Jenny Beth sat down with Gina Swoboda of Arizona. Gina wears many hats, including Executive Director of Voter Reference Foundation, she is a Vice Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, and she has served as an elections official in the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. In this episode, Gina breaks down in detail what is going on in Arizona.
Jenny Beth sat down with Gina Swoboda of Arizona. Gina wears many hats, including Executive Director of Voter Reference Foundation, she is a Vice Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, and she has served as an elections official in the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. In this episode, Gina breaks down in detail what is going on in Arizona.
Gina Swoboda (00:00:00):
If we don't wanna be in a situation where we're all going on election day and something goes wrong, whether willful or unintentional, um, we've gotta vote early.
Narrator (00:00:10):
Keeping our Republic is on the line, and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:00:42):
When it comes to Arizona politics, the big question is, what the heck is going on there? My next guest is perhaps one of the best people to answer that question. Genus Waboda is heavily involved in the state of Arizona, and she wears many different hats In this episode, I guarantee you'll walk away with a greater understanding of Arizona than you ever have before, and I think you'll also gain a little more hope for the future of this beautiful state. Gina
Gina Swoboda (00:01:54):
Thank you. It's great to be with you, miss Jenny Beth. I appreciate that. I do, I have many hats. I have friends that tell me they're going to buy a different hat for each of my hats.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:02:28):
Well, I, it's been such a pleasure to get to know you over the last several years and to learn from you and then to help teach other, other people as well. And I hope we can do some of that today. Right on. Let, let's start with Voter Reference Foundation, because that's more national. What pe and then we'll, we'll go into Arizona and then we'll go into Maricopa. Sure. So that'll kind of be the, the structure for today. So nationally there is Voter Reference Foundation, you are the executive director, and you are doing things not just for Arizona, but around the country. Tell people what, what is Voter Reference Foundation, and then we'll talk about how they can use it locally.
Gina Swoboda (00:03:05):
Thank you. So Voter Reference Foundation, um, is a nonprofit. Um, we are dedicated to promoting election transparency. And, uh, a primary focus of my mission is to publish the voter roll for the entire country, to put them online, for the public, for free, uh, and to do that forever. Um, so, uh, under the National Voter Registration Act, the public has oversight of voterless maintenance. And the, the issue the public has is they can't get the files. They don't know how to get the files, and then they're very large. You know, it, it's a big database file.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:03:40):
What, what are voter rules? What, what do you mean when you say
Gina Swoboda (00:03:43):
That? So, thank you. So every election starts with who's registered to vote, who's eligible to cast their ballot. Um, and then after the election, you get a vote credit in your history that you have cast a ballot and the list of every eligible voter over time, um, it'll show you canceled. You moved, uh, in some states, your party affiliation in some states not, uh, when did you register? Um, that is all contained in a list that is commonly referred to as the voter rolls.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:04:15):
Okay. And those are con usually maintained at a local or a state level,
Gina Swoboda (00:04:19):
Correct? Correct. There are public records. Um, it's a common misperception. People think a state runs an election. A state does not run an election, nor, I would say, would we wish that they do. So, uh, counties run elections, local jurisdictions run elections. So in Arizona, there are 15 counties. There are 15 county recorders, and those county recorders are responsible to maintain the list of all the voters who are eligible, uh, and then as their profile changes over time.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:04:48):
Okay. So your organization, voter Reference Foundation is working to acquire these voter rolls from the, the states around, around the country and make it available online. And how, what, why is that important?
Gina Swoboda (00:05:02):
So
(00:05:04):
I would, I would say particularly, I've, I've always been passionate, uh, about Voterless maintenance and elections process. Um, uh, I'm nerdly in that, in that way that God gave me, uh, after, um, a, a few of the past election cycles, I think the public at large has become aware, um, particularly as more states move to mail balloting, uh, Arizona does this very well. We've, we've done this for a long time. We have a mail ballot list. So if you're an eligible voter and you sign up, we'll mail you a ballot, you, you send it back, you drop it off. Uh, during Covid, a lot of states that had no experience doing mail balloting attempted to do so, uh, to ameliorate the risk to people. I, I, I'm sure they had great intentions, but then you had, you know, tens of millions, upwards of a hundred million ballots throughout the United States going out to addresses.
(00:05:55):
If the voter list is not accurate. Now you have ballots in the mail going to locations where this voter does not reside. Um, and election mail by law, uh, is in most states, and in fact, I believe in all states is not forwardable. So there are just ballots going out, um, cycle after cycle. I get phone calls from all over the country from people saying they received a ballot at their home for a person who has not lived there. I've lived here 20 years, I don't know who this person is. And then they just start getting mail for this person, election mail, and, and it's unsettling. Um, so it's, it's usually important. The entire security of the election depends upon that list being accurate.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:06:37):
So then when you get it and you put it online, what, what ha And that is what you're doing. Yes. Right? Yes. You're getting the list. Yes. You're not just, are you holding the list and keeping it private, or what are you doing with that? No, no.
Gina Swoboda (00:06:47):
Right, right on. Uh, so, um, I acquire the list, the certified list, right? So to these are certified election records straight from the election official. Um, there's another piece of federal legislation called hava, the Help America Vote Act. And that seeks to have one person in every state, one official be designated as the chief election official, uh, that was passed in after the 2001, uh, you know, disputed election in 2000. So the, the, the focus of hava is we want there to be a statewide voter registration database. So while, while we discussed all these counties and local jurisdictions in Wisconsin, it's 1800 almost jurisdictions run the elections. There's a lot of clerks. They work very hard. God bless 'em. They take, so Wisconsin as an example, they each have a list. They conduct their election, and then they send their data files up to the mothership, which is the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
(00:07:42):
And the Wisconsin Elections Commission is consolidating all that data, uh, so that if a member of the public wants to acquire a data file, rather than reach out to 1800 jurisdictions, you contact the Wisconsin Elections Commission, you get the file. So I reach out to the chief election official, I get a certified copy of the file. Um, I do not clean the file in any way. So that means when you look and well, you know, we'll talk about the website, you'll see people who appear to be 200 years old. Um, and the likely reason for that is that when a clerk of some sort was processing their voter registration, they couldn't read the birthday. So they enter like, oh 1 0 1 1900 as a placeholder, and then they're not coming back, uh, and cleaning that up once they verified it. So you, I've seen names of characters from Lord of the Rings.
