Although the public hasn’t forgotten the 2020 election for the suspicious circumstances surrounding former President Joe Biden’s victory, the 2024 election also deserves attention for some apparently unscrupulous practices by officials.
The focus of this latest inquiry is one that raised voters’ concerns six years ago — Maricopa County, Arizona.
Republicans and Democrats alike are concerned about a third-party facility’s questionable handling of ballots in the latest presidential election year.
Runbeck Election Services was hired by Maricopa County officials to help sort ballots in 2024, according to Just the News.
The news outlet reported the contents of a memo that “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 staffers listed a number of “alarming” concerns they noted at the Runbeck facility, which was miles away from the election office.
They said completed mail-in ballots were stored with blank ones. They were told that no other government officials or observers from either party were on-site.
They observed that ballot sorting was done alongside blank ballots and non-election materials. They also said they saw some pallets of blank ballots that appeared to have been ripped open and some of the ballots removed.
One staffer said, “It was alarming that the day after an election that ballots and envelopes would be printed, left unattended, with thousands of others similarly positioned.
“Stacked on the right were USPS sorting boxes, which were used to transport Maricopa mailed ballots from [the main Maricopa facility] to Runbeck.”
The staffer added, “I asked if any of [the workers present] them were government employees or law enforcement. They said no.
“I asked if any government employees were on site, they said no.”
The memo was cited by the FBI to obtain a subpoena to the Arizona state Senate “as part of its expanding probe into election irregularities across the country,” Just the News reported. The agency is tackling terabytes of data from that subpoena in its investigation.
Maricopa County is not alone. WAGA-TV reported the FBI raided Fulton County, Georgia, election offices in January, with the agency seizing 650 boxes of ballots from the 2020 election.
Court documents say the FBI is investigating “intentional acts” that led to possible discrepancies in the counting of over 500,000 ballots.
In Congress, Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy introduced the SAVE America Act in January, which would safeguard elections by requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
The issues surrounding Maricopa and Fulton counties are a different issue entirely.
We must not only ensure that American citizens are voting and no one else, but the greater task is ensuring that honest people who wish to have a fair count run election services.
It will not matter if every well-meaning person shows up to the polls with an ID if election officials — through malice or carelessness — do not do their jobs.
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