Former Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem, who is contesting his loss last fall to Democrat Adrian Fontes, filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority and Evidence in Support of Contestant's Motion for Reconsideration last week. A Maricopa County judge dismissed his lawsuit in December. Finchem included 10 exhibits consisting primarily of declarations from observers, election workers, and experts, including one who believes the election printer settings in Maricopa County were deliberately modified to create misreads of the ballots.

Exhibit K was a declaration from Bob Hughes, who has 50 years in the printing industry and 16 years printing ballots for the Maricopa County Elections Department. Last month, Hughes and a team examined the Logic & Accuracy tests that were performed immediately before the election, the ballots used for testing, the certification reports for each voting center, and the tabulator reports printed from the testing. He concluded, "An intentional change was made to the printers affecting the DAY OF Election ballots."

He said the change was made after completing the Logic & Accuracy tests. "The most important and notable finding is that every machine and every voting center report showed that every test was passed without any failures," Hughes stated. He surmised that since "no 19 inch format ballots were created for the 2022 election … it was not possible that a BALLOT STYLE other than a 20″ PDF could have been used, even by accident for the 2022 Election." Since many 19-inch ballots were printed during the election, he said it "clearly indicates that the interference caused by 19″ ballots had to have been by someone from [Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC)] or by someone hacking into the MCTEC system."

He added, "Since no failures occurred during even one test of the system and since all the machines were made tamperproof and held in security until used, no other possible reason is plausible. The assertion that random accidents occurred on Election Day is impossible. A large number of printers, all printing ballots of the wrong 19 inch size on Election Day, is not a random accident."