(00:08:37):
It is possible that someone loves Aragorn and has changed their name to Aragorn
Jenny Beth Martin (00:09:39):
That, that is great. So when they go to that website, what, how do they use it? What are they, why, what would the average listener wanna do when they go to that website?
Gina Swoboda (00:09:49):
So it, it's, it's depends what you're, what hat you're wearing. So I, I would say for the average person, a member of the public, um, that is seeking to do their oversight, uh, under the National Voter Registration Act, you would want to perhaps look at the list for your state. One of the first things I think anyone should do that's interested in, in voter roll cleanup, you have to understand the statutes in your state. What an inactive voter is is completely different in various states. And at the sister site, voter reference foundation.com, I have, uh, worked with my team to helpfully compile what are the voter registration, uh, statutes in your state. So if you go to voter reference foundation.com, top of the page has a red bar, and it says Voter registration guides. And if you click there for every state in the country, it tells you what are the statutes of voter registration?
(00:10:45):
And where I have it, uh, which any state I mapped, I have this, what does each status code mean? For example, inactive, right? So if, if you were a person living in Wisconsin and you, you say, you know what? I'm gonna get involved. I'm gonna get engaged, um, I want to do my oversight, you go to vote ref.com, you click Wisconsin, now you're looking at a list of voters. You can filter them by status. So if you wanted to say, how many voters are inactive in Wisconsin, you'd click to, to inactive. But you have to understand what inactive means. I, I have heard people say, uh, the number of inactive voters in Wisconsin exceeds the population of Wisconsin that's eligible to vote. That's a little, uh, that's accurate, but it's a little misleading because inactive in Wisconsin is canceled In Arizona, if you're in an inactive status in Wisconsin, you can't vote.
(00:11:39):
That means you're deceased, or you're, you're, you've been convicted of a felony and your rights are not restored. Um, in Arizona, uh, when you see inactive, you can vote, uh, you can still vote. That means we have a notice somehow that you moved a piece of mail came to the recorder. So we're starting this process to, to eventually get you to canceled, but you're inactive. So the very first thing a person should do, if they wanna get engaged and they wanna look at voter rolls, uh, is check what the statutes are. Then the next thing you know, like let's say I'm, I'm me and I live on my block and I'm just, you know, gung-ho to, to help clean things up. You can search by address. So for example, it would be highly unlikely if you put in the address of a single family home on your block that there would be 150 registrants in it.
(00:12:27):
Um, you can search by a address and make, and you can see who is registered at, at this house. So if, you know, and this is the example I always use, there's some innocent person out there named Sheila that, you know, I just picked the name Sheila. If you have a sister-in-law named Sheila, who you know, is very energized about voting, and you know, your nephew Jimmy is, uh, let's say in university, uh, in Georgia, um, and you, you're, you are like, you know, I know Jimmy voted in Georgia, but I don't know, you know, Sheila might, might have gotten carried away because she's always talking about how she knows how Jimmy would vote. You can look at your, your sister-in-law's house, her address in Ohio, see if Jimmy is registered there, and see if there's a vote credit for Jimmy in that election. And then if you know where Jimmy is in Georgia, uh, you can look up Jimmy.
(00:13:16):
Now, if Jimmy is the same Jimmy and you're confident it's him, you might wanna call your sister-in-law Sheila and say, Sheila
(00:14:05):
I've, I've had reports from people using the site. Nevada was my first state up. So I received an email from a, a gentleman, um, his wife was still had an active voter registration in Nevada, and it looked like she was voting, but she had moved to North Carolina like 10 years earlier. So they reported that, uh, to the clerk. And I would presume the appropriate steps were taken to clean it up. You have to own your record, right? I moved, you probably hear the New York, it's been a long time since I left New York. Uh, but I canceled my voter registration before I moved. Most people, you're caught up in moving. You don't necessarily think of that. So you can look up yourself, your family, your loved one that's maybe in a nursing care facility. We had a lot of issues in Wisconsin, uh, in the 2020 election. These are our vulnerable voters. So, uh, if you have a relative that's in a memory care unit in another state, uh, you might wish to check the voter registration to make sure that you don't see a vote credit, because someone who, um, has been deemed incompetent by a court is not eligible to vote, and no one is allowed to cast a ballot on their behalf. So there should not be a vote record for your relative.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:15:16):
That's, that's very useful information. So what are those websites again?
Gina Swoboda (00:15:20):
Voter reference foundation.com has toolkits and guides and scorecards. Uh, we, we score states on how transparent their data is. And then vo ref, v o t e r e f.com is where the voter files live.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:15:37):
Okay, very good. Now, let's switch hats and talk about what's going on in Arizona.
Gina Swoboda (00:15:43):
Yes. Uh, beautiful, beautiful Arizona, uh, that we love so much. So we've had a, a, a couple, uh, or three, um, elections where, uh, the way they were conducted with regard to Maricopa County has, in my personal opinion, uh, resulted in a complete loss of confidence Now, in the voters, uh, I, I have, it's, it's gotten progressively worse since 2018. But after the 22, um, election day, I, I can only use the word fiasco. You know, I, I love our election officials. I, I was an election official. That's the polite
Jenny Beth Martin (00:16:19):
Term.
Gina Swoboda (00:16:21):
Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm editing myself. I am censoring myself, right? But it, it really was a fiasco. So, um, there are a lot of voters who wanna vote in person. I happen to be one of them. And, you know, sometimes for work, I, I have to use a mail ballot. That's an option we have in Arizona. That's the law. But there are people for whom, um, going on election day is, is of great importance to them. After, um, the 2020 election, some people, uh, particularly, um, on the right side of the political divide had such a loss of confidence that they wanted to either hold their mail ballot and drop it in person at a polling place on election day, or they wanted to walk in on election day and vote in person. And that is absolutely, uh, our right, you have that right in Arizona, we are not an all male state.
