Just the Facts

DID YOU KNOW: Maricopa County uses an air-gapped system in its tabulation room, meaning the ballot counting equipment is never connected to the internet and is completely separated from the Maricopa County network. There are no routers connected to the tabulation system and there never have been. See attached closed network diagram of the County’s Election Management System.  

Two certified Voting System Testing Laboratories tested the equipment in February 2021 and found no evidence of internet connectivity.  These tests determined the tabulators were not  transmitting information outside the closed air gapped system within the County tabulation center or while being delivered, returned, or used at a Vote Center.

On January 15, the County provided Windows event logs, precinct-based tabulator logs, Election Management System workstations, server logs and more in compliance with the Senate’s subpoena. The County also provide the Senate all of the Election Tabulation Equipment that was used in the November General Election.  Someone with knowledge of the equipment would be able to confirm through a review of those logs or through a visual inspection of the tabulators that the equipment was not connected to the internet and had no wifi devices installed.

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DID YOU KNOW:  Maricopa County performs a hand count audit after every election that includes a federal or state-wide contest.  The County chairman for each political party appoints representatives to select the ballots and to perform the hand count audit. In each of the three hand counts performed during 2020, the Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian appointees found a 100% match to the tabulation equipment results. For the November 2020 General Election, the hand count audit included a random and statistically significant sampling of both mail and Election Day ballots, verifying over 47,000 contests.

Arizona has a Vote Count Verification Committee established by state law made up of statisticians and elections experts that review and set the limits for variances in the hand count. If those variances are exceeded, state law requires more ballots be hand counted to ensure the accuracy of the results.  Maricopa County’s hand count audit results had no variances and matched the tabulated results.

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DID YOU KNOW: The Logic & Accuracy tests in Maricopa County were independently performed before and after every election in 2020.  Professional election staff from both the County Elections Department and the Arizona Secretary of State independently performed these tests in the presence of political party observers before and after the 2020 General Election.  The pre-test ensures the tabulation equipment counts the ballots accurately and the post-election test verifies no changes occurred on the equipment.

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DID YOU KNOW:  Sharpies do not invalidate ballots.  Leading up to the 2020 March Presidential Preference Election, the Elections Department did extensive testing on multiple different types of ink with our new ballot tabulation equipment. Sharpies were used at in-person voting locations in all five elections during 2020.  Sharpies are recommended by the manufacturer because they provide the fastest-drying ink.  The offset columns on ballots ensure that any bleed-through will not impact your vote.  For this reason, sharpies were provided to in-person voters on Election Day.  People who voted by mail could use sharpies, or other pens. 

The fact that offset columns were programmed correctly and that sharpies did not impact tabulation is further evidenced by the small amount of overvotes that were cast on Maricopa County ballots. There were a total of 5,002 overvotes on the presidential contest out of 2,089,563 total ballots cast. This small percentage (.2%) is fewer than in prior Maricopa County elections that had a presidential contest on the ballot. When reviewing Election Day ballots, there were 233 overvotes out of 167,878 ballots. This represent an even smaller percentage at (.1%) of the total Election Day Ballots.  

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DID YOU KNOW:  From a standard Lexmark, HP or Oki printer to a large scale printing press, the Elections Department ensures the same high level of security around ballot creation, printing, verification and counting no matter how a voter chooses to cast a ballot. Depending on the printer, some ballots are printed in color and others are printed in black and white. While there are no watermarks programmed on Maricopa County ballots or on the paper, about 9% of the printers used at Vote Centers during the 2020 General Election have a standard feature, which adds microscopic yellow dots to everything printed on that machine. Those dots do not impact tabulation.

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DID YOU KNOW:  This is known as a “federal-only” ballot. In the 2020 General Election, 8,114 voters cast that type of ballot, of those, 3,630 are military or overseas voters who have proven citizenship but are living outside of the U.S.

It’s important to know that voters are not required to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. In 2013, the Supreme Court decided that state law requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote is preempted by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 for federal elections.. While it is a felony to register to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, there are voters who do not provide proof of citizenship simply because the federal voter registration form doesn’t ask for that information. Arizona is the only state that requires documented proof of citizenship; other states only require the voter swear an oath to being a U.S. citizen.

