Concerns are increasing that Kari Lake’s “loss” to Ruben Gallego in the Arizona U.S. Senate race last November was due to malfeasance. Many believe around 60,000 votes were transferred from her to the unknown Green Party candidate in the race. The CONELRAD Group, a team of mostly former intelligence and military officers located primarily in southern Arizona that investigates illegal election activity, along with the Pima Integrity Project (PIP), issued a new report this week on alleged improprieties in Pima County’s elections last year. The groups found 10 areas of concern, including some where laws or rules were violated involving “possible malfeasance,” and called on the Arizona Legislature and the Trump administration to investigate.
The 54-page report, compiled by CONELRAD founder Jack Dona and a couple of team members including Tim Laux of PIP, found multiple violations of the chain of custody (COC) of ballots, which is a class 2 misdemeanor, noncompliance with the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM), also a class 2 misdemeanor, refusing to allow political party observers at early voting locations, providing mostly left-leaning ballot couriers, courier time records that were impossible, unsecured ballot boxes, and ineligible voters on the voter rolls.
Dona suggested to me how the wrongdoing could have happened. "All of the information lawfully obtained in this report begs the question: Is this nothing more than a series of possible mistakes, errors, incompetence, malfeasance … or is it something else entirely?” he asked. “One could imagine if the fictional character SGT Joe Friday of the TV Show ‘Dragnet’ were assigned to this case, his discussion with his partner Detective Bill Gannon might go something like this: ‘Bill, let's see if we can piece this all together. First they make a copy of the voter database. They use that copy of the database to adjust addresses. Then let's say they send a dump for printing. The database copy then gets tossed and disappeared.’”
He went on, “‘Then when the election happens, those adjusted addresses go to different places, ballots filled out and dropped somewhere? Isn't it a fact that between the November election and the January data dump, thousands of records are removed? They don't go inactive first as ARS states do they?... Don't they just go away? Has anyone ever seen those ballots’ histories because as I understand it the voter record is gone? Doesn't this answer the question as to why a voter swears they didn't vote in spite of the records showing they actually did?’"
For their investigation, the teams reviewed chain of custody documents from Pima County’s 2024 primary and general elections, and digital data provided to the Republican Party by the Pima County Recorder. They included screenshots of the problematic findings in their report.
The teams found that voters cast ballots who were ineligible, since they had registered to vote after the cutoff date. Their research here went back to the 2016 election and found over 500 of these voters.
The group found that the chain of custody forms used by Pima County did not follow the template recommended by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). “It appears that every ballot transfer sheet that we reviewed had only one courier, a severe violation of the Arizona Revised Statutes and the EPM. This constitutes a break in the chain of custody,” the report said.
Some of the COC forms contained blank lines to fill in important information, but nothing was marked down. The forms lacked blank lines for filling in the “pickup date and time, were seals intact, what are the vote counts, and when did the couriers with 11 their ballot boxes arrive at the BPC.”
After the groups previously expressed their concerns to Pima County about its chain of custody form not requiring adequate information, the county changed some of the forms. However, “the new chain of custody form did not bring about any better or more trustworthy results. In fact, the recorder and staff made things worse by leaving off a space for ballot box and seal numbers. Instead of 2-party printed names below the line of legible signatures, the form now has tiny spaces for initials only.”
Some of the chain of custody forms lacked information such as the name of the person who signed to receive the ballot boxes and the time the box was opened. Instead of names, only initials were jotted down. The report added up instances of each involving the mail-in ballot drop-offs during the primary election. There were seven boxes of ballots lacking seals, 35 missing a delivery date or time, 39 missing a pickup date, 52 instances that took over four hours to deliver the ballot boxes, 35 missing the couriers’ initials, and six instances of blanks not filled in.
The couriers were frequently registered as independents, also known as Party Not Designated (PND), and some had changed their party from Democrat shortly before the election. “Did whomever put this into practice believe or think that no inquiring citizen would notice how they seem to be circumventing the law so they can work solely together?” the report asked. “Basically, two democrats oversee adjudication, duplication and often pick up ballot boxes, and handle voted ballots.” The groups asked, “Why are there no spaces or lines to write in a second bi-partisan courier?” Both Arizona statutes and the EPM require two couriers from two different parties to move a ballot box from one location to another.
I asked an election attorney whether independents constitute a “political party” that could be one of the bipartisan couriers. The attorney responded, “The law requires one person from the two major political parties, but it’s widely interpreted by all county recorders to be of differing parties, including PNDs. But the couriers should be one PND and a person of another party. BUT, if the PND routinely votes the SAME primary ballot as the other courier, that would be a huge problem. Two PNDs cannot be couriers together, period.”
Laux responded and told me, "My belief is that the County Recorder goes beyond the spirit and intent of the law by not using couriers from differing political parties."