(00:17:14):
Um, I would encourage our policy folks in the elections officials to understand we are not going to be an all male state. Half of the people of Arizona do not wanna go to all male, only male. That being the case, there is an obligation of the election officials to make sure that the election day process is a good one. And there's been a total failure, uh, which has just gotten worse over the last three cycles. And it was catastrophic, uh, in 2022. So, um, by nine 30 in the morning on election day, so I was, I was in a room with great attorneys that are there to, to make sure things go well. And people are, you know, checking id. And we take calls from observers, uh, and other states call 'em poll watchers, right? So by nine 30, I had multiple locations down. Um, the onsite Tabulators, there is not a requirement in, uh, title 16 is where our election laws live in Arizona.
(00:18:11):
There's not a requirement that says you must have onsite tabulation on election day. Tabulation is the act I'm putting my paper ballot into the machine, and it's counting, it's counting the votes, it's tabulating as I'm putting it in the machine. Many counties in Arizona do not have, and it's shocking to a lot of people. Uh, 20 years after Hava passed Hava that we talked about Help America Vote Act, there are, is grant money, federal grant money that's been going to states for over 20 years to enable them to do two main things here. One is create your statewide voter registration database. And another is, uh, to, to purchase equipment, to secure election. So from my position, um, we should have onsite tabulation on election day in every county in Arizona. And we don't, some counties you walk in, you get a paper ballot, you drop it in a bucket, they take the bucket back.
(00:18:59):
The reason that's a problem is if you've made a mistake on your ballot and you have over voted, like let's say house reps, you're supposed to pick two. What if you picked three? If I stick it into the machine, the machine is gonna spit it back out at me and say, Gina
(00:20:05):
Okay? So now all of these people that are waiting online that already had a concern, which is a lot of them, not all of 'em, but they had a concern. That's why they waited till election day. Or they were a person for whom no amount of hard sell of you should really do a mail ballot has worked for these people. They don't want to do that. They wanna go on election day, they're online, they have a concern. Ballots are literally being spit back out of the tabulator. And the polling workers are instructed to say, drop an in door three. And we will, you know, duplicate
(00:20:50):
So if you were already concerned, this is not sounding like a great option for you. So now the lines are growing. More and more locations went down. It was over 64% of the locations. Okay? I, I will can just say personally, I, in my party hat with my county party chair, had conversations in emails in the weeks leading up to election day with the elections director of Maricopa County. And I made very clear my position via the county chair that we knew we were going to have record in person turnout from the party on the right on election day. And I said over and over again, are you sure that you have enough toner? Because in 2020 we had the same problem. It was just limited in scope. I had three vote centers. So maricopa's using a vote center, okay, so which, which this whole problem, and remind me if you will, to come back to the ballot on demand precinct polling place issue.
(00:21:46):
'cause this whole thing would be obviated if we were doing that, but we're not. So in 2020, I had three vote centers, uh, in the Queen Creek area in, uh, Congressman Big's district where this happened. All, all of the ballots were spitting back out and they were putting them all in door three. And I had an observer call because the, the staff, and again, poll workers are, I think, good-hearted people, but um, some of them are new. The training, as much as you can try to train people, you can't cover everything. At that point in 2020, they were inadvertently telling people to put it into spoiled ballot door. 'cause there's door three to duplicate, and then there's a door where you're spoiling your ballot, which is why you have to have poll watchers and observers. The observer was alert and was like, oh, no, you know, and called me. And I was like, no, no. And I, I called the elections director. All of those ballots would never have been counted if that had continued. So we've had this issue before. So I am weeks leading up to the election, everybody on the planet
(00:22:43):
I mean, even, even if you were, uh, out on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf, if you were from Arizona, you were aware that that people had a loss of confidence. And were planning to vote on election day. Not secret. There was a push to vote. There was a push by people, a a group, a big group of people to vote yes. That were like vote on election day, right? So, so knowing that you're gonna have record turnout, and the conversation was going back and forth with the elections director, uh, you know, like we're like, we're gonna have record turnout. We're really concerned is the, is the toner cartridge full or you're gonna run outta paper? And the response was coming back, I election director have benchmarked what the turnout was in 2020. And in 2020 I only had a handful of vote centers that, you know, hit 1200 people.
(00:23:25):
And to which my response was, oh, we're gonna blow that away. And that's unusual because it's a midterm. However, it's not, if you take into account that, you know, I have a third of of this party that's absolutely not gonna vote by mail. And they're positioned, by the way,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:24:09):
Why don't you just give full cartridges? Period. This is what
Gina Swoboda (00:24:24):
This is, and this is I think, a core of the problem. And, and what I always say is you have to have the will to run an election. If, if Maricopa County is spending the last time I checked less than half of 1% of its budget on elections, and elections are one of the enumerated duties, uh, that they are supposed to, I am not interested personally in the temperature of the concrete outside a s u. And I do not think that we elected the board of supervisors to measure the temperature of the concrete outside a S u. And if they wish to do that, that's up to the voters to decide whether or not they think that's a great thing. And I love the planet. I live on it too. I, I want it to go well. But I do know that they a hundred percent were elected to run an election.
