Exclusive: Video shows Arizona center processing ballots in manner that alarmed Congress’ monitors

Video footage captured by congressional observers shows a third-party election vendor in Arizona’s largest county processing live ballots and performing signature verification in 2024 far away from the official Maricopa County election center where bipartisan monitors witness such activities, a discovery that prompted the observers to file a formal report alleging “alarming” concerns.

The video obtained by Just the News depicts a visit by one Republican and one Democratic congressional staffer to a third-party printing company responsible for conducting signature verification on ballots during the 2024 election. 

After that visit, the Republican staffer reported back to Congress in a memo, raising concerns about how the county and its third-party contractor were handling ballots, Just the News exclusively reported last week.     

Storage and sorting ballots a serious issue, both parties say

The staffer said that completed mail-in ballots were stored in the same room as blanks and were sorted by a third-party printing company that had no government officials or partisan observers on site.

In the memo, that staffer, a Republican, described in detail his visit to the third-party contractor, Runbeck Election Services, which was hired by Maricopa County to sort mail-in ballots for signature verification in preparation for counting at the county’s main election site. 

The Republican staffer was joined by his Democratic counterpart during the visit, who the staffer says shared similar concerns about what they observed at the facility, according to the memo delivered to the House Administration Committee. That's the legislative panel responsible for overseeing federal elections. 

The video was recorded during a tour of the facility conducted by an individual that the staffer described as Runbeck’s CEO in the memo, which was separately reviewed by Just the News. 

As the Republican staffer noted in his memo to the House committee, there appeared to be no bipartisan election observers at the facility and workers said that no county election officials were present either.

According to the Arizona Secretary of State’s website, election observers may “observe at a central counting place and at each point where ballots are handled or transferred from one election official to another.”

While the definition does not specifically include third-party sorting sites, observers are permitted to carry out their activity at “any other significant tabulation or processing activities at a central counting place.”

An agreement that Runbeck signed with state lawmakers in early 2024 stated the company agreed to allow political party observers to watch the sorting process in its Maricopa facility after Republicans raised concerns about the third-party contract after the 2022 election, Votebeat Arizona reported. 

Neither Runbeck nor Maricopa County responded to renewed requests for comment from Just The News about the congressional staffers' visit to the Runbeck facility in 2024. 

Workers are seen in the video feeding completed mail-in ballots in signature green envelopes through a machine that is supposed to conduct signature verification. The machine sorts those ballots, after which workers prepare them to be shipped back to the main Maricopa County elections facility across town.

Image

Runbeck workers man a ballot sorting machine.

Runbeck_video_1

The footage shows an industrial shelf nearby where incoming ballots from the 2024 election in Maricopa were stored in open USPS boxes, awaiting signature verification. 

Image

2024 election ballots on a shelf in Runbeck warehouse.

Runbeck_video_1

The video shows that just steps away from where workers were conducting the signature verification process on completed ballots, the facility stored pallets of fresh ballots and green vote-by-mail envelopes. 

Image

Pallets of ballots and envelopes stored in Runbeck warehouse.

Runbeck_video_1

The video in its entirety can be viewed below: 

Long-standing, bipartisan issue

Arizona's state Senate was recently forced to turn over election records to the FBI about Maricopa County, Arizona, home to the state’s largest city of Phoenix, pursuant to a grand jury subpoena. 

Concerns about election counting in Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, stretch back more than a decade as the state moved to mostly mail-in ballots.

In the old days, Democrats were the early complainants. More recently, Republicans like President Donald Trump, former gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake and now-U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh have raised concerns about the state’s ballot distribution and counting systems.

The Arizona Senate conducted a massive audit after the 2020 election affected by COVID-19 and concluded there were irregularities. One of the Senate’s findings was an estimate that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted without being reviewed, or "cured" in Maricopa County, more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing that had been acknowledged by the county.

The audit did little to resolve disputes, as Democrats and Maricopa County officials argue the concerns are overblown, while Republicans say they fear there are still vulnerabilities. Those clashes continue into planning for the 2026 election. 

The California Globe reported last week that "Clark County’s [Nevada] mail-in ballots were outsourced to Runbeck Election Services’ facility in Maricopa County [Arizona] where they were allegedly commingled with Arizona ballots (and other western states) in an unsecured warehouse devoid of proper oversight."

The outlet continued to point out that "the U.S. Election Assistance Commission stresses bipartisan witnesses, no unsupervised access, and continuous accountability to prevent tampering, addition, or substitution. When ballots are shipped out-of-state to a private vendor like Runbeck, direct county control evaporates."

Hamadeh, a Republican from Arizona, asked the Justice Department last summer to investigate claims that the Runbeck facility in Maricopa breached protocols during the 2024 general election. The congressman shared similar concerns with the Justice Department, such as the mixing of blank ballots with mail-in ballots and whether proper security procedures were followed.