Here are the records the RNC is stupidly suing Maricopa County over

The RNC and AZGOP sued Maricopa County over records relating to poll workers in the August primary; the records make them look even dumber.

My ears perked up when I heard about a lawsuit over public records in Arizona, but then when learning it was the state and national Republicans suing over records not long after requesting them while Maricopa County is deep in election preparation for November I had to take a look at what they were whining about.

I asked the county for all the records the Republican National Committee received already and wanted to see some more background communications from the attorneys.

For some necessary background:

Rosalind Helderman @PostRoz

The RNC accused Arizona's most populous county of shutting Republicans out of poll worker jobs. County officials say that's not true and accuse the party of purposely spreading misinformation, @patrickdmarley @yvonnewingett report.

washingtonpost.comRNC seizes on political affiliations of poll workers in swing statesIn Arizona, election officials see this as a new attempt to spread misinformation and lay the foundation to contest results should GOP candidates lose.

Thomas Galvin - Maricopa County Supervisor ☘️ @ThomasGalvin

This is a lie. Ronna Romney McDaniel is wasting GOP donor money &, more importantly, @maricopacounty resources & tax dollars on a PR stunt thats using AZ’s court system as a political playground. I love Arizona & swore an oath to serve it justly. I’m sick of grifters attacking AZ

Ronna McDaniel @GOPChairwoman

The @GOP and @AZGOP have officially filed two lawsuits against Maricopa County, Arizona. After several weeks of negotiations, Maricopa left us no choice but to sue because Arizonans who want to be poll workers should not be shut out of the process.

As everything else dating back to the 2020 election in Maricopa County has seen, the people hurling accusations are not living in the real world and every single claim made in this lawsuit has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

On top of that, each explanation was provided to the Republicans seeking the information before the lawsuits were filed a week ago, which I’m sure was a coincidence that it happened four days before Trump returned to the state he lost in 2020.

The main complaint was the county hired more Democrat poll workers than Republicans, however this email exchange between Scott Jarrett, the county’s elections director who reports directly to the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors, and Mickie Niland, the Maricopa County Republican Party Chair shows just how unserious these people are.¹

Jarrett sent this to Niland on September 13 (emphasis mine):

You’ve expressed concerns that we are not hiring individuals from your provided lists. I’ve confirmed with our recruiters that we contacted every one of the individuals that you submitted. Our initial contact took the form of an email (see attached). When the individuals responded, we followed up with phone calls and emails to find a position that worked best for them. This resulted in us hiring over 60 individuals from your lists to serve as either a poll worker or central board member. The remaining individuals from your lists did not contact us back, were unavailable to work, or quit after we hired them. We also needed to fire one of the individuals because they refused to adhere to our hiring requirements for serving voters that needed assistance in a nursing home and assisted living centers.

Here’s more in that email from Jarrett explaining to Nailand how the process works.

None of Niland’s (or any other emails) seem to counter how the county made efforts to hire as many Republican poll workers as possible (because of course they did) and the problems that arise between hiring and the election. Poll workers can get sick, they can resign, they can be fired or they can just simply not show up. All of those happened in the August primary and the county had to act as best it could to run an efficient and accurate election.

“There are many times that we have poll workers quit in the days right before Election Day and including on Election Day. Our recruiters do their best to fill these positions with a poll worker of the same party that quit, but there are some instances when it is not possible,” he wrote.

Jarrett in a separate email noted how Niland questioned about 11 vote locations having no Republicans. He quickly explained away four of them explaining in one case they had to convince two Republican poll workers in Wickenburg to drive 26 miles to a different location in order to replace those who dropped out. It also meant they were listed under their original location and not the new one.

Niland’s response? "Why did you only give me answers on 4 of the voting centers without Republicans, not all 11?”

Jarrett replied, “I picked some locations at the top of your list. I also selected the Aguila Fire Department because I remembered having to backfill those positions and offer the poll workers from Wickenburg mileage reimbursement to drive to Aguila.”

It seems pretty clear the county is bending over backwards to make sure all information is accurate and the County Republicans and others are not acting in good faith at all.

The RNC also keeps bouncing around attorneys to represent them. First they had Eric Spencer, the former elections director under Michele Reagan. He was then replaced by Kory Langhofer² and now Tim La Sota is representing the RNC in the matter while Alex Kolodin, the state representative-elect and subject of a year-long State Bar investigation who was fired by Cyber Ninjas, is representing the AZGOP.

Spencer told me he still reps the RNC just not on this lawsuit, but wouldn’t explain what happened.

Here are several pages worth of records for your viewing pleasure. I chose not to publish all of them because a lot of it is who all of the hundreds of poll workers were for the August primary election. They didn’t sign up to help run the election so their named could be published everywhere so I’d rather err on the side of caution for people trying to uphold Democracy.³

• Months worth of communications between party officials and the county

• Conversation between Mickie Niland and Scott Jarrett

• Comms between many attorneys

1. By “these people” I of course mean, Niland, Kelli Ward, Ronna McDaniel and those associated with the lawsuits. Not the county officials or other election officials.

2. There’s some irony here of Langhofer, the attorney who repped the Arizona Senate in multiple public records lawsuits, briefly representing the RNC on the other side of a public records-related lawsuit.

3. I highly recommend reading or listening to Hank Stephenson of the Arizona Agenda who worked the polls on Election Day and provides a really well-done narrative of what it was like.