(00:25:03):
And I do know that we've had three election cycles in a row where there have been serious process issues, and it has now been catastrophic. And to say, um, to come out repeatedly and say, this was the best election ever, and this was a, a minimal problem and it was addressed is just as is garbage. That, uh, like gaslighting, it's an insult. It is an insult. And it, and it frustrates people. It is not getting us to a place, uh, where voters can have confidence and participate. And my rock bottom concern and all of these things is people will stop participating. I can't keep telling people, you know, don't worry
(00:25:58):
So Maricopa County, um, retained a former state Supreme Court justice named Ruth McGregor, uh, hats off to a, a wonderful person to do an investigation, an independent investigation of what happened. They released a report, Okie had a, a fuer that you couldn't, you know, take it out. And they didn't tell us that this pound paper wouldn't work. Okie issued a, a statement saying, okay, nobody contacted us. You did this investigation. Not a single person contacted them. The findings on the, the fuer being that's not true on this printer model. The manufacturer specs that come with the printers clearly tell you don't use this pound paper. Um, and they expect the county attorney's office to issue a correction. So now we are in June and we are still having problems with understanding whether or not that report, um, has addressed the concerns. If, if the reports that are coming out about what happened are still being questioned by the person who manufactured the equipment, it's the loss of confidence is profound. And so, and I think that what we have now is it's overflowing, uh, into, into kind of other realms, uh, in, into the political realm, if you will.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:27:04):
Well, I think that that's true. Not even do I think it's true. It is true. And in Georgia, I think that by and large, the election in 22 was an improvement over the election in 2020. And, and that's good, right? Yes. So I'm not saying it was perfect, and everyone from Georgia, don't worry, I'm not naive to the problems in Georgia, in Arizona, we can't say that. No,
Gina Swoboda (00:27:30):
It's,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:27:30):
It, it's so much worse. But the problems in Georgia, I mean in Arizona and in Maricopa, it's not even all of, well, it is a good of Arizona, but especially Maricopa, it is having an effect around the entire country because people are going, well, I don't even know if it matters if I vote, because if I vote, yeah, my vote won't count. And even if I vote here in, in, um, Ohio
Gina Swoboda (00:27:55):
Or,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:27:56):
Or Iowa or wherever, my vote is gonna be canceled out by the really bad problems in, in Maricopa, I
Gina Swoboda (00:28:03):
A hundred percent.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:28:04):
And it's, it's just, it's, it's,
Gina Swoboda (00:28:05):
It's
Jenny Beth Martin (00:28:05):
Unacceptable. It is unacceptable. It is grievous yes
Gina Swoboda (00:28:08):
Issues, and it's shaking the bedrock. You know, the, this group of people is very fond of talking about protecting democracy and we're in a constitutional republic, but the form of our, uh, elections, we, we have a representative democracy. Yeah. So, um, maybe less time talking about saving our democracy, protecting our democracy, and a little more time invested in executing the process. Well, that is the bedrock of the foundation of that process. Because if we don't have that, we don't have confidence. It doesn't matter how many times you, you hashtag things at people, uh, they're just gonna kind of drop off and not participate. Uh, and historically that's just not good
Jenny Beth Martin (00:28:42):
Gina Swoboda (00:28:51):
Uh, a hundred
Jenny Beth Martin (00:28:52):
Percent. And the Department of Justice acknowledges and their civil rights division for, uh, for elections, there's a civil rights division within that, that if you do anything to suppress the right to vote, that is a violation of a person's civil rights. And yet that is what's happening here. Yes. And it is the effect that it is happening here. Uh, yeah, I much more than a stupid meme that might've been posted on Twitter. I was just
Gina Swoboda (00:29:16):
Gonna say, it's my understanding some guy that did a meme
Jenny Beth Martin (00:30:28):
No, it's not acceptable. And that attorney, and I don't know the attorney, and I don't have to worry about having respect for the attorney like you do 'cause I don't live here. But frankly, that attorney is, is failing at upholding the Constitution. The job isn't just about scoring points and winning in court. The job is about making sure that what you are doing is the right thing and that you're upholding the Constitution of Arizona, and that you're upholding the Constitution of the United States. And when you're worried about winning in court at all costs, rather than making sure that you have, you and the county have done the right thing the entire time and held the proper election, um, it it's disgraceful. Amen. And, and honestly, and I I have said this all along about what I saw happen in 22 2 before the results were in, as I was watching what Ha unfolded on election day and watching the videos and the issues that, that were coming in, I said, it doesn't even matter who's declared the winner. It, it doesn't matter if the candidates, the, the Republicans win or the Democrats win, right? It doesn't matter. This election needs to be redone. It is a disaster. And there's n neither side is going to have faith in the outcome of this election. Um, if their candidate did not win
Gina Swoboda (00:31:49):
Ab absolutely a and I mean, and then you have, then you, you're gonna take office without a mandate because regardless of what the canvas of the vote says, the vote count was, if, you know, and polling is showing like, uh, not just a majority of the party on the right, but like nationally, like if you poll rasmussen's like looking nationally, people of the party on the left that happened to be, in this case, the, the party that won the entire executive branch out here, uh, think there was a problem. So you, you can't ignore it and hope it goes away and talk through it and just basically, you know, pat voters on the head and call them ignorant and send them home because they don't know any better. And, and this is kind of the pattern that's been developing. Um, and just to circle back to this polling precinct issue, this will keep happening if we keep using ballot on demand printers.
(00:32:38):
That's what this failure was. Okay? And the reason for that is this vote center model, right? So on, on a larger scale, people like precinct voting. So here's what I don't understand, and I do understand, but I think it's a political thing. But let's, let's present it this way. There are advocates who are constantly talking about choice. So the people in, in Arizona, uh, the county election officials, we want choice for the voters, right? We want you to have options. That's why we want the mail ballot. Well, precinct polling places make it easier for you to vote because it's closer to your house. It is literally the precinct around your area. It's designed that way. Usually it's not even more than a mile. You can roll radius from your house. Yeah, you can, if you're, if you can get there, you know, your, you know, your area where you live, you know how to get there.
(00:33:24):
That is your area where you can go. The move to vote centers, they're claiming they, the advocates that, that like this model are like, well, now you can vote anywhere. Okay, well that's, that's a point. However, in Maricopa County, when you look at where the vote centers are, uh, and when they present the election plan, um, the elections director for election day voting in Maricopa County, he's always very proud when he's presenting it to the board of supervisors. You know, they do this on, on YouTube livestream to say, look, I put them all along the light rail. Look how many there are along the light rail. Well, you know what, what's not along the light rail
(00:34:12):
Now they're, they're going outside their area. They're outside their neighborhood, they have to have a car or they're not gonna get there. I, it is my personal opinion that this is a cast on steam nudge effort to push people to voting by mail. Because if I'm an elderly suburban voter and I don't drive anymore, I can no longer get to my voting location. I now have to go down to the vote center, or I can send it in the mail. And, um, you know, the legislature out here worked very hard to push through some process driven policy. Uh, that was moderate policy. It was not political to improve election day experience for the voters. One of them was tabulate early ballots on site. People compare us to Florida often, and they say, how can Florida, who has a larger population, have their results in? And Arizona looking at you, Maricopa County is taking three and a half weeks.
