(Headline USA) An Arizona county