Gina Swoboda, executive director of Phoenix-based Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), recently discussed election problems and what can be done about them on the Jenny Beth Show. The first part of her interview in mid-August with the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots went over how VRF’s websites can be used to look through voter registrations and spot problems with the voter rolls. The second part dug into the election anomalies in the 2022 midterm election, what led to them, and how they could have been easily avoided by officials who blew off fixes.
During the second part of the interview, Swoboda said, “We’ve had three election cycles in a row where there have been serious process issues, and it has now been catastrophic. And to say, to come out repeatedly and say ‘this was the best election ever’ and ‘this was a minimal problem and it was addressed’ is just garbage. That’s like gaslighting, it’s an insult. And it frustrates people. It is not getting us to a place, uh, where voters can have confidence and participate. And my rock bottom concern of all of these things is people will stop participating.”
She added, “So we’ve had a couple or three elections where the way they were conducted with regard to Maricopa County has, in my personal opinion, resulted in a complete loss of confidence. … It’s gotten progressively worse since 2018. But after the 2022 Election Day, I can only use the word fiasco.”
Swoboda criticized the Maricopa County officials.
“There is an obligation of the election officials to make sure that the Election Day process is a good one,” she said. “And there’s been a total failure which has just gotten worse over the last three cycles. And it was catastrophic in 2022.”
Swoboda honed in on the onsite tabulation problems as one of the biggest issues in the election.
“There’s not a requirement that says you must have onsite tabulation on Election Day,” she explained. “Tabulation is the act of I’m putting my paper ballot into the machine, and it’s counting, it’s counting the votes, it’s tabulating as I’m putting it in the machine. Many counties in Arizona do not have [this], and it’s shocking to a lot of people.”
She said the Help America Vote Act [HAVA] was passed over 20 years ago and provides money to secure elections, so this money should have gone to ensure same-day tabulation.
The executive director observed how Florida, which is larger than Arizona, has its election results the night of the election, whereas Arizona took three and a half weeks since there is no law requiring same-day tabulation.
Swoboda said she warned election officials about the printers causing problems on Election Day, but they didn’t heed her advice.
“I made very clear my position via the county chair that we knew we were going to have record in-person turnout from the party on the right on Election Day,” Swoboda said. “And I said over and over again, are you sure that you have enough toner? Because in 2020 we had the same problem. It was just limited in scope.”
She said she told election officials the turnout on Election Day would be extremely heavy since voters were extremely concerned about election fraud after the debauched 2020 election.
The official Swoboda spoke with pushed back, asserting, “[I]n 2020 I only had a handful of vote centers that, you know, hit 1,200 people.”
She responded, “[W]e’re gonna blow that away. And that’s unusual because it’s a midterm. However, it’s not, if you take into account that, you know, I have a third of this party that’s absolutely not gonna vote by mail.”
Swoboda was skeptical of the retired Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor’s investigation into the printing problems. While McGregor found that there were problems, she did not understand why they happened, and she failed to contact the printer manufacturer. Her report concluded that using 20-inch ballots on 100-pound paper pushed the printers to their limits, so the 100-pound paper should not be used in future elections.
“The manufacturer specs that come with the printers clearly tell you don’t use this pound paper,” Swoboda said. “So now we are in June and we are still having problems with understanding whether or not that report has addressed the concerns. If the reports that are coming out about what happened are still being questioned by the person who manufactured the equipment, the loss of confidence is profound.”
Swoboda disapproved of the attitude one of the county’s attorneys took.
“At the close of an election contest trial for a candidate, one of the closing arguments from the Maricopa County attorney was basically — and I have respect for the man — but he said, ‘You reap what you sow,’” she said. “Like, so in effect, it is the fault of the voters who tried to vote on Election Day that things went wrong on Election Day. And if they had just, you know, been smart enough to take their mail-in ballot like a good voter should, ’cause that’s what we told you to do, this wouldn’t happen to you. … That’s not acceptable to talk to the voters like that.”
Martin responded, “This election needs to be redone. It is a disaster. “
Swoboda said it’s inappropriate to move on without trying to fix the problems.
“So you can’t ignore it and hope it goes away and talk through it and just basically, you know, pat voters on the head and call them ignorant and send them home because they don’t know any better,” she said. “This will keep happening if we keep using ballot-on-demand printers,” she said. “The refusal to revert to precinct polling places means we cannot pre-order ballots, which means we’re always gonna be at the mercy of these printers. And this equipment is not tested, regulated, certified in the same way that that other election equipment is. It’s outside the scope of like logic and accuracy or election equipment certification. So people, it’s gonna happen again.”
Swoboda said the county claimed moving to vote centers would make it easier to vote since the centers were located along the light rail line.
“Well, you know what, what’s not along the light rail, a lot of elderly suburban voters are not along the light rail,” she said. “Because the light rail doesn’t go there. So what has happened, if you look at the disbursement of these vote centers, is it is making people travel far, far, much farther than they would’ve had to travel in a precinct. … It is my personal opinion that this is a cast on steam nudge effort to push people to voting by mail.”
Swoboda explained that Arizona has early mail-in voting, not early voting in person. She said the vote centers should have been added in addition to precincts, not in lieu of. Unfortunately, legislation to do that has been vetoed, she said, “They’re coming out against anything that would improve the Election Day process.”
Also, she criticized the talking points from the left about “democracy.” “You know, this group of people is very fond of talking about protecting democracy, and we’re in a constitutional republic,” she said, “but the form of our elections — we have a representative democracy. Yeah. So maybe less time talking about saving our democracy, protecting our democracy, and a little more time invested in executing the process.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Gina Swoboda” by The Jenny Beth Show.