(00:35:07):
What people need to understand about Arizona is we don't have early voting. We have early mail voting. So in the 27 days of early voting, you can go into any one of these vote centers 'cause your precinct's gone. Right? And that's the other thing. If you want vote centers, do it In addition to precincts, don't do it in lieu of precincts. We had a bill for that. Here comes the veto. Okay? Uh, then we tried to say, let's tabulate on site the early ballots so that these voters who want to get the ballot in the mail gives them time to do research. They fill it out. That's all great. They wanna walk in, show their ID and tabulate it. Counties don't like that either. I, I tried to give them $10 million in a bill
(00:35:53):
So that's just Maricopa and Pima, that's Phoenix and Tucson for folks out there have one location that has early ballot tabulation per legislative district. And they still don't want that. They still came out against that. They're coming out against anything that would improve the election day process. And they are doing that in my opinion, because they want us to go to all mail. So anything that's going to make election day better, they're, they are going to come out and their official position is, no, we reject this bill and they tell, uh, and we pass it through the legislature. I've got a one vote majority for the party of the right, uh, in both houses, but you know, they're gonna get vetoed. So you can't have a vote center model, which is everyone can vote everywhere without ballot on demand printers because everyone's got a different school district, a different water district.
(00:36:38):
So what happens is you walk into a vote center, scan your license, and the ballot on demand is printing your ballot for you based on where you live. Hans v Spassky always tells us from Heritage Foundation, from Heritage, and who worked in the voting rights, uh, division of the, of the D O J, um, the gold standard for every precinct, you should have 110 to 125% of the paper ballots pre-ordered for every voter you have. You cannot have pre-ordered paper ballots in a vote center model because I have no idea who's gonna walk in. And there are tens of thousands of ballot styles in a county as big as Maricopa. So the refusal to revert to precinct polling places means we cannot pre-order ballots, which means we're always gonna be at the mercy of these printers. And this equipment is not, um, tested, regulated, certified in the same way that that other election equipment is.
(00:37:32):
It's outside the scope of like logic and accuracy or election equipment certification. So people, it, it's gonna happen again. And it's just kind of been growing. So I think it's a mistake. The the Vote center model is, is a problem. Also, think about this, how, and this is part of what happened, how can I predict how many voters are gonna walk in to any given location? I don't know if you know Lisa was going to see Aunt Susie that day and she's like, oh, I have, I, oh look, there's a vote center. I think I'll just vote. I don't know where people work. I don't have a record of where they work, how close they are to where they work. You. It's a shot in the dark to be able to gauge what your turnout is gonna be in a ballot, uh, on demand vote center model.
(00:38:12):
Whereas in a precinct place, you know exactly what the turnout's gonna be because it's restricted to the voters that live in the precinct, which was upheld in Verna VI V D N C, that was the ballot harvesting and the precinct based voting. Wait, explain what that, what do you mean by that? Sorry, I went off on my tangent. Uh, so, um, Arizona passed a ballot trafficking ban, ballot harvesting ban. So we don't want people going door to door. Gimme your ballot, Jerry. I'm, I'm really excited that you want this job and my boss sent me here to get your ballot and watch you vote no. Uh, so we don't want other people collecting people's mail ballots. Part of that case was the precinct based polling, um, restrictions. If you are in a precinct based model, so, you know, Gina lives in precinct 1, 2, 3, Gina votes in precinct 1, 2, 3.
(00:38:59):
Or Gina could go to any vote center if Gina goes to precinct 1, 2, 5. And it's not a vote center that when you check in, the clerks tell you they're very carefully trained. And I, I've been a a polling place worker as well. Uh, they say, Gina, this is not your precinct. You need, and they will print the address out on a little tape and say, go to this precinct. Or if you had a hybrid where vote centers and precincts, you could say, or you can go to any one of these vote centers any day of early voting, right? But let's say it's election day, if I insist on voting in the wrong precinct, I'm gonna have to vote a provisional ballot. And it is not gonna count because I have decided willfully to vote in the wrong precinct after I have been informed I'm in the wrong precinct. So we got sued over that. They didn't like that. They want every, they want us to count all these provisionals of people who decided to go to the wrong place. Um,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:39:47):
And that's important because if they're getting a ballot, are they getting the ballot for their precinct? No. So then they're voting for school board. That's right. Or city council for people that won't even
Gina Swoboda (00:39:57):
Represent them. That's a hundred. And that's,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:39:58):
And if you care about democracy, you don't. That's right. You shouldn't want that.
Gina Swoboda (00:40:01):
Right? Why do I want people to get a ballot to, to have a voice and a raise that doesn't affect them for jurisdiction. They don't live in a hundred percent. Thank you for that. So that is why, uh, we will not count those. And that was part of the bevi V D N C case that went to the Supreme Court, and that was upheld. And, and as a result, as soon as that decision came down, Pima County, which was up until 2022, a precinct based polling model shifted to vote center model. And people don't realize Pima County had a catastrophic failure as well in 2022. But because Pima County doesn't have the onsite tabulation on election day, they were dropping them in the bucket when they got back to central count. Central counts where the big tabulators are. Um, it was spitting the ballots back out just like it was in Maricopa because they had ballot on demand printers. There was a problem. Pima County duplicated 22,000 ballots in a, in a handful of days after election day. And most people don't realize it happened because the machines weren't on site. So the voters didn't see it. It happened back at, at central count
Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:01):
When you're duplicating what is duplication? Just explain that.
Gina Swoboda (00:41:05):
So, uh, it's manual in Pima County. Um, so it's literally people sitting together at a table, um, and they're supposed to be like independent and Democrat or Republican and Democrat or libertarian and independent, not one party. Uh, and they're looking at the ballot, the paper ballot, and they're like, what was the voter intent? What was the voter trying to do? And then they recreated on a new paper ballot. So they're literally gonna go, you know, they voted for Jack, they voted for Jill, they voted for Bob. Um, and then if there's one where they can't tell, they have to come to an agreement about what did that person mean? So they are literally recreating ballot after ballot after ballot. Yes. And so to do 22,000 with limited staff in that time window, you're likely to make errors 'cause we're human
Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:47):
Beings that's scoring. Yeah.
