Maricopa County's two top election offices are at odds over video of county employees working late at night inside the secured ballot tabulation center, which the county recorder forwarded to the FBI and the county attorney.
Recorder Justin Heap told FOX 10 that a citizen sent his office the footage and photos, taken inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center late on the night of Oct. 7, and that his office passed them to law enforcement before they spread on social media.
"If you see, you know, questionable things happening in a secured facility after it's been locked down and after Logic and Accuracy testing, it's appropriate that we hand those over," Heap said. "And we did."
What the county says happened
In a joint statement, Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko said the employees were installing software for the county's ballot duplication process on machines kept off the internet. They said the election management system and the machines that count votes were not involved.
The room is on a livestream around the clock, Brophy McGee said, adding that as she understands it, both the FBI and the county attorney have closed their reviews without finding wrongdoing. "There was no incident, it was simply people working late at night," she said.
She also faulted the recorder's office for going to law enforcement without first asking county election officials what the workers were doing, and said employees were put at risk once the images circulated. "Effectively they were doxed," she said.
Supervisor Mark Stewart said Monday that the county manager confirmed the people in the photos were Elections Department employees following a rule that two people must badge in together, and that one of them was updating election software ahead of testing scheduled for the week of Oct. 12.
