extends to other states.
Before the FBI subpoenaed election records involving Arizona's largest county this month, congressional staffers dispatched to monitor Maricopa County’s vote-counting process in 2024 reported "alarming" concerns that completed mail-in ballots were stored in the same room as blanks and were sorted by a third-party printing company that had no government officials or partisan observers on site, according to a copy of the observer's report obtained by Just the News.
The concerns about one of Maricopa's third-party run centers were detailed in a memo written during the 2024 presidential election in which Trump won, including in Arizona. That memo memorialized the observations of a Republican staff member sent by the House Administration Committee with a Democratic colleague to monitor election procedures in the county.
The memo, which was reviewed by Just the News, is one of the pieces of evidence that the FBI recently reviewed before it sent a recent subpoena for Maricopa County voting records from the state Senate.
Terabytes of data
The FBI is currently receiving terabytes of data from that subpoena to the state Senate as part of its expanding probe into election irregularities across the country, Just the News reported Sunday. The subpoena followed a raid on a Fulton County, Georgia election center last month during which federal agents seized ballots from the 2020 election.
In the memo, a Republican staffer described in detail his visit to a third-party contractor, Runbeck Election Services, which was hired by Maricopa County to sort mail-in ballots for signature verification in preparation for counting at the county’s main election site.
It was at that third-party site, miles away from the main election facility, that the House staffers observed concerning storage practices and were informed that no state workers were present, despite the handling of completed mail-in ballots.
The Republican staffer was joined by his Democratic counterpart during the visit, who shared similar concerns about what they observed at the facility, according to the memo delivered to the House Administration Committee–the legislative panel responsible for overseeing federal elections.
Rep. Abe Hamadeh, a Republican from Arizona, asked the Justice Department last summer to investigate claims that the Runbeck facility in Maricopa breached protocols during the 2024 general election. The congressman shared similar concerns with the Justice Department, such as the mixing of blank ballots with mail-in ballots and whether proper security procedures were followed.
Blank ballots appeared to be ripped open and ballots removed
Neither Maricopa County nor Runbeck responded to requests Monday for comment from Just the News.
When the congressional monitors visited the Runbeck facility, they observed that mail-in ballot sorting was taking place in the same warehouse alongside shelves of unsecured blank ballots and other printing materials. The wrapping of some pallets of blank ballots appeared to be ripped open and ballots removed, the memo stated.
The Republican observer recounted how blank ballots and envelopes were left unattended in the same facility sorting incoming mail-in ballots.
“It was alarming that the day after an election that ballots and envelopes would be printed, left unattended, with thousands of others similarly positioned,” the staffer wrote. “Stacked on the right were USPS sorting boxes, which were used to transport Maricopa mailed ballots from [the main Maricopa facility] to Runbeck.”
Additionally, Runbeck staff informed the congressional staffers that no state election officials or bipartisan observers were present at the third-party site while ballot sorting was ongoing. “I asked if any of them were government employees or law enforcement. They said no. I asked if any government employees were on site, they said no,” the staffer wrote.
Runbeck previously detailed plans to upgrade monitoring systems, including new cameras and a designated area for official election observers to watch the ballot sorting process.
Runbeck’s President and CEO Jeff Ellington told the AZ Central in 2024 the facility would have a room for observers with a live video feed into the warehouse.
"Two people out here is manageable," Ellington said, referring to the warehouse floor. "But if you start to get too many, with fork trucks and pallet jacks, somebody could get run over. So we're just going to try to keep people in a room where they can watch everything. If they want to come out and see something, there will be a process to bring them out here."
No official observers present
However, according to the congressional staffers, there were no official observers from the Maricopa elections office monitoring the process at the Runbeck facility on the day they visited during the 2024 election.
“In contradiction of statements made to local news and journalists, Runbeck did not have bipartisan teams running these machines. There was [sic] no election workers present, no observers, and no election integrity,” the Republican staffer alleged in the memo.
The Runbeck facility in Maricopa was also responsible for processing ballots for the election in neighboring Nevada. The staffer noted that Runbeck was responsible for processing mail-in ballots for both Arizona and Nevada at the same time, raising further concerns about commingling and was offered as an explanation for counting delays in Clark County, Nevada in that election.
“The employee explained that they were running Arizona’s ballots for Maricopa before they started to process Nevada again. (This may explain the delay in Nevada posting any new tabulated totals for Wednesday and Thursday, because the Nevada ballots were awaiting sorting/signature verification at the Runbeck facility.)” the staffer wrote.
In addition to Nevada, the Runbeck site reportedly stores ballots for several other Western states, including Colorado, California, and Utah. It is unclear based on the report whether Runbeck also sorts ballots on behalf of election officials in those states.
House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil recently hinted at the significance of the staff report in an interview with the Just the News, No Noise television show.
“We’re digging back through those reports that were submitted by our election observers that were deployed across the country,” Steil said. “This is where working hand in glove with other federal government agencies is so important.
“We have reports documenting instances that occurred in Arizona and across the country, and we are reviewing those in real time and working hand in glove with federal partners to make sure that the law was followed in every jurisdiction in the country,” he added.
Concerns about election counting in Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, stretch back more than a decade as the state moved to mostly mail-in ballots. In the old days, Democrats were the early complainants.
More than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures
More recently, Republicans like President Donald Trump, former gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake and now-U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh have raised concerns about the state’s ballot distribution and counting systems.
The Arizona Senate conducted a massive audit after the 2020 election affected by COVID-19 and concluded there were irregularities. One of the Senate’s most stunning findings was an estimate that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted without being reviewed, or "cured" in Maricopa County, more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing that had been acknowledged by the county.
The audit did little to resolve disputes, as Democrats and Maricopa County officials argue the concerns are overblown while Republicans say they fear there are still vulnerabilities. Those clashes continue into planning for the 2026 election.
Steven Richards and John Solomon
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/house-investigators-reported-commingled-ballots-third-party-facility
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