Gina Swoboda (00:41:48):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:49):
So that, that is a huge problem. And what you're saying is that Pima County, once the Supreme Court said that the ballots don't have to be counted if the voter willfully voted in the wrong precinct. Yeah. Instead of making sure that they continued and had the precinct model, they were just like, okay, we'll get rid of the precinct model and go to the vote center
Gina Swoboda (00:42:09):
Model. Yeah. And then had the ballot on demand printers and, and then had had this kind of, uh, again, catastrophic experience.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:42:16):
I, in the vote center model is, I, I just think it is, it's very, very problematic. It, there's nothing, it is much more cumbersome for me to go to a vote center that is five or 10 miles away from my house. It it may be closer to my work, but then I've gotta get to work early or leave work late or go during lunchtime. Whereas if it is a mile from my house or the school right up the road that I pass every day going to and from my neighborhood no matter what, and I just slide in there, vote and and decide right back out, there's nothing more convenient than than that.
Gina Swoboda (00:42:57):
That's right. And talk about, so convenience, and by the way, people said, oh, when we do the vote center model, it's gonna increase turnout. No, it has not increased turnout. It has absolutely not increased turnout. Um, and so one of the arguments that you get from the election officials is, well, the reason we can't do the precinct polling places is because it's too hard to retain the facilities because the schools have decided that they don't wanna participate anymore. Uh, and we trying to stay away from churches, I guess, because they don't wanna offend anybody 'cause they think it's offensive. Um, so we don't have the location, so there's a bill for that, right? So we wrote a bill, we, but we, the legislature, uh, wrote bills that said, uh, it's already the law in Arizona that a public school must permit use as a voting location unless they can demonstrate that there's a, a danger to the children.
(00:43:45):
So Senator Jay Kaufman had a beautiful bill, uh, that said, okay, we're gonna make it a school holiday. So now it's a school holiday so the children are not there. So it is not a danger to the children. And you will use, if you were a, a public school, um, and you had a standalone gymnasium, we will block that day out, make that a school holiday, uh, and now look, now everybody can go. And so the next thing, the, the response to that bill, and we gave them a million dollars in that bill, uh, to, and, and, uh, Senator Mesnard had a similar bill where he said, okay, uh, let's, let's say every single, uh, local county or state government facility must permit its use as a polling place. Um, and you can have vote centers in addition to the precincts, right? The pushback from the counties was no.
(00:44:37):
And then the pushback from advocates on the left end of the spectrum was, well, now you're, you're making it impossible. If the kids have the day off, then how am I gonna get the time to go vote now, now I can't work. So people that were not concerned about shutting down every school in the United States of America for 22 months during covid, uh, and did not care about how those parents were gonna go to work, suddenly think having one day as a holiday. And these are the same people who say it should be a national holiday. So it like, you know, it's just the shifting sands of the argument. If it's a national holiday to vote, then the kids aren't gonna be in school. And and I, when my kids were little, took them with me because I'm proud to vote. I'm so proud that we have the opportunity to vote in this country. And I think it's a, a hugely important thing to, for the kids to see you doing, you know, your civic duty. Um,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:45:20):
Yeah, my parents took me to vote. I remember standing in line out in a, going to vote in a, in a fire station with my mom. Yes. And, and that's how she taught me that, you know, this is how you actually vote. And this is what I do while I'm voting. And I did the same with my children.
Gina Swoboda (00:45:35):
It makes you more likely to participate because it's part of your, your civic, uh, life, your upbringing, you know. But, but yeah, it's just, look, I've come to the conclusion after the last session of a legislature that, uh, the county election officials in the state of Arizona are not going to do anything to improve the election day process because they do not want to, because they do not have the will to continue to have, uh, in-person voting. And they want to shift us to all mail. So getting back to our Florida analogy, in Florida, when you vote early in person, you're sticking your ballot in a tabulator in Arizona, when you vote early in person, they're handing you an envelope and a ballot. Even if you, you show up in person, you got 27 days, here's your envelope and here's your ballot. Vote your ballot, put it in your envelope, seal your envelope, sign your name.
(00:46:19):
So I've showed ID
(00:47:01):
Maricopa has a bigger budget. So they can buy equipment and they can do this, and they just do, I don't know how else to say it. They just do what they want. They've been not fully signature verifying those early in-person ballots. That's why you see videos like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Right? But that's what the law says. And we have a process in the United States where if you don't like what the law says, you, you go to the legislature and you fix it. You don't just do things your own way because for expedience, because you're you and you're the great state of Maricopa. So Florida's, all of those early ballots have already been tabulated. They're on a little, little digital card, and all they have to do is stick it in the reader and get the count.
(00:47:43):
In Arizona, every single early person, whether you did it in person or in the mail, all has to go through signature verification. Then we gotta pull it outta the envelope, flatten it, tabulate it. If there was an error on it, duplicate it, adjudicated. I mean, it's, it's, I I will tell you, because these bills are getting vetoed. Um, I think that this election, uh, for 2024, I think the entire world, because Arizona's 11 electoral votes are incredibly important for who's gonna determine the presidency, the world caress about who's the president is gonna be sitting like this for like a good three weeks and for a month. Yeah, for a month. And given what happened to the people that tried to vote early in person, I'm gonna have more people. The the biggest problem, and what I tell people is of all of the beautiful options and do what works for your heart on how you vote, the quote, worst way for the purposes of getting your results in on time is to take that mail ballot and drop it off inside on election day, because they stopped doing signature verification to shift to election day operations.