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DID YOU KNOW:  Maricopa County has a secure, award-winning voter check-in system at all voting locations called the SiteBook, which prevents against the possibility of double voting. Developed in-house by Information Technology experts, it securely connects to the voter registration system using proprietary software and a virtual private network connection for enhanced security. It is not connected to the tabulation equipment at the voting locations.

When checking in at a voting location, the SiteBook does a real-time check of the voter database, ensuring the voter is eligible to vote in the election and that the voter has not yet cast a ballot. If a ballot has been issued but not returned, the SiteBook cancels the already issued ballot. If a ballot has been issued and returned for that voter, it notifies the voter of a returned ballot and will not issue the voter a new standard ballot. The ability to track in real time each ballot issued and received back by the Elections Department safeguards against double voting.

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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors authorized a forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment used in the 2020 elections. The February 2021 audit was the culmination of a year-long effort by Maricopa County to ensure the accuracy of the federally- and state-certified hardware and software used to count votes.

Two independent Voting System Testing Laboratories performed the multi-layered forensic audit of the tabulation equipment’s software and hardware: Pro V&V and SLI Compliance. Each company concluded, independently of each other, no modifications were found or installed, no malicious software was installed or running, and that the tabulation equipment is not connected to the internet.

In addition, Pro V&V checked that the tabulation equipment and software correctly captures, stores, consolidates, and reports the specific ballot selections, and absence of selections, for each ballot position. Using test ballots from the November General Election, Pro V&V examined the accuracy of more than 1.5 million ballot positions. The certified firm found no evidence of vote switching and concluded that the equipment tabulated and adjudicated ballots accurately.

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DID YOU KNOW: As a best practice, the Maricopa County Elections Department is always preparing for potential issues that could impact elections. Whether it be a power outage due to a storm, a supply chain issue with ballot paper, or a public health concern, we build back up plans to ensure elections run smoothly for our voters.  As part of our tabulation contract, we built in an emergency response plan to be able to overnight new tabulation equipment if needed. We initiated that plan after the court ruling in February.

As part of our contingency planning, the Maricopa County Elections Department is using new tabulation equipment to count the ballots for local elections in throughout 2021.  This plan ensured statutorily mandated local elections could still be administered and ballots would still be counted while the County developed a plan to replace tabulation equipment that was subpoenaed by the state Senate. 

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At the July 14, 2021 Board Meeting, the County amended its contract with Dominion in order to replace all of the tabulation equipment that the Senate subpoenaed.  This amendment will ensure that the County has the necessary tabulation equipment needed to design and tabulate ballots for elections in 2022.

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FACTS: Voters in Maricopa County may vote early or on Election Day. If a voter chooses to vote early, they may cast a mailed ballot or vote in person prior to Election Day. In both of these cases, the voter is casting an early ballot. For the November 2020 General Election, Maricopa County had 2,364,426 requests for an early ballot and 1,918,024 early ballots returned either by mail or voting in-person early.

The claim that Maricopa County had 74,000 more mail-in ballots than requests appears to be incorrectly calculated by comparing two files that are created during early voting, the EV32 and EV33 files. Created daily, the EV32 file is a listing of all voters that requested an early ballot on that day, while the EV33 file is a listing of all voters that returned a ballot on that day. State law requires the County prepare these daily files for the County political parties during early voting. The EV32 file must be created up until 11 days prior to Election Day, which is the last day a voter can request a ballot in the mail. The EV33 files must be created up until the day before Election Day.

Any voter who cast an early ballot in person after Oct. 23, 2020 would not be included in the EV32 file and any voter who dropped off an early ballot on Election Day would not be included in the EV33 file. Any comparison using these files to find the total number of early voters would lead to inaccurate results. The “voted file” provides the full accounting of voters that cast a ballot in Maricopa County.

FACTS: This is false. Maricopa County uses an air-gapped system, meaning its tabulation equipment is never connected to the internet and is completely separated from the Maricopa County network. There are no routers connected to the system and there never have been.