Next, the report went over the issues with ballots that were dropped off where voters showed ID. It stated, “Mail-In Early Ballot Boxes were often not picked up on a daily basis. At times they were left unattended for days and even over weekends.” The report found that seven boxes of ballots had no names or signatures, 172 boxes had no box number or seal, 17 had broken seals, 32 had no couriers, and 172 lacked two bipartisan couriers.
Regarding video surveillance, the groups found that “the camera in the overnight voted ballot vault, is broken and has been broken for many elections, per a whistleblower. How does Pima County produce video surveillance in case of an audit or records request?” Additionally, “We are concerned that the Native American locations used for Early Voting are unprotected and often have no video surveillance of ballot boxes left unattended for weeks without a daily pick up.”
During the primary election, the teams found a very “questionable” batch of courier sheets for site-issued ballots. The Eastside office of the recorder does not issue ballots for early in-person voting, but used the site-issued courier sheets anyway, crossing out “site issued” on the forms. “Why did the Eastside office use the wrong sheets?” the report asked. “There is no need to have them on hand.”
The report observed regarding the questionable sheets that they all were from the same courier, contained only one receiving signature, and all signatures on the sheets were by the same person. The times jotted down on the forms showed the courier transferred the boxes from the main office to the Eastside office in four minutes. “At 10:00 in the morning this is impossible even during light traffic, and even if there were no stop lights.”
On Election Day of the primary, the report observed a large number of ballots with total numbers that sounded “manufactured.” “Pima county staff transported 650 extra ballots from the Downtown location, plus 700 extra ballots from the Eastside location to the Ballot Processing Center,” the report said. “It is highly unlikely that voters would drive all the way to the Downtown and Eastside Recorder’s locations to drop off their ballots on election day, when they could choose many locations closer to their home or work. Voters have a choice of 126 locations for their ballots to drop off.”
The report speculated that there was wrongdoing involved. “We hypothesize that when an exact and even number is reached, ‘someone’ is purportedly moving said ballot box so that more even numbers of ballots could be dropped into another ballot box for an even numbered count.”
The groups concluded regarding the poor chain of custody documentation, “In all of these instances, the County’s current custody documents would appear to show that the couriers did not count, nor verify, the number of ballots they were assuming responsibility for before they took them into custody. The boxes were not opened at the voting centers in front of witnesses, nor were the contents inventoried at the vote centers prior to the courier(s)taking custody and transferring the box to the Ballot Processing Center.”
Ballots received from the military and other overseas voters, known as Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) ballots, had numerous problems, the groups found. There were 29 COC sheets for 444 votes, and “every sheet has multiple violations. … There is no evidence when, date and time, the UOCAVA ballot was received and no explanation which location was used to capture and process these ballots.”
All 29 used the wrong form, had no box number, no seals, no pick up time, no received time, or opened time. There were 27 with no courier or only one courier named, 21 with only one signature for receiving, and 24 with a section that was not filled in.
Another observation in the report was that the election workers staffing the polling locations were not bipartisan. “There are no Marshalls, Inspectors, Judges of Same and Opposite parties nor are they a bipartisan staff. This type of maladministration is one of the major violations during Early Voting.”
For the general election, the groups found that “NONE of the Pima County Recorder’s Early voting transfer data sheets had ballot box numbers” and “NONE of the ballot boxes had any seals installed. The ‘bipartisan’ teams and couriers did not have a valid chain of custody with printed name below a legible signature. Every Pima County Recorder’s Voting Site Ballot Transfer Form sheet only displayed initials.”
The report said at least one of the couriers appeared to have kept the ballots overnight, and ballot boxes were left unattended over the weekends. “At times the number of Voted Ballots increased between pick-up and delivery,” causing the groups to speculate the ballots were added.
Much of the report went over various fields that were not filled out on the COC forms, constituting chain of custody violations. In the primary election, the teams found 51 violations of no delivery date or time, 24 with no pickup date, 35 with no delivery date, 22 with a ballot box kept overnight somewhere, 39 where delivery took over four hours, 100 missing courier initials, 108 with one or more boxes not filled in, and 136 with slot or zip seals missing or broken.
Examining COC forms for the general election, the teams found 211 with no courier name, no box number, and no seal. There were 93 boxes with no seals, 44 boxes held overnight somewhere, 44 boxes delivered late, 102 missing courier names or receiving names, and 96 lacking two bipartisan couriers.
The transfer forms from USPS had problems, the teams found, including “an entire week of custody forms missing.”
They discovered that the list of voters who should no longer be on the Active Early Voter List (AEVL) keeps increasing. “A.R.S. 16-544 mandates that these voters be moved to inactive status if there were no votes recorded for two consecutive vote cycles.” They found that “109,464 voters were listed on the voter rolls that had NO voting history and of those voters, 65,098 were on the Active Early Voter List.” Those numbers increased this year to 178,869 voters on the voter rolls with no voting history, with 102,813 on the AEVL.