(00:48:48):
So now you're gonna have, in the last cycle, we had 300,000 people do that in Maricopa alone. 300,000 people walked in on election day, dropped it in the bucket, in the, in the envelope. So it had a, now what should have happened is the county recorder staff supposed to pick up those drop offs, take them back to central count log, how many there are, and only then can you take them to your vendor, in which, in the case of of Maricopa is run back to scan the signatures. They said they were overwhelmed. I'm sure they were
(00:49:37):
But because of what happened with people who tried to vote in person in Maricopa, I predict as we sit here that the number of people that are gonna walk in their mail ballot and drop it is going to be in excess of 300,000, could possibly be 400,000 or more. So we're not gonna have like three and a half weeks. We're gonna have like four and a half weeks if, if this continues. And, and you have to have the will to make the process better. They are invested in not making the process better for voting in person because they have their own plan. I'm sure it's easier to have all of the votes come to you. Um, again, love, love election officials, but you don't have to have that job if you don't, if it's too stressful to go find poll workers and go find a facility, we're trying to make law to help you, you know, if it's too
Jenny Beth Martin (00:50:22):
Hard for you to follow the law, then
Gina Swoboda (00:50:25):
There's a lot of jobs in the world. I hear there that the vacancy rate is quite high.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:50:29):
Gina Swoboda (00:51:04):
A hundred percent. And, and in, uh, you know, we have the Purcell principle. So for many years we had a county recorder in Maricopa named Helen Purcell. She was tremendous. She started the mail voting. The Supreme Court, uh, of the United States has the Purcell principle of which is like, if you're too close to the election, you don't wanna start to change the process 'cause you can confuse the voters. So to have one county that's just kind of doing their own thing out there, when that's not what the process is, is confusing to the voters. And we have a problem with this because we wind up in litigation. And the problem when you, you try to go to litigation, is if you try to argue about, look, they're not following the process. They didn't follow the process in 2020. They didn't follow Maricopa, they didn't follow the process in 2022.
(00:51:47):
Chain of custody signature verifying mail ballots early, et cetera. Okay. Uh, the way they do it for, for, I can hear in my head that the election director arguing when you're ready, um, if you go too early, they will say it's not ripe. If you try to go, when they start, when you, if you wait until early voting starts 27 days before election day in Arizona, and you see them start to do things. 'cause we have observers. The observers right away are like Gina, they're not putting, uh, serial numbers on the duplicated ballots. 2020. If I tried to go to court, then they would say it's latches because the process has already started. The
Jenny Beth Martin (00:52:20):
Courts would.
Gina Swoboda (00:52:21):
Yes. And, and, and so you have a standing issue. It's too early, it's too late. People, the, the people, the people have to understand that there is a way to enforce the law. To your point about what the Board of Sheriffs are saying and what everyone is going through, it's not a suggestion. It's the law. And when I grew up, and I'm a Gen Xer, ignorance of the law was no excuse. If I did something that I didn't know was unlawful, because there are so many laws, I would still get prosecuted. Yes. Because I'd say it's no excuse that I don't know. So clearly these people know what the rules are and they're just choosing not to follow them. And there thus far has not been any successful attempt to force them to abide by the rules. And while they may think that's just hunky dory and they're gonna keep going on their way, the total collapse in confidence will, will have a knock on effect that is just very detrimental to the people and to the whole country.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:53:09):
Okay. So now that everyone in the audience is going, okay, Arizona
Gina Swoboda (00:53:48):
Yes. AZ free enterprise, the Arizona Tea Party, easy z az, um, save Arizona. There, there are a lot of, uh, groups engaged. And so this is the penultimate question that I get now is tell me why I should vote. And, um, and I would, I would caution people, there are folks whose job, you know, they used to say, don't feed the trolls. When we first started having like, comment boards, there are people out there in the world who get paid to demoralize you and go onto threads where you are and say, yeah, there's no point in voting. Oh,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:54:19):
Oh by the way, we know now from the Department of Homeland Security and what the Media Research Center has done that the Department of Homeland Security has given grants
Gina Swoboda (00:54:29):
Out. Oh, fantastic.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:54:31):
For, um, claiming that groups like mine and others, oh my God, are domestic terrorists. Oh yeah. At any rate, there is a, um, new information out because of these grants that is saying that a presentation that was done at a university in Ohio, the person who is presenting the information. So we go onto these boards and work to disrupt the groups and cause chaos in the groups. There you go. And some of what we do isn't even legal. And they're being that's lovely paid money by the government from the grants, from the Department of Homeland Security. But the point is that sometimes the the trolls are very, very real. Yeah. And they are there. And many of them are there for the specific purpose of disrupting our organizations and causing harm to our organizations. I just wanna highlight that.
Gina Swoboda (00:55:21):
Thank you. Thank you. And that's, and it's frightening because there's the First Amendment, it was not a suggestion. It was, you know, correct. One of, of the foundation of the bedrock. Um, but yes, so for people that are demoralized and they have every right to be, you know, there is no way to rationalize what took place in Maricopa in 2022. Uh, the gaslighting is profound. The refusal of the officials to acknowledge their failures is, um, disgraceful. However, you, I'm gonna come back to my New York lotto tagline. Okay. You have to be in it to win it. You know, you are making it easier for them if you are not voting. Uh, the 2016 election is illustrative in this regard. Um, I do not believe that the Party of the Left saw that candidate in that wave coming in 2016. I, I, the, the, there was a, a, a, um, imbalance in the funding to the campaigns.
(00:56:26):
And it, it was, it was truly just, uh, a kind of an earth shattering, uh, turnout model. Um, people who believe that the whole thing is kind of jerry rigged against us, uh, or us as voters, right. And us in our will, not us as a party, us as voters, uh, in our intent being demonstrated in the outcome. Um, that's a high bar to prove. If you, if you believe that you need to, you need to vote harder. Yes, people laugh about that. But you do, you need to commit to you personally. Take three people you know that did not vote, that do not vote, that are not active. Take them to the polls. Do like a Scooby-Doo van thing and say, let's all go. We're all going to vote. Do it early. Do it. In one of the 27 days of early voting in Virginia, it's 45 days of early voting.
(00:57:15):
Virtually every state has a form of early voting commit to take your friends and your acquaintances and say, you know what? This is too important. If we get out there and we get out there early, then there's not gonna be a potential shenanigan where someone else gets my mail ballot and and does something else. 'cause I was there, I was there early in Arizona, pre 2018. The Republican party voted early by mail and they would mail it back right away. So the pattern was, uh, the party of the right banked their votes. And then the party of the left was predominant on election day, but they couldn't make up the margin after 2018. It started flipping and then it was completely inverse by 2022, they, whether you think it was intentional or you think it was a collapse of the system, you have to acknowledge that everybody waiting to vote until election day in Maricopa created a situation where there were long lines.
