Latest strategy in fighting election skepticism: Radical transparency

FLORENCE, Ariz. - In this conservative bedroom community of Phoenix, where Donald Trump remains popular and his 2020 loss is viewed with suspicion, election falsehoods don’t fizzle.

They fester and grow.

So as Pinal County officials prepare for another election with the former president on the ballot, they are trying to combat that distrust with radical transparency. Among their strategies:

- Pinal County officials quickly built a $32 million election headquarters that more than quadrupled the previous space and has walls of windows so that more observers can more easily watch the vote-counting process. They added more cameras inside and out to create a trove of surveillance footage.

- Election workers now strap GPS devices onto the cages that transport equipment and ballots to and from polling sites, creating a record of every movement. The need for this came after trying to disprove rumors in 2020 that a school bus filled with voting equipment had been abandoned in a nearby desert town.

- The wiring for machine tabulators runs through see-through grates instead of behind drywall so that officials can prove that the equipment is not connected to the internet and possibly hackable, a popular false theory.

- County leaders launched an outside review of the election and cybersecurity systems to “unequivocally prove the integrity” of the process after a Republican county leader raised doubts about the legitimacy of the July 30 primary. The outcome is expected in October.

“When you know in your soul there is nothing to hide, being open about the process is a no-brainer,” said Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis (R), who helps oversee elections. “Even when you pull the curtain back, there are still people who lurk in the shadows, but we are going to continue to try with logic, accuracy and reason to combat the narrative of distrust in the elections process.”

The new headquarters illustrates how many officials around the nation are trying to rebuild confidence in elections. Trump’s relentless focus on how votes are cast and counted - along with false and fantastical information floated by him and his prominent supporters - has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people who are observing and scrutinizing the process across the nation. In just a few short years, the election process in many states, especially closely watched battlegrounds, has been transformed.

Election officials are hosting open houses and trainings so that those who are curious about or skeptical of the process can see it for themselves. They are video recording ballot-counting procedures so people can watch live streams from their homes - or request the footage later. They are setting up video cameras at ballot drop boxes, which were central to a baseless theory in 2020 that purported “mules” had illegally stuffed the boxes with votes for Joe Biden.

Officials say that while none of these measures will likely prevent the onslaught of election conspiracies - and could actually provide more fodder - it should be easier and faster to disprove fake information.

“We know there are people who are going to take things that they see out of context to bolster or inform their own narrative and that is part of the tension with being super transparent: It potentially leaves you vulnerable for misunderstanding in a moment when we know that absolutely any function in election administration can be weaponized,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials.

Linda Phillips, the administrator of elections in Tennessee’s Shelby County, said her attempts to educate the public are like “emptying the ocean with a teaspoon.” It’s still worth the effort, she said, noting that electronic trackers on critical election components during the 2022 midterm election helped stave off litigation and false claims of missing machines.

“Some of the people who were very skeptical of the process in 2020, we brought them in, we showed everything that we do,” Phillips said. “I wouldn’t say that they are completely convinced, but they’ve at least ratcheted it down a few notches.”

In Mesa County, Colo. - where a former clerk was convicted in August for participating in an election equipment breach after the 2020 election - the top election official hosted open houses and tours during this year’s live elections so people could watch the process unfold with their own eyes. She is also allowing the public to attend training sessions once reserved for bipartisan election judges.

“The more transparent we are, the less skepticism we’ll have,” said Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Bobbie Gross (R).

When voters in Arizona’s Maricopa County received mailed ballots during the primary election this summer, they were also sent a guide in English and Spanish that explained how ballots are counted - and why the process can take so long. After the 2020 election, that timeline contributed to a deluge of misinformation in the county, which is home to Phoenix and more than half of the state’s voters. The guide read: “If you would like to see a higher percentage of results by 8:00 P.M. on Election Night, you should return your early ballot by the Friday before Election Day.”

Maricopa’s elections department also worked with leaders from a Native American tribe that lives in a remote part of the county to create an oral glossary of election terms that includes “fraud” and “drop box.” And officials have hosted dozens of in-person tours of election facilities and launched a virtual one.

The 2020 election unleashed pressures that county leaders in Arizona had not faced before, stemming largely from false notions about Trump’s narrow loss. While much of that attention focused on Maricopa, it also consumed places like Pinal County, where Trump overwhelmingly won. The increased scrutiny demoralized election staff and prompted many to quit, a pattern that played out in election offices around the nation.

