House investigators documented concerns during the 2024 election about ballot storage and handling practices at a third-party facility, records show.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Federal investigators reviewing election procedures in Arizona obtained records from the state Senate after congressional observers reported concerns about how ballots were handled at a third-party facility in Maricopa County during the 2024 presidential election.
According to documents revealed by Just the News, congressional staff assigned to monitor vote counting reported “alarming” observations involving the storage and sorting of completed mail-in ballots alongside blank ballots at a contractor-operated warehouse.
The memo documenting those concerns was prepared during the 2024 election by a Republican staff member from the House Administration Committee who visited the site with a Democratic colleague. The committee oversees federal election administration and had deployed observers to monitor procedures in several jurisdictions.
The document became part of the material federal investigators examined before the bureau issued a subpoena seeking Maricopa County voting records earlier this month.
Authorities are now receiving large volumes of election data connected to the subpoena as part of a broader inquiry examining potential irregularities in multiple states. The investigation follows a separate federal action last month in which agents seized ballots during a raid at a Fulton County, Georgia election warehouse related to the 2020 election.
The congressional memo describes a visit to a warehouse operated by Runbeck Election Services, a private contractor hired by Maricopa County to process incoming mail-in ballots before they were transferred to the county’s main tabulation center.
According to the report, House observers found that ballot sorting operations were being conducted inside a warehouse where shelves also contained large quantities of blank ballots and printing materials.
The staffer reported that some pallets of blank ballots appeared to have been opened, with the plastic wrapping partially torn and ballots missing from the stacks.
“It was alarming that the day after an election that ballots and envelopes would be printed, left unattended, with thousands of others similarly positioned,” the observer wrote in the memo. “Stacked on the right were USPS sorting boxes, which were used to transport Maricopa mailed ballots from [the main Maricopa facility] to Runbeck.”
The memo also stated that the observers were told no government officials or law enforcement personnel were present at the warehouse during the ballot sorting process.
“I asked if any of them were government employees or law enforcement. They said no. I asked if any government employees were on site, they said no,” the staffer wrote.
According to the report, the Democratic staff member who accompanied the visit expressed similar concerns about the conditions observed inside the facility.
Neither Maricopa County officials nor Runbeck Election Services responded to requests for comment about the report at the time the observations were disclosed.
Runbeck officials previously discussed plans to increase oversight at the facility, including installing cameras and creating a designated observation room where election monitors could watch the ballot processing operations through live video feeds.
Runbeck President and CEO Jeff Ellington told AZ Central in 2024 that safety considerations inside the warehouse influenced how observers would be accommodated.
“Two people out here is manageable,” Ellington said, referring to the warehouse floor. “But if you start to get too many, with fork trucks and pallet jacks, somebody could get run over. So we’re just going to try to keep people in a room where they can watch everything. If they want to come out and see something, there will be a process to bring them out here.”
However, the congressional staffers reported that no election observers from Maricopa County were present at the time of their visit.
“In contradiction of statements made to local news and journalists, Runbeck did not have bipartisan teams running these machines. There was [sic] no election workers present, no observers, and no election integrity,” the memo stated.
The Runbeck facility also processes ballots for neighboring Nevada. The congressional observer reported that the company was handling ballots from Arizona and Nevada simultaneously during the 2024 election cycle, which raised additional questions about ballot handling and timing.
“The employee explained that they were running Arizona’s ballots for Maricopa before they started to process Nevada again. (This may explain the delay in Nevada posting any new tabulated totals for Wednesday and Thursday, because the Nevada ballots were awaiting sorting/signature verification at the Runbeck facility.)” the staffer wrote.
Reports of delayed vote counts in Nevada during the election were noted by local media, including coverage describing how paper ballots and late polls contributed to delays in Clark County results.
The warehouse reportedly stores ballots associated with elections in several Western states, including Colorado, California, and Utah, though it remains unclear whether ballots from those jurisdictions are processed at the same facility.
House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil indicated that congressional investigators are reviewing election observer reports as part of ongoing oversight efforts.
In an interview with the Just the News, No Noise television program, Steil said lawmakers are examining documentation submitted by observers stationed around the country.
“We’re digging back through those reports that were submitted by our election observers that were deployed across the country,” Steil said. “This is where working hand in glove with other federal government agencies is so important.”
“We have reports documenting instances that occurred in Arizona and across the country, and we are reviewing those in real time and working hand in glove with federal partners to make sure that the law was followed in every jurisdiction in the country,” he added.
Concerns surrounding election administration in Arizona—particularly in Maricopa County—have been raised repeatedly over the past decade as the state increasingly relied on mail-in ballots.
Following the 2020 election, the Arizona Senate conducted an audit examining voting procedures in the county. Among the findings was an estimate that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted without review, far exceeding the approximately 25,000 mismatches acknowledged by county officials.
The audit did not settle the dispute over election procedures. Democratic officials and county administrators have maintained that concerns about the process are overstated, while Republican leaders continue to argue that vulnerabilities remain within the system.
Those disagreements persist as state officials continue planning election procedures ahead of future contests, with political and administrative disputes over voting practices continuing to influence preparations for the 2026 election cycle.
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