AZGOP Whiteboard Update with Gina Swoboda — AZ's early voting process

hi Gina swoda chair Republican party of Arizona with another whiteboard update it's benefit uh congratulations to everybody who ran a race congratulations to those who won a race we are ever so grateful to God all the glory goes to God uh he's going to save this country um it's been an honor to serve you and I look forward to all the work we're going to do together today we are talking about one Statute in particular elections you know how I love elction CS 16- 564a all right um this the the name of the statute right there's a little title is opening exhibiting and locking The Ballot Box before receipt of ballots semicolon removal and opening of box um there's there's a lot of interest in this statute and there's a lot of concern I would say rightful concern about whether or not uh this has been complied with um so I'm going to go through where the statute lives uh and what the attorneys have told us about the statute I asked about this uh in 2018 I tried again in 2020 I tried again in 22 um and let's go through what uh they told me and and you know then we can see what we can do going forward in the future okay so 16 564a here's the part of the statute that's of interest to people The Ballot Box right we're talking about The Ballot Box at the py place it The Ballot Box shall not be removed until all ballots are counted so there's a lot of concern uh again I think it's appropriate that during early voting The Ballot Box in early voting locations that those ballots that are being dropped in there um when people go vote early person are not being counted on site with a chain of custody form before they depart uh and people have been calling it an illegal election because that's not being done so let's talk about the structure of the statutes where the statute lives and why the attorneys that I have consulted with for three Cycles have said uh this is not a thing that I I could fight about okay so if you want to go look at the statutes and follow along with what I'm saying go to a.gov then click legislative Council from that drop down click Arizona revised statutes and then you're going to see all of the statutes right and there there's title it starts with title scroll down you'll see title 16 the the subname the heading of title 16 is elections and electors then you keep scrolling down and within title 16 you get to article8 article 8 is early voting this does not live in article 8 this is not in the early voting section of title 16 you keep going after article 8 early voting there's article 8.1 there's article 8.2 and then you get to article 9 article 9 is polling place procedures that means election day and that's where the statute lives Okay so so this statute that is saying opening exhibiting and locking The Ballot Box before the receipt of the ballot so we're showing the ballot box is empty right um and then opening the box it shall not be removed the Box until all the ballots are counted this applies here where it lives and where it lives is election day and here is uh the legal interpretation by its plain terms the plain terms of what it says and where it resides the statute has no application to early voting it governs the specific context because it's here of in-person voting on Election Day three times I have I have gone and said they're not counting the early ballots every day and three times uh it's been explained to me that because it's it doesn't live here in article 8 under early voting it lives here in article 9 under polling place procedures by this the plain meaning of the plain terms and the context around it everything that this is talking about in article 9 is talking about election day it's not talking about ear voted now um this gets us to a bigger issue that we have in Arizona early voting in Arizona is male voting it's male voting when we created early voting it was always male voting it was never intended to be in a physical location so um 16579 uh you know starts to talk about it's ID but it talks about early voting also and this is where people always say why can't we be like Florida this is one of the reasons that we're having trouble um during this election that we just had when the early voting polling places started to open because you will look at this in go polling place is a polling place you know a horse is a horse of course of course unless of course it's vot by mail like which is what happened no election official is required to open a single location for early voting there is nothing in title 16 that says they have to do that so we started early voting and people were very excited because they you know were chasing ballots and were're trying to get people back to banking the vote early which was good and and helped uh you know they never caught up to us okay um but people said why is there only one location in Gilbert why is there like or or no location why is there no location in uh Paradise Valley they're not required to have any they could open none and they're totally in compliance because when the legislature uh enabled us to do codified and built these things around early voting it's vote by mail in Arizona I try to tell people people in other states are like why is it taking you so long I because everything's in an envelope if you have never voted early in person in Arizona during the 27 days of early voting you may not realize this when you walk in if your county chooses to open a location which they do not have to do Maricopa opens many they stagger them until there are quite a lot of them I know that because we run the Observer program right and I'm going to talk about how great we did on the Observer program in another video uh but you walk in in Maricopa you show your ID they scan your ID right or if it's your two like utility bills uh they come over the polling place see what I did there worker and you know authorizes it and then the ballot on demand printer prints a ballot you know what else it prints it prints an envelope it's printing an envelope when you are there in person and you have already shown your ID this is insane that's what this is it is the result of us having started a system where early voting was supposed to be only by mail uh we never went back uh when people start to change things and add things and as the process is evolving over time we didn't clean it up so you walked in in person you already showed your ID and now they're making you put your ballot in an envelope part of the delay in the tabulation in this election we just had I will take Puma as an example they were tabulating about 20,000 ballots a day they couldn't get the ballots out of the envelopes fast enough Pima doesn't even have that many locations open for inperson early Copa by far by far has the most any of any county in the state and again these are called ballot processing boards they're people that are sitting in teams two different parties pulling ballots out of envelopes pulling ballots out of envelopes and flattening them so they can go through the tabulator well why do we have the envelope when we're there in person already and we show it already day we shouldn't have the envelope there is a bill that is drafted that is sitting in the legislature I thank God for our expanded Republican legislature I hope and pray that Governor Hobbs will sign this bill uh the people of Arizona should not have to wait for people to take the ballet out of an envelope when they were already there in person with the polling workers with their ID there's no reason for an envelope if you are voting early in person but right now as I'm talking to you that's what the statute say so we have to change it so again I'm coming back to to this this bigger issue the way this works in Florida is you have vote by mail you want to vote by mail you you're putting it in an envelope the only time you have an envelope in a polling place in Florida is if you're walking in and you're dropping it off they're allowed to do that in Florida during early voting