Then real mistakes unfolded in 2022, undercutting the confidence election workers and some county leaders had been trying to instill. During the 2022 primary election, some races were missing from tens of thousands of early ballots and many voting sites failed to stock enough ballots to meet demand. For many voters and Trump-aligned candidates, those problems validated the criticism of an error-riddled system. That November, a recount caught another mistake: Hundreds of ballots had not been counted.

Such mistakes were blamed at least partly on cramped facilities built in another era, when population was a fraction of what it is today. Home to more than 425,000 people, Pinal is the state’s fastest growing county, drawing new residents to the county southeast of Phoenix who want lower housing prices, reasonable commutes to the city and wide-open desert views.

County officials decided to invest in a larger facility. They fast-tracked the project, paid for with money in the county’s reserves, so it would be ready for the 2024 primary election in July.

The space was designed with the intricate steps of the voting process in mind, including the printing and storage of ballots, the signature verification procedures for ballots received in the mail and movement of electronic equipment from the headquarters to polling locations. There’s lots of extra space with the expectation that the county population will continue to boom.

The centerpiece of the building is what officials jokingly call “the shark tank,” a glass walled room that provides a panoramic view of the ballot-counting process.

“They say, ‘You’re hiding something, you’re doing something wrong,’” Pinal County Supervisor Jeff Serdy (R), said of doubters. “Okay, what do we do to show you that we’re not? We did it. Now, tell me where that is in this process that this stuff is happening? … We might disprove their theories.”

Standing inside the shark tank on one recent morning provided an up-close view of the preparations underway ahead of November. Ports to ballot tabulators were sealed with plastic barrels so unauthorized flash drives cannot be inserted to introduce viruses without being detected. Doors were also sealed, preventing unapproved people from entering spaces with live ballots. Video of operations inside and outside of the building and from other sites streamed on monitors overhead.

“If I have this on recorded surveillance, I have a trusted source of information to be able to disprove any tomfoolery,” Lewis said. “I can automatically say, give me a date and time, and we can go pull surveillance.”

Through the glass, an election worker was seen watching a computer screen showing the locations of cages that hold ballots and equipment.

When an election is underway, blinking green dots will indicate the cages are on the move. Red dots will mean they are locked and stationary. Election officials know the routes the ballots are being transported on, and the GPS units allow them to monitor for deviations.

“If all the sudden they stop moving … we know there’s an issue,” Lewis said.

The devices helped assure officials that election workers were safe earlier this year when anti-voter-fraud activists tailed a county truck carrying ballots.

The July primary provided a dress rehearsal for the November general election - and officials had to gather evidence to refute false claims.

During early voting, Republican activist Boots Hawks, told friends in an email that two Republican candidates were “behind” in their races, even though Election Day had not arrived and votes had not been counted.

The narrative took off. Pinal County Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh (R), who later lost his primary election for sheriff and claimed that the county’s elections are not transparent, cited Hawks’s correspondence as “potential evidence” of a crime. He demanded the Arizona Attorney General investigate whether election workers had illegally leaked election results. The allegations were quickly deemed “unsubstantiated” by the prosecutors office, which will not open a criminal investigation, said a person familiar with the review who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about it. Hawks seemed to have conflated publicly available voter participation data with electoral results. Hawks said this month in an interview that Cavanaugh’s citation of his email to authorities “got my hackles up” and that he trusts the county’s elections.

Had an investigation moved forward, video recorded near the shark tank would have shown that ballots had not been counted when Hawks sent his email, said a county official familiar with the footage who was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.

When the county governing board - composed of five Republicans - gathered to canvass the election results, Cavanaugh wanted to distribute a different report that he said detailed his discovery of “mathematical” problems with several local races. His colleagues wouldn’t allow him to do so. He later begrudgingly joined them to accept the election results that handed him defeat.

“Aye,” he said, “under duress.”

Soon after, as Cavanaugh’s unfounded claims spread, county leaders announced that outside experts would review the election systems - even though they were confident in the accuracy of the results and the processes that delivered them.

“It is vital that we unequivocally prove the integrity of the Pinal County elections process,” said Supervisor Jeff McClure (R), “so our voters can go to the polls in November and be assured that the outcomes will be fair and accurate.”