If voters are moved to inactive status, as required by state law due to lack of voting, they may not be able to easily send in a ballot without going through extra hoops such as getting reinstated or voting a provisional ballot. Some suspect bad actors in government deliberately fail to transfer them to inactive status in order to allow corrupt organizations to easily send in fraudulent mail-in ballots in their names that aren’t scrutinized.
The group went over the efforts that have been made to persuade Pima County to allow political party observers at early voting locations, including the lone Republican on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Steve Christy, asking Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly. State statute leaves it up to the discretion of each county recorder, and every Arizona county except Pima allows them. The report said Cazares-Kelly, who features pronouns on her X bio and “dismantling white supremacy,” responded with excuses. They included not enough room at the locations, issues with observers and poll workers, not being informed early enough, and “that’s what my predecessor did.”
Similarly, while observers are allowed to watch signature verification, they are kept six feet back where they can’t adequately see what is happening on the computer screens, the report said.
In 2023, “[a]t the June 20, 2023 Board of Supervisors meeting the Recorder was allocated money to purchase a new ballot processing machine from Runbeck, Inc. An expensive option, Artificial Intelligence software known as Agilis was also approved for $15,000 per contract.” The teams said the recorder claimed she wouldn’t use AI, but election workers received training on it. “The Recorder also stated that a human would touch every mail-in ballot to verify signatures,” the report said. “We don’t believe this is accurate.”
The report said the new Agilis machine was located too far away from observers to see what was taking place. They discovered that the accuracy of it was set to 15 percent. “The Kari Lake campaign found out that in spite of the 81% failure rate, the software continues to be used. That does not bode well for good outcomes. The banking system would never use this kind of verification and would not allow it. Aren’t elections just as important as banking?”
There were discrepancies between the recorder’s official numbers and the documents provided by the recorder to the teams. The number of UOCAVA ballots was stated by the recorder to be 4,682, but “the sheets in our possession amount to 3,990 ballots.” The recorder said there were 107,542 early ballot drop offs. However, “Our COC sheets show that 101,695 sheets were delivered to the Ballot Processing Center. Where did the 5,847 ballots come from?” Similarly, the recorder said there were 45,232 site-issued ballots. The report only found 43,650.
The recorder said she doesn’t use unstaffed ballot drop boxes, but the teams disagreed. “In the 2024 General election, 44 SITE-ISSUED BALLOT BOXES DID NOT get delivered on the same day they were picked up and 22 EARLY BALLOT DROP OFF BOXES DID NOT make it to the Ballot Processing Center on the same day they were picked up!”
The teams asked the recorder for a list of election workers. The recorder said there were 49 permanent employees and 186 temporary employees who worked the election, but only provided records showing 106 employees, a difference of 129.
The report brought up the Crowdstrike outage that occurred last July, which caused Pima County to issue provisional ballots. “If machines are not connected to the Internet, then why can't the Tenex ePollbooks connect via the Intranet that is supposedly protected by an air gap,” the report said. “That is not safe, nor secure!”
The teams said they have had no success bringing these types of problems to the attention of local officials. “We have exposed and reported these to the Pima County Election Integrity Commission, to the Pima County Board of Supervisors and to the media. … Sadly, the end result of those efforts has been dismal.”
The group was also skeptical of any action being taken by judges to remedy the problems. “Pima County has a serious problem with the chain of custody for ballots cast in their county. These custody sheets are unlikely to be legitimate in any honest court of law. But then again, we are talking about the Arizona Judiciary.”
CONELRAD and PIP recommended as solutions, “Based upon the preponderance of the analysis provided in this document, and the repeated mistakes, errors, possible malfeasance or possible other election ‘irregularities’ that continues to plague elections in Pima County, the situation will require the direct intervention of the Arizona State Legislature to correct.” Additionally, “The President of the United States should immediately convene an investigative body, with law enforcement subpoena capability, perhaps a Special Council, that will be able to step in and identify and correct the problematic issues plaguing Pima County Elections.”
Many believe there were a couple of races in addition to Lake’s that were manipulated; one was the state representative race in Pima County’s LD 17 where Republican incumbent Cory McGarr lost even though Republicans have a 10-point voter registration edge over Democrats. There is also speculation that the abortion-till-birth proposition, Prop. 139, passed due to cheating.
Last July, CONELRAD and PIP issued a report about ‘malfeasance, incompetence, and possible criminal activity’ in Pima County’s 2020 and 2022 elections. The new report noted, “In June of 2020, Pima even used custody forms without a space for courier names, dates or times of pickups, thereby casting the 2020 election into uncertainty.”
In December, two state legislators, Reps. Rachel Jones and Teresa Martinez, requested an investigation by the attorney general into “disturbing allegations” in Pima County’s 2024 general election. The new report can also be accessed on Rumble and the CONELRAD Group can be reached here.
Reprinted from WND