MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ — Maricopa County officials said they found two bins of uncounted green ballot envelopes during an inspection Friday morning, three days after the election.
The discovery occurred when election workers inspected equipment in their warehouse. The equipment had been returned from ballot drop-off locations across the county.
The elections department said 2,288 green affidavit envelopes were found inside the two bins.
The bins were secure with their tamper-evident seals, according to officials, but poll workers had mistakenly placed the bins back into the drop box instead of transporting them separately to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.
"Humans run our elections, our community members run our elections, and there are going to be mistakes that are made,” said Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County's deputy elections director.
Liewer said the ballots came from a west Valley drop box location.
“We're able to have those conversations with the poll workers to let them know here is how you were trained and here is what took place to ensure that this doesn't happen again,” Liewer said.
After the discovery, a bipartisan team of election officials took the bins to ensure the proper chain of custody was followed.
The misplaced ballots were signature-verified on Friday, and those with good signatures were processed for tabulation.
The ballots will be included in the results post planned for Friday afternoon.
"The important thing is that we have a process and a redundancy in our system to make sure that, when a mistake is made, we are able to quickly correct it,” Liewer said.
The Maricopa County recorder, who registers voters, was critical of Election Day officials for the misplaced ballots. His office issued a statement, saying “While errors can occur in a county as large as Maricopa, the repeated mistakes over many past election cycles have eroded public trust in Maricopa County's elections."
Other political figures want more details about what happened.
"Our legal counsel is sending an inquiry to determine how the ballot boxes were missed, verifying chain of custody is intact, and steps being taken to ensure this does not reoccur,” said Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda.
