Disputed Fact
The “300,000 ballots” whistleblower allegation originated in the Lake v. Hobbs election contest lawsuit (CV2022-095403), filed December 9, 2022, in Maricopa County Superior Court. Attorneys Kurt Olsen and Bryan Blehm filed a 70-page complaint on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, incorporating testimony from multiple witnesses including at least one Runbeck employee.
The complaint states in paragraph 13: “Testimony by whistleblowers and witnesses with first-hand knowledge shows that Maricopa County officials violated Arizona chain of custody laws for hundreds of thousands of these mail-in ballots… With no chain of custody, there is no way to tell whether over 300,000 ballots cast in Maricopa County are legal ballots.”
Background
Runbeck Election Services is an Arizona-grown, privately owned company headquartered near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Its core business is ballot printing, mailing, and envelope-scanning for elections. For Maricopa County, RES performs a specific and critical function: it prints and mails early/mail-in ballot packets to voters, and it scans the signatures on returned ballot envelopes so that Maricopa County can perform electronic signature verification before tabulation.
For the 2024 general election alone, Runbeck’s facility printed approximately 35 million ballots for counties in eight states — Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, Utah, Florida, and Illinois. The company’s CEO, Jeff Ellington, has publicly stated that the company does not over-print ballots, tracking each through a chain-of-custody process from paper stock to delivery to election offices.
The typical Maricopa County workflow involving Runbeck is as follows:
- Early/mail-in ballots are returned by voters via USPS or drop boxes.
- Maricopa County staff pick up ballots from USPS facilities and drop-box retrieval teams.
- Those ballots are transported by Maricopa County drivers to Runbeck.
- At Runbeck, ballot envelopes are scanned to capture voter signatures.
- The signature images are transmitted electronically to the county’s Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) for signature verification.
- Approved ballot envelopes are returned to MCTEC, where ballots are removed from envelopes and tabulated.
This arrangement — unique among Arizona counties — means Runbeck occupies a critical intermediary position between returned ballots and final tabulation, making chain-of-custody documentation at the Runbeck handoff point a legitimate area of election integrity scrutiny.
Specific Claims by Whistleblower
The Lake legal team incorporated a sworn declaration from a Runbeck employee (whose full identity was not publicly disclosed in summary reporting) containing two core allegations:
Allegation 1 — Missing Chain-of-Custody Documentation:
The whistleblower alleged that on Election Day, November 8, 2022, a total of 298,942 ballots were delivered to Runbeck by Maricopa County drivers without the required “Inbound Receipt of Delivery” chain-of-custody forms being completed or signed. Under Arizona law and the Maricopa County Elections Procedures Manual, every batch of ballots transferred to Runbeck must be documented on standardized transfer forms signed by both Maricopa County staff and Runbeck staff.
The complaint specifically described the workflow that was allegedly bypassed: the required Early Voting Ballot Transport Statement Forms (for drop-box ballots) and the Inbound Receipt of Delivery chain-of-custody forms (for transfer to Runbeck) were the specific documents alleged to be absent or incomplete.
Allegation 2 — Unauthorized Ballot Insertion:
The whistleblower additionally alleged that Runbeck employees were permitted to add their own and their family members’ ballots to incoming batches of ballots being processed, without any documentation, tracking, or oversight. This allegation, if true, would represent a serious chain-of-custody breach enabling the injection of unauthorized ballots into the processing stream.
Maricopa County Response
Maricopa County officials and their spokeswoman Megan Gilbertson consistently maintained that:
- Ballots were transported to Runbeck by bipartisan teams using standard, pre-planned procedures.
- Transfer of ballot envelopes to Runbeck was documented using chain-of-custody transfer slips signed by both elections department staff and Runbeck staff.
- Republican observers were present at Runbeck on election night and subsequent days.
- The deliveries were a routine, planned part of the election workflow described in Maricopa County’s published 2022 Election Plan.
Conclusion
A Runbeck employee’s sworn declaration alleged the absence of required chain-of-custody transfer documentation for 298,942 Election Day ballot deliveries, and the unauthorized addition of family members’ ballots. This testimony was incorporated into a formal court filing, heard by a judge, and rejected for lack of clear and convincing evidence of intentional misconduct or proof of election-outcome impact. All subsequent appellate challenges were also dismissed.
Citations
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- VOTEBEAT: Trump’s ongoing investigations of the 2020 election … – This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local elec…
- Lake v. Hobbs – 2022 Election Contest (AZ) – – On Dec. 9, 2022, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed an election contest in Maricopa Cou…
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