Federal investigation into Arizona election records comes as a Justice Department official says she personally observed ballot handling issues and voter roll problems during recent election cycles.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A senior Justice Department official overseeing federal efforts to address voter roll maintenance said she personally observed serious problems with election administration in Arizona’s largest county, raising questions about ballot handling procedures as federal investigators review election records tied to recent voting cycles.
According to reporting from Just the News, the official said her observations occurred while she worked as an election lawyer monitoring operations in Maricopa County during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.
The comments come as Maricopa County has begun providing election materials to federal investigators after the jurisdiction was compelled to turn over election records to the FBI through a grand jury subpoena.
Federal authorities cited multiple sources when pursuing the subpoena, including findings contained in a congressional staff memo prepared after observers monitored election procedures in the county during the 2024 general election.
The report described concerns about how ballots were processed and stored by county officials and by a private contractor responsible for handling certain mail-in ballot operations.
Harmeet Dhillon, who currently holds a senior role within the Justice Department connected to election enforcement efforts, said she observed irregularities firsthand while working in Arizona during the two most recent election cycles.
“I can say, as a lawyer who – taking off my government hat and putting on my former political hat – I was on the ground in the last two election cycles, in 2022 and 2024 in Arizona, in Maricopa County, specifically,” Dhillon said during an appearance on the television program Just the News, No Noise.
Dhillon said that based on what she saw, it was difficult to determine whether the problems stemmed from mistakes or intentional misconduct.
“And you don’t know whether it’s incompetence or deliberate malfeasance, but either way, it is a shambolic, you know, bleep word show of an election process that leaves many citizens feeling like they shouldn’t vote because they see the wrong paper being loaded,” she said.
“They see ballots being transported without proper security under state law, and then they see unclean voter rolls that are in violation of our federal election laws.”
Much of the scrutiny described in the congressional memo focused on operations conducted by Runbeck Election Services, a contractor used by Maricopa County to process and sort mail-in ballots before they are counted at the county’s main election center.
Congressional observers who visited the Runbeck facility reported what they described as troubling conditions during the handling of ballots. According to the memo, the ballot sorting operation was conducted at a warehouse located miles from the county’s central election facility.
The congressional staff members reported that completed mail-in ballots were being processed at the location even though state election officials were not present to oversee the work.
The memo stated that both the Republican staffer who authored the report and a Democratic staffer who accompanied the visit expressed similar concerns about what they witnessed at the facility. The findings were later submitted to the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal election matters.
Dhillon also raised concerns about the security procedures governing ballot transportation.
“Runbeck, of course, runs the elections in Maricopa County, and […] many other places. It’s a company that does that,” she said.
“And you know there’s state laws that say, for example, when ballots are transported from a voting place to the central count area, there have to be police escorts, so they should be treated like gold. They should be treated like Fort Knox, and they’re not.”
“They’re treated like those coupons you get for…your grocery store, and that’s outrageous,” she added.
Concerns about the contractor’s role in Arizona elections were also raised by Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh of Arizona, who requested a Justice Department investigation into whether the company complied with state election procedures during the 2024 general election.
Hamadeh’s request cited allegations that completed mail ballots may have been stored alongside blank ballots and printing materials at the Runbeck facility and questioned whether security procedures were consistently followed.
Debate surrounding election administration in Arizona has persisted for years, particularly in Maricopa County, which shifted toward extensive use of mail-in voting over the past decade.
Earlier disputes about voting procedures in the state were often raised by Democratic officials. In more recent election cycles, Republicans have been among the most vocal critics of the county’s ballot processing and counting procedures.
Among those raising concerns are President Donald Trump, former Arizona gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake, and Rep. Hamadeh.
Following the 2020 election, the Arizona Senate ordered a comprehensive review of voting procedures and ballot handling.
That review cited several irregularities. One report referenced during the process included an estimate suggesting that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted in Maricopa County without undergoing a verification process known as curing.
The figure was significantly higher than the approximately 25,000 mismatched signatures county officials had acknowledged during the election review process.
Despite the audit, disagreements over election administration in the county remain unresolved. Maricopa County officials and Democratic leaders have argued that many of the concerns raised about the system have been overstated.
Republican officials and activists, however, maintain that vulnerabilities in ballot handling and voter roll maintenance still exist.
Those disputes have continued into preparations for upcoming elections. Officials within the county government remain divided over aspects of early voting administration and election oversight as planning for the 2026 election cycle proceeds.
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