The Republican National Committee sent a letter to the Maricopa County Elections Department (MCED) demanding to know why MCED appears to have broken the law by assigning significantly more Democrats than Republicans to poll worker positions for the August primary election. The lopsided hiring practices came by the Elections Department to light through a public records request by the Maricopa County Republican Party.
State law requires that each county board handling the election must be “comprised of two members of different political parties,” but the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) discovered through public records requests that 857 Democrats were hired for those positions, while only 712 Republicans were. At 11 voting centers, no Republicans were hired.
Eric Spencer, an attorney for the National Republican Committee, sent a letter to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office requesting a written explanation for the discrepancy by Friday, including why so many of the names provided by the MCRC were not utilized.
In a letter obtained by The Arizona Sun Times, he appeared to allege MCED violated the law. “It is difficult to attribute this disparity to mere chance,” he stated; adding:
A.R.S. § 16-531(A) requires that the inspector, marshal and judges at voting locations ‘shall be divided equally’ between Republicans and Democrats, and across all voting locations ‘[t]here shall be an equal number of inspectors … who are members of the two largest political parties.’ The statutory scheme should have virtually guaranteed an equal distribution by party affiliation.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