Two separate federally certified Voting System Testing Laboratories independently confirmed that the system is not connected to the internet. In February 2021, they tested the equipment and found no evidence of internet connectivity. The firms also confirmed that there was not any malicious software or hardware installed on the tabulation equipment.

These tests determined the tabulators were not transmitting information outside the closed air gapped system within the County tabulation center or while being delivered, returned, or used at a Vote Center.

See a network diagram of the Election Management System here.

As a best practice, we are always preparing for potential issues that could impact elections. In advance of the 2020 general election, our Information Security Department implemented additional security controls to both prevent and detect unauthorized access to our website. In conjunction with our strategic partners, on November 2, 2020 we were able to quickly detect that an individual was programmatically accessing the county’s website and accessing publicly available information. We immediately worked to stop the access and put additional security measures in place to ensure it does not happen again. No services to voters were impacted. The County’s website is in no way connected to the air-gapped system in the secure tabulation room where ballots are counted.

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FACTS: County Election Officials program and configure the election. County staff have the expertise, passwords, and security tokens needed to program, configure, and prepare the tabulation equipment for an election. The County provided the Senate with the security token and related passwords that were used to configure the November 2020 General Election. Dominion’s administrative token and security password can be used to update the firmware on the tabulators. Any changes to the firmware must go through federal and state certification and testing. The County does not need to have access to these security protocols to conduct elections.

FACTS: Maricopa County has a robust set of security controls to prevent unauthorized access to its Election Management System (tabulation system). This includes maintaining the tabulation system and central count equipment in a secure ballot tabulation center with access controlled by badge readers. Only staff members who have a direct responsibility are provided access. The tabulation center is monitored by cameras 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

We also use a series of passwords that provide different levels of access to tabulation systems and equipment. To access each tabulator, an operator needs a series of two passwords and a security token (key). Prior to each election, we change the password that is used to access the election program and to tabulate ballots.

In addition, ballots are only tabulated when political party observers are present. The political party observers verify that the total number of ballots tabulated on each tabulator at the beginning and ending of each shift. At the end of each day, the totals are reconciled. This process independently validates that ballots are only counted when political party appointees are observing the process.

FACTS: The U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Testing & Certification Program (Version 2.0, Section(s) 1.16, 3.42, 3.43) requires that any software and security updates to tabulation equipment must first be authorized by the tabulation vendor and thoroughly tested by certified Voting System Testing Laboratories. If Maricopa County were to implement a software or security update without it being tested and approved by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, the County’s tabulation equipment would lose its federal and state certification. This is not only a requirement, but it’s also a best practice prior to implementation to ensure that each update does not pose a risk to the tabulation system.

To ensure security vulnerabilities are not introduced after a tabulation system is certified, the county also maintains an air-gapped network.

FACTS: At no point during the 2020 election cycle did Maricopa County modify the rigorous signature verification requirements. Any suggestion to the contrary is categorically false.

Maricopa County follows rigorous state signature verification guidelines and staff receives training prior to elections to ensure compliance.

In June 2020, all full-time staff members that perform signature verification in Maricopa County completed a statewide signature verification certification course offered by the Associated Forensic Laboratory, LLC.

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FACTS: At no point were illegitimate ballots duplicated or inserted into the duplication process. To ensure ballots can be counted for voters that are in the military, temporarily overseas, vote using a large print or braille ballots, or who return a ballot too damaged to be read by a tabulator, Maricopa County duplicates these ballots. During the duplication process, the Elections Department assigns a matching serial number to both the original and duplicated ballot. This number can be used to compare the original ballot with the duplicated ballot.

The accuracy and completeness of Maricopa County’s duplication process was confirmed in court (Ward v. Jackson) where the plaintiffs randomly sampled 1,626 of the 27,000 duplicated ballots. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the lower court ruling, “conclude[ing], unanimously, that . . . the challenge fails to present any evidence of ‘misconduct,’ ‘illegal votes’ or that the Biden Electors ‘did not in fact receive the highest number of votes for office,’ let alone establish any degree of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election results.” (Ariz. S. Ct., December 9, 2020)

There may be some instances where the serial number was printed over the timing mark on the original damaged ballot. Since the duplicated ballot and not the original is tabulated, the added serial number overlapping a timing mark does not impact tabulation. When reviewing the randomly sampled duplicated ballots in Ward vs. Jackson, we were able to find and reconcile the serial numbers for all ballots reviewed.