only and then on Election Day they have to drive to the supervisor's office their supervisor is the equivalent of our recorder and then they drop it off there that's what we need to do our legislature tried to do that um and you know uh for various reasons the governor didn't like it and um some of the county officials didn't like it and so we we were forced to let people walk in and drop it off in the envelope on Election Day but beyond that there was a bigger problem this cycle with a lot of people voted early in person and then they had to open the envelope and that slowed us all way way way way slowed way way way way way down um in Florida back to Florida if you go vote early in person you know what happens so you walk in there are not as many locations as we have but they have locations you walk in you show your ID they use ballot on a man printers I don't I don't really like bot on man printers but that's a story for no day you walk in you show your ID it prints your ballot uh and then they put it in a tabulator they use the same tabulator they use on Election Day right so if we were in marova county and we wanted to fix this issue what we would do CU Maricopa tabulates on Election Day not all our counties do um but in Maricopa we would walk in during 27 days of early voting show our ID generate the ballot do not generate an envelope because then this is not an issue right guys because now there's no envelopes to count during early voting it's it's the count it's a hard count once you tabulate I I have a tape I have a tape from a tabulator of exactly how many ballots went in I have the eole book check-ins I know exactly how many people checked in I know exactly how many ballots got tabulated if we move early voting to be actual early in-person voting and we didn't have all of these envelopes this issue we have where people are rightfully concerned about chain of custody because we're not counting them every day would not exist would it no would not exist because when they're emptying the the the drop off box there is a chain of custody that's created uh back at Central count when they drop them off and we can try to codify the pickups right count the pickups of the drop offs count them when they're dropped off make sure they match but there's not going to be a million of them because every single person that walked into voter early person is not going to have an envelope right they're just going to tabulate it what if you're a county that doesn't tabulate on site on Election Day and there are many of them okay again inperson early voting should look exactly like your election day looks so I walk in and let's say I'm panal I walk in and panal I'm at 27 days of early voting I scan my ID it I check in that's checking in when I'm scanning my ID um and then it generates a ballot and then I drop it I drop my ballot Into The Ballot Box and that's it and we're done okay no more no Moss envelopes during inperson early voting would be great then we don't have all these envelopes waiting to be scanned waiting to be opened all these people opening envelopes we slows this down okay but but I digress so that's a bill I really really hope it passes and I really hope the governor signs it cuz the average person when I explain to them that we are walking in we have showed our ID I am physically there with the election worker and they're making me put it in an envelope people really just like lose their mind and say I don't understand and it it's a relic it's an artifact of the fact that we set up a process where early vote in Arizona doesn't exist we have early vote by mail in Arizona we need to have true early voting true vote by mail and then true election day and once we do that a lot of this will get cleaned up including chain of custody and I encourage everyone um that wants to make sure that this gets included in any kind of Bill trying to straighten this stuff out and really codify these three categories um give your feedback to to your legislators okay but there is an aspect about this that I do want to discuss so when we say um by by its plain terms this statute is only has no application to early because it's down here in polling place election day um there's something else to consider and it is our old friend the elections procedures manual spooky so the elections I love it but the elections procedures manual as we know has the force of law uh today as I'm filming this we have a hearing in our appeal AG goop uh and RNC are still litigating over several Provisions in that manual uh the courts slowed us down a bit um and then we got an adverse ruling and now we're appealing because we're not done and we're not going to be done until everything is the way we all believe it should be I will keep fighting um I will keep fighting uh that's what I do so our president so I want to point out something about the 23 procedures manual on page 76 of the 2023 procedures manual is a very important sentence that applies to this question security and chain of custody requirements for election day also apply to early ballots hello so if that's the case this statute appears to to concern chain of custody and security for sure we're talking about securing and we're talking about counting and we do this on Election Day and everyone's like no Gina you can't argue about this because it's in the wrong section but what about this guys what about this so this is what I would encourage people to look at when you're saying we should be counting them and I'm not saying that I I don't agree with that as you can see I think this is a question that needs to be addressed um I I pick my battles with the resources that I have and the attorneys didn't want to have this this particular argument in this cycle um we had some other things to clean up if I have limited resources which I do living in a finite Universe uh I focus trying to stop ballots from going out to begin with to people who should not be on the voter roles uh you may notice I lost that case on our old friend standing last week judge Lanza um much respect for the court uh said you don't have standing uh Gina sabota uh Arizona Republican party uh voter or third party group none of you have standing under the national voter registration act even though there is a private right to action uh under the nvra uh so I'm not done with that either and I'm going to work on that um but when I have resources I decide you know where best to use them I'm fighting on the procedures manual on a whole host of things including the citizenship issue which is a huge issue I'm fighting on cleaning up the voter list so that these ballots are never created so that these people that aren't here aren't even on the list all right but I encourage those of you who are concerned about this issue to address it um here okay here here here where what does this mean I if this is saying that everything that applies on Election Day applies to early ballots then this whole thing you know where it's like oh Gina it's in the wrong section is obviated by this so somebody somebody tell us what this means um and now that we have time I'm happy to address it so let's see if we can't get some of this cleaned up by the legislation that we draft in this session have a newly expanded majority God is very very good indeed he always is um and now we can try to clean some of this up and differentiate mail voting early voting election day voting and as part of that process let's please try to address this stuff okay and make sure that this is included in whatever we do so that we are having a full chain of custody and we are getting a account of anyone who is choosing to drop off a mail ballot stop calling it early it's a mail ballot um at a polling place during early voting right right and and you know I'm going to encourage the legislature to do that and I hope you do as well uh it's always a pleasure to be with you it's an honor to be your chair um and look for my next video on the poll observers believe Merry Christmas God bless you see you next time