Maricopa County officials tapped former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor to investigate the printing problems in the 2022 election, and on Monday, the county released her report blaming the thickness of the ballot paper. Jennifer Wright, who was the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office during the election and who performed her own investigation of Maricopa County’s election problems going back to the 2020 presidential election, told The Arizona Sun Times the report was “meaningless” since it did not include an analysis of the printer logs.
Wright tweeted on Monday, “The report proves printers failed, but doesn’t identify WHY some Oki printers experienced more problems than others. It seems to ‘exonerate’ MC without determining the ROOT cause of failure. It’s surface level stuff. It’s embarrassing. It would fail cross-examination.”
She further explained, “When a report simply confirms a problem exists but can’t explain why — it isn’t an investigative report, it’s an incident report. Would an insurance company end an investigation after determining the brakes failed? No! They’d find out why. Maintenance? Defect? Sabotage?”
Wright disagreed that the thickness of the paper was the problem. “Note the report confirms WILDLY different error rates on seemingly identical machines,” she tweeted. “If the root cause was simply paper thickness and ballot length, you’d expect substantially similar error rates. This report would not be enough to prove causation in a basic tort claim.”
She called it a “lackluster” investigation, stating, “Transcribing interviews is not an independent investigation,” and “You can’t find what you don’t look for.”
She also expressed concern that the report did not look into other aspects of the problem: on-site tabulator logs, system logs, and actual Election Day ballots in 2022.
The report proves printers failed, but doesn’t identify WHY some Oki printers experienced more problems than others.
It seems to “exonerate” MC without determining the ROOT cause of failure.
It’s surface level stuff.
It’s embarrassing.
It would fail cross-examination.
4/4— Jen Wright (@JenWEsq) April 11, 2023
During the printer stress test in September before the election, McGregor said the 100-pound paper was used with a 20-inch ballot instead of a 19-inch ballot since the ballot size had increased to accommodate all the contests. She said the printers performed fine with the larger size — but their settings were for heavy paper.
19-inch ballots were used during the primary election, and lighter-weight paper was used in 2020 and previous elections. Election workers discovered on Election Day after encountering problems that once the media weight settings were changed to “heavy,” the printers performed a little better. McGregor’s 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.
McGregor said she was “also asked to review the chain-of-custody policies affecting BOD printers and consider whether the election day issues resulted from human error or process and equipment issues.” However, she did not investigate why the printer settings on Election Day were not set for heavy paper. There has been speculation that a rogue actor could have adjusted them remotely.
Wright skeptically considered McGregor’s reference to “Sharpiegate,” where the county handed out markers to voters that bled through the ballots, a red herring. McGregor implied that perhaps the heavier paper had been used to avoid bleed-through.
“The gratuitous reference to ‘Sharpiegate’ seems to imply voter concerns in ’20 over bleed through somehow caused MC to deploy error-prone inadequately tested printers in 2022,” Wright tweeted. “The report feels like another victim-blaming, ‘you reap what you sow’ lecture from MC.”
McGregor listed numerous experts, county employees, and other election workers to whom she spoke with, but none were whistleblowers or anyone who had complained about election problems.
Kari Lake, who is still contesting the results of her election loss to Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, condemned the report. “Maricopa County has released the results of their internal investigation & has SHOCKINGLY found themselves not guilty of any crime,” the Kari Lake War Room account tweeted. “We told you this was a farce. These people don’t think your vote or your opinion matters. And anyone who takes the results of this ‘investigation’ seriously is part of the problem.”
Lake added from her personal Twitter account, “Maricopa County will figure out who screwed up their election just as soon as OJ Simpson finds the real killer.”
Wright is now working as Abe Hamadeh’s attorney challenging his close election loss to Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes due to Mayes “targeting” her. Hamadeh issued his own statement about McGregor’s report.
“They refused to extend voting hours, lectured the most skeptical voters, sought sanctions for anyone challenging the election, withheld evidence, hired an ‘independent’ investigator that to no one’s surprise absolves them of any responsibility,” Hamadeh tweeted. “Time and time again when given the opportunity to do the right thing or coverup their failures they’ve chosen the option that avoids any criticism and scrutiny.”
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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 “Jennifer Wright” by Jennifer Wright. Background Photo “People Voting” by Ben Schumin. CC BY-SA 3.0.
