New testimony from Bob Hughes confirms ballot tampering in Maricopa County's 2022 election. Hughes states in his affidavit that "an intentional change was made to the printers affecting the DAY OF Election ballots" in the 2022 Maricopa County midterm election. Hughes' affidavit in Exhibit K of a newly filed Motion to Reconsider in Mark Finchem's dismissed 2022 election lawsuit confirms previous testimony from Clay Parikh. Parikh was one of several expert witnesses in the Kari Lake lawsuit.
Parikh testified there are "only two ways the printing of a 19-inch image on a 20-inch paper happened, and they are both intentional. He explained, "One way is by changing the printer adjustments. That would make the printer adjustments, and settings override the image file that was set. The other is from the application side or the operating system side."
Hughes has 50 years of experience in the printing industry—16 of which have been in "printing ballots for Maricopa County Elections," according to his affidavit. He also helped "establish the auditing criteria for the printing and paper portion of the 2020 Maricopa County ballot audit and helped select and set up the equipment used during the audit to do the ballot counting."
On Mar. 6, 2023, he and his team reviewed the Logic and Accuracy reports (L&A) for the 2022 Maricopa County Election. Hughes and his team "physically inspected the ballots at MCTEC that were used in the testing of the election tabulators." They also reviewed each of the Maricopa County Voting Center certification reports and the Tabulator reports that were "printed during their testing." His affidavit clarifies explicitly that "[t]he most important and notable finding is that every machine and every voting center report show that every test was passed without any failures."
Personalized ballots were required in the Maricopa County election because of various local elections, such as school district races. Therefore "ballot styles" are created for each precinct and "are prepared for each election at MCTEC," not at the Voting Centers. When a voter arrives at a Voting Center, his identity is verified by the poll worker. The poll worker then uses the County's e-poll book system to "verify they have not returned a mail-in ballot." However, on election day, mail-in ballots were also turned in to the Voting Centers, and thus, the e-poll book may not be up-to-date on the status of a given voter's mail-in ballot.
Contrary to what many want us to believe, Hughes testified that the equipment to carry out the voter verification process and the printing of ballots "need to be networked and online at the same time."
Bob Hughes Declaration/03-29-2023
Additionally, and very importantly, is that "ballot STYLES" are "stored PDFs." They are "locked style formats that cannot be revised on the fly," according to Hughes. They are "built ahead of each election and stored." As such, Hughes confidently asserts that the 19-inch format seen in the 2022 Maricopa County election "was incorrectly used by mistake." Furthermore, Hughes "was told" during his team's review at MCTEC that "only 20-inch formats were created and no 19-inch formats were created for the 2022 election." The use of the 19-inch ballot was NOT accidental, according to Hughes. He posits the 19-inch ballots either represent "interference...from someone at MCTEC" or "someone hacking into the MCTEC system."
Bob Hughes Affidavit/Exhibit K/Finchem Motion to Reconsider
Logically, Hughes concludes that the shenanigans must have been introduced after testing because the "L&A tests showed no errors." And, since poll workers have no access to the printer command module, the "interference had to come through the online E-poll book and then to the printers." Many printers at multiple locations—with a "high correlation of those within Republican precincts," leaving Hughes with the impression it was "not happenstance but an orchestrated attack on the election."
Hughes speculates there are a number of ways ballots came to be unreadable because of the "larger margin at the top and the bottom of the page," as captured in the screenshot below,
Bob Hughes/Exhibit K/Finchem Motion to Reconsider/ Why the margins?
L & A testing is performed before election day with a test set of ballots. The tests are required to "perform at 100% accuracy rate," according to Hughes. Hughes was told the Oct. 11 test decks were printed at MCTEC. However, Hughes concludes that "DAY OF Election test decks were printed at each voting center" because of several "clear factors."
Bob Hughes Affidavit/Finchem Motion to Reconsider
This assumption led Hughes to conclude that an "intentional change was made to the printers" for Election Day ballots leading to what he believed was "a perfect opportunity for interference in the election."
Bob Hughes/Affidavit/Exhibit K/Finchem Motion to Reconsider
