At least one dishonest or dishonest election official in Arizona has finally paid the price, albeit for recent gaffes rather than for fraud in 2020.
The primary elections were held on Tuesday, and David Friske, the elections director for Pinal County, Arizona, was dismissed as a result of how he handled them. After Virginia Ross, the Pinal County Recorder since 2013, announced her resignation, Friske was chosen to take her place. According to the county website, the Recorder’s office is in charge of voter registration in Pinal County.
Voters in Pinal County supported the dismissal but had mixed feelings about the county’s choice of replacement for Friske.
Due to unprecedented demand for in-person ballots, Pinal County has experienced a ballot shortage in certain, limited precincts. Pinal County is continuing to print additional ballots and distributing them to each affected precinct polling place.
— Pinal County – Government 🌵 (@PinalCounty) August 2, 2022
Voters in Pinal County claim that right now they feel as though they are seeing the Titanic’s deck chairs being moved around.
According to his biography on Pinal County websites, David Friske was a native of the very pro-blue Kitsap County, Washington, where he had worked for Kitsap since 2015 and had been Project Manager of the Elections Division since 2018.
On March 8, 2022, Friske was named the director of elections for Pinal County. As the team’s leader, he was tasked with organizing the county’s elections while ensuring that they are safe, open, accessible, free, and fair and that the general public has faith in the electoral process.
🚨 PINAL COUNTY UPDATE
— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) August 4, 2022
The Elections Director has officially resigned.
2 Questions: ⤵️
If your right to vote was literally taken away, is this person’s resignation enough to remedy that?
How much bigger would our win be if all these people were allowed to vote?
Friske’s issues began almost immediately, since Pinal County was the subject of litigation even before the election, as the Elections Department mailed an inaccurate early ballot to nearly 63,000 voters in seven towns.
On election day, reports about Republican voters being turned away because Pinal County ran out of votes went viral. According to reports, Friske used a formula provided by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office to calculate the number of votes required at each voting location.
The county’s justification for the shortages was that there was an unusually high demand, yet they completely printed more and distributed them.