(00:58:04):
If I'm an elderly voter and my precinct polling place doesn't exist, and I don't have a mail ballot, and I go down to the line, and this is what's interesting to me, senior citizens are not considered a protected class under the Voting Rights Act. So, although you're protected in virtually every other thing in your life from discrimination, if you're 78 years old and you're trying to stand on the line and it's three and a half hours long and you don't even know where you are 'cause it's not your precinct polling place anymore, and you can't stand anymore, there is no recourse for you. You, you walk away or you hobble away. 'cause you're hurt and you can't stand anymore. So if we don't wanna be in a situation where we're all going on election day and something goes wrong, whether willful or unintentional, um, we've gotta vote early.
(00:58:49):
And I, you know, so, but not voting is just making it easier, um, to lose. You've gotta be in it to win it. So I, I encourage people, there are efforts, there are many groups. We're doing education, we're working with the legislature. Uh, there's, there's litigation. I, you know, I feel strongly that there's probably gonna be a lot of litigation in this six month window because it has to be done ahead of time. Because once you get into the election, you can't do it. Um, and there's prayer, uh, and that is ultimately gonna decide, you know, what happens. But, but you have to, God helps those who help themselves, and you have to take an affirmative step forward to make the situation better. And I just urge everybody that I know, take three friends, make sure you all go vote in, in Arizona in 2022, turn out in Yavapai and Mojave, which are very red counties.
(00:59:43):
And I know that the parties worked incredibly hard out there. It was down from 2018 to 2022. It was down. And part of why it was down, I believe, is because people had their mail ballot on the counter and they were gonna go on election day because they had, they had heard, I don't know, I don't trust the mail. I don't know. Uh, and then if something happens, if little Susie is sick, Mojave, uh, these areas are, are spread apart, you have to drive far to get to a place to drop off your mail ballot and you can't put it in the mail on election day, it's too late. So I think our turnout was down, uh, because some of the messaging might've inadvertently wound up with people that would have otherwise voted by mail, not voting by mail. And then you had the disaster in Maricopa where people who tried to vote on election day could not effectively vote.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:00:28):
And once they heard that, yep. Because the problems were happening early and by noon. Yep. It, it had spread not just around Arizona, but around the entire country. They may have just been like, not even give up. Not even. Yeah.
Gina Swoboda (01:00:38):
Yeah. We tried to go to court, we went to court to ask for the polling places to be, uh, kept open for an hour and the judge said, no latches, you came, it's too late now. Uh, and then, and then, and then extended to polling places in Navajo County, which did not have a catastrophic failure. So, um, yes, I, I do think that there are people that probably just gave up and said, oh, it'll be okay. Uh, and now you
Jenny Beth Martin (01:01:01):
Can't do that. Yeah. You have to do, yeah.
Gina Swoboda (01:01:03):
Yeah. We are, we are a day after the anniversary of D-Day and so many people, and I don't, you know, I know everybody's heart. Uh, they've worked so hard, um, to get, to get the result, to get out the vote to register people. Um, so many people have given up so much for us. Uh, we have to keep trying because that's what people want us to do, is to give up and go away and stop voting. And while I agree that I have talked to people that are like, basically their position is, yeah, but if you start pushing mail voting and voting early, you're doing what the counties want because then the data is gonna show, look how many people are voting early. We really don't need polling places anymore. I can give my personal assurances that as long as I am here, I
(01:01:50):
And there are plenty of people that will, we will stand together to make sure our polling places for election day stay open. But what, what I think we don't wanna do, now I'm gonna put on the political hat as the third vice chair. What we don't wanna do is, um, leave our people vulnerable to a catastrophic incident like that. Because if the Democrats have already banked their votes and the Republican party all waits till election day and we have another catastrophic failure, our votes just aren't coming and we can't make up the margin. So I encourage people, have the people send it in. It doesn't mean that they're gonna get to flip us to all mail without your voices being heard. Um, we all know our legislators, um, on both sides of the aisle, we have a one vote majority. It's not just the top of the ticket, which is urgent. It's the races close to you. It's the school board race, it's the county tax assessor. All these county races are on the ballot in Arizona this year. So the board of supervisors oversees election day, the county recorder, right, who oversees the voter list. All of these people are up for election
Jenny Beth Martin (01:02:48):
In 2024.
Gina Swoboda (01:02:49):
In 2024. So if you want to effectuate change in the elections process for election day, your board's of supervisors are the people making those decisions about how that works. They appoint the elections director. If you're worried about the voter list not being accurate, that's your county recorder who's tasked with that. So all those people are gonna be on the ballot. Don't give up the chance to go and vote and cast your vote to try to effectuate a positive change. Because short of replacing the executive branch as we know, that's what we're gonna have to do. We're gonna, we're gonna have to, uh, replace those seats. And that's the end of the political hat.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:03:24):
Thank you. Well, very good. I I think that you gave a lot of information about what's going on in Arizona. You taught people about voter reference foundation and we're giving people actionable items. And right now, just the average voter, the most simple, the simplest action item is to vote yes. And to get other people also to go and vote. And then if they want to be involved with election integrity, maybe they're going, yeah, well I'm gonna vote, but what else can I do? Yes. There, there are places to go. You can be involved with T pretty p Treats action. You can go to Voter Reference Foundation. Yes. And look at the voter rolls. And if you sign up with us for, um, election integrity work, we connect you with the Election Integrity Network and, and other partners to, to help educate you and get you even more active.
Gina Swoboda (01:04:10):
Absolutely. And you know, they say always be closing. Right? Always be registering. So I take, every time I take an Uber
Jenny Beth Martin (01:05:21):
Well, thank you, Gina, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for all the work you do and all the mini hats you wear. My pleasure. And we're so glad you joined the Jenny Beth Show today.
Gina Swoboda (01:05:30):
God bless you. Thank you everybody.
Narrator (01:05:32):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:05:52):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you wanna be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications on whichever platform you're listening to. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow and I appreciate it very much.