PHOENIX, Arizona (PNN) - February 7, 2025 - Concerns are increasing that Kari Lake's loss to Ruben Gallego in the Arizona Fascist Police States of Amerika (FPSA) Senate race in November was due to malfeasance. For example, many believe around 60,000 votes were transferred from Lake to the unknown Green Party candidate in the race. Now, 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, or PIP, have issued a new report on 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 President Donald J. Trump regime 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 this writer 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 was 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 (Arizona Revised Statutes) 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 (he or she) didn't vote in spite of the records showing (that he or she) 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 ineligible voters cast ballots, since they had registered to vote after the cutoff date. Their research went back to the 2016 election and found over 500 of these voters.
The group also 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 chain of custody 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 their ballot boxes arrive at the BPC (Ballot Processing Center)."
After the groups had 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, or 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 political Parties to move a ballot box from one location to another.
Asked whether independents constitute a "political Party" that could be one of the bipartisan couriers, an election 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 said, "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.