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FACTS: Maricopa County used 80lb VoteSecur paper for every ballot (early, Election Day, provisional and accessible voting devices) in the November 2020 General Election. According to the manufacturer, the VoteSecur paper that the County used in the November 2020 General Election has no special properties that would prevent bleed through. Because ballots are designed with offset columns, ink that bleeds through the ballot does not impact tabulation.

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FACTS: Sharpies do not invalidate ballots. Leading up to the 2020 March Presidential Preference Election, the Elections Department did extensive testing on our new tabulation equipment using different types of ink and paper weight. The manufacturer also recommends Sharpies, as it provides the fastest-drying ink, a necessity on Election Day to ensure the ink dries before voters place their ballots into the tabulation equipment. If the ink smudges on tabulators, it can be a major cause of delays at voting locations. Because federal law requires counties to work to avoid long voting lines, we used the fastest drying ink on Election Day. Voters casting an early ballot may use Sharpies or ballpoint pens, since early ballots are signature verified and processed, allowing the ink plenty of time to dry before being tabulated at the Elections Department.

In addition, Maricopa County designs the ballot with offset columns, ensuring ink that bleeds through the ballot does not impact tabulation. People who voted early could use Sharpies, or other types of ink.

The Elections Department programs the tabulation equipment to accurately tabulate ballots based on the location of the ovals and the offset columns. This accuracy was verified through Logic & Accuracy tests, a hand count audit performed by the political parties, and post-election audits performed by EAC certified voting testing laboratories. This is evidence by the fact that that there were only 5,002 overvotes on the presidential contest out of 2,089,563 total ballots cast. This small percentage (.2%) is fewer than in prior elections that had a presidential contest on the ballot. When reviewing Election Day ballots, there were 233 overvotes out of 167,878 ballots. This represent an even smaller percentage at (.1%) of the total Election Day Ballots.

#SharpieGate was already debunked in court.

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FACTS: Maricopa County used four grants in the November 2020 election, all approved in public meetings. Two grants were from non-profits, one was a state-funded grant and one was CARES funding from the federal government.

Those grants were used to fund projects and services beyond the baseline budget, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The grants enhanced the county’s plans and did not dictate how the county would spend the funds.

Maricopa County transformed our election model to ensure we could safely and securely serve voters in the 2020 Primary and General Elections. These plans, approved well before the election, included finding voting locations that were large enough to accommodate physical distancing, increasing the number of early voting locations to give voters additional options, providing voters who traditionally vote in person information about how to vote by mail, and more.

Below are the four grants and some additional information about each one:

CARES Funding - A grant from the federal government that awarded Maricopa County $5 million. The majority of this funding was spent on purchasing PPE, renting retail space to serve as Vote Centers, renting additional space for full time and temporary early voting staff for physical distancing, bio-fogging all of our offices once a week, and teleworking equipment and additional cyber security infrastructure around teleworking.

AZVoteSafe - A grant from the Governor’s Office that awarded Maricopa County $2.2 million. We spent these funds primarily on poll worker overtime. In a traditional election, most poll workers are paid for training and Election Day. But, with the expanded election model, instead of just one day, most of our poll workers were hired for 1-3 weeks, with few days off. Because of the long hours and additional days, poll workers qualified for overtime pay.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life - A grant from a non-profit that awarded Maricopa County $3 million. Some of the budget items included:

• Online training technology for poll workers
• Salaries for increased temporary staff
• Mileage for troubleshooters and couriers
• Additional ink and toner for ballot printing at Vote Centers
• Breakroom tents and generators to allow warehouse and temporary staff to physical distance during meal breaks
• Additional mailers to inform voters about the voting options

USC Schwarzenegger Institute - A grant from a non-profit that awarded Maricopa County $42,000. We spent the grant on the costs associated with drive through drop box locations including:

• Pop up tents
• Courier salaries and mileage
• Drop box worker salaries
• Ballot security measures
• Lighting rentals

FACTS: Maricopa County did not delete files when preparing the subpoenaed SQL server for delivery. The modified date of April 12, 2021 shown in images provided by the Senate’s contractors was the day the County powered down the server to prepare it for delivery to the Senate.

In a technical response, Maricopa County confirmed that the original database folder on the “EMSPrimary” server was not deleted or otherwise tampered with during packaging and delivery to fulfill the Arizona Senate’s subpoena.

There are several indicators on the R-Studio screenshot that the Senate’s contractors did not properly reconstruct the “EMSPrimary” servers RAID array. This could result in the R-Studio Data Recovery Technician program not being able to accurately translate the parameters of server’s RAID array partition schema.

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FACTS: As commanded by the subpoena, Maricopa County provided the Senate with early ballot envelope images.

All of the ballots counted in the 2020 November General Election have been removed from their affidavit envelopes, which makes it impossible to tie the ballots back to a specific voter. Arizona's Constitution entitles every voter to a secret ballot, which is why the county puts no identifying information on a voter's ballot.

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FACTS: Our analysis of the voter rolls found no evidence of any ballot counted from a voter registered after the voter registration deadline. The courts extended the General Election voter registration deadline to October 15, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Only voters whose forms were received by the deadline were eligible to vote in the election. Between the original Oct. 5 deadline and the court ordered extension, the county received approximately 18,529 voter registration forms. Voter registration staff completed processing the forms around October 23.

If any of the voter registration forms were incomplete or deficient, elections laws and policies require that the county put the voter on suspense. The county notified these people of the issues and ways to rectify their registration form in order to be officially added to the voter rolls. In these cases, once we receive the correct information, they are officially added to the voter rolls. State law dictates that the voter would be considered registered from the date they submitted their original registration form.

Additionally, there were approximately 7,605 provisional ballots that were cast and ultimately rejected because the voters were not eligible to vote in the election. However, there were 6,198 voters that cast provisional ballots, these were researched and found to meet the legal eligibility requirements, including that those voters were registered to vote before the registration deadline. Those ballots were counted as part of the official returns for the November General Election.

FACTS: Our review of the Nov. 7 and Dec. 2 files from 2020 found that every voter on the Dec. 2 voter file that was legally given credit for voting during the November 2020 General Election was registered by the October 15 deadline. It’s important to note that Arizona law allows provisional ballots to be processed up to 10 business days after the election. The Nov. 7 file would not have included all provisional ballot processing results.

It is common for a voter that was previously on suspense or in an inactive status to vote provisionally and cure their registration status and be added back to the official active voter rolls. Additionally, voters that cast a provisional ballots that are rejected often complete new voter registrations and appear on the voter rolls in subsequent months.

FACTS: Maricopa County has over 2.6 million registered voters and it is not unusual for there to be tens of thousands of changes to the voter rolls each month. In fact, our analysis of the actual voter registration database confirmed that there were 13,320 voters removed from the voters rolls between November 3, 2020 and January 2, 2021. The majority (7,916) of these removals were because a voter moved out of Maricopa County or passed away during this period. The remainder (5,404) were for situations such as felony convictions, adjudicated as incapacitated, or by the request of the voter to be removed from the rolls.

FACTS: The Arizona Senate commanded the County to turn over all election equipment, ballots and other election materials through a subpoena issued on January 12, 2021. On January 15 and 21, the County provided thousands of documents including tabulator audit, administrator security, windows event logs and the cast vote records. In February, a court ruled that the subpoena was valid, and the County turned over the nearly 2.1 million General Election ballots, 385 Election Day tabulators, nine central count tabulators, and more than eight terabytes of data.

Of the 56 categories subpoenaed, Maricopa County has complied with or sought additional information for every item that was included in the Senate’s January subpoena except one: Maricopa County routers. Learn more about why here.

Find a complete accounting of the information here.

Another subpoena was issued on July 26, 2021. Find the County’s response here.