Arizona AG says he found election fraud, gives no details yet

PHOENIX —Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Wednesday his office has uncovered “instances of election fraud by individuals” in 2020.

But he is providing no details. And he finds no evidence the election results were rigged or that Donald Trump won the popular vote.

Instead, Brnovich is using what he calls his 12-page “interim report’’ of his election review to propose changes to state laws and election procedures to prevent problems he says he has found.

Among the recommendations are:

Instituting new procedures to verify the people using mail-in ballots are 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 counties being allowed to accept outside funds to help administer elections. But that is now a moot issue as state lawmakers already enacted a prohibition against that occurring in the future.

The report comes as Brnovich, a candidate for U.S. Senate, has been criticized by some fellow Republicans who accused him of not adequately investigating allegations, all unsubstantiated, that the election results were tainted, and claims that Trump, not Joe Biden, actually won the popular vote in Arizona. Some of Brnovich’s foes in the primary election have accused him of dragging his feet.

Even Trump called him out by name at a January rally, saying he was “anxiously waiting’’ for him to do his job.

Brnovich is using Wednesday’s report to defend not only the speed of the inquiry, which now has stretched into six months, but his record in “vigorously defending Arizona’s election integrity laws.’’

He said he’s not just relying on the findings of the audit ordered by Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott. The audit included a hand count that determined Biden not only won the popular vote in Maricopa County, but by a larger margin that the official election results. It made no finding of fraud but did claim to find irregularities.

Brnovich 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 in what he can disclose.

But much of what has already come to light falls into the area of individual actions and not wholesale fraud, such as the charges Brnovich’s office 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.

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“We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification,’’ he wrote. Those start, he said, with procedures that are supposed to match the signatures on ballot envelopes with those already on file.

He said that 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 Maricopa County election officials in 2020, faced with an overwhelming number of early ballots, were less than diligent in reviewing the signatures. He pointed to a sharp decline in the number of ballots rejected due to mismatches.

Brnovich’s proposed 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 he makes no suggestion of how much time would be appropriate.

In a joint statement, Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates 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,’’ said Gates and Richer, who are both Republicans. “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.

The attorney general 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 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 set stronger penalties for those who refuse to comply with a legislative subpoena or a demand for information from 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.

The Senate earlier this month 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.