Walter Ringfield Jr., a former Maricopa County Elections Department (MCED) employee and progressive activist who was caught on video stealing a key FOB that was capable of reprogramming all 140 voting machine tabulators on Election Day pleaded guilty last week to one count of Attempted Computer Tampering and three theft charges for unrelated crimes. The activist, who had vowed to stop Republican lawyers combating wrongdoing on Election Day, will be sentenced on March 5.
Ringfield was caught last year in June prior to the primary election. Although the charges aren’t very serious, he is being held without bail, according to KJZZ.
Computer tampering is a class three felony which carries up to eight years in prison. He was initially charged with a more serious felony, a class two, for tampering with computers that are a “critical infrastructure resource,” but was allowed to plead to the lesser charge in exchange for changing his plea from innocent to guilty.
He also pleaded guilty to criminal charges unrelated to the key FOB theft. One of those was stealing over $1,000 in cash from a Fry’s grocery store in 2023 while employed there. He was given a diversion agreement by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell instead of fully prosecuted. If he had been fully prosecuted, it would have shown up in a background check and he would not have been hired at MCED. He also pleaded guilty for breaking into the Arizona Senate and stealing memorabilia coins, and stealing jewelry from the Phoenix Art Museum.
In response to a public records request from The Arizona Sun Times, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released 131 pages of police reports regarding Ringfield’s arrest. According to the reports, then-Maricopa County Elections Co-Director Scott Jarrett told officers that Ringfield was hired as a temporary employee to clean the voting machine tabulators. The job did not require him to use key FOBs. However, Jarrett said that Ringfield, who had a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Science from Arizona State University, could still access them due to the nature of the job, and he knew the associated password.
At first, Ringfield denied to law enforcement that he had stolen the key FOB. But eventually he changed his story and said he’d returned it to the office. The officers obtained a search warrant for his residence and found the key FOB in his bedroom on a dresser.
Much of the police reports consisted of officers stating that they performed searches on Ringfield’s phone. The Sun Times requested the results of those searches but did not receive a response.
Ringfield has a lengthy history of progressive activism, including circulating petitions to get Democratic-backed propositions such as ranked-choice voting on the ballot and working for progressive officials. According to the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, he was one of the top signature collectors for the ranked-choice proposition. Ringfield was paid by Field+Media Corps, run by Mesa City Councilman Francis Heredia, which is under investigation in Pennsylvania for “suspicious voter registration forms.” In Arizona, both Navajo and Mohave counties flagged voter registration forms from the company and sent them to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for investigation.
Ringfield’s LinkedIn page showed that he volunteered for Our Voice Our Vote (OVOV). A registered Democrat named Jeremy Garrett, who works as an electoral campaign manager for OVOV, was implicated in a scheme this year that involved allegedly forging signatures to put fake candidates on the ballot. Ringfield filed a Statement of Interest in 2023, expressing interest in running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate.
Despite numerous hearings, there has been almost no media coverage of the court proceedings against Ringfield since his arrest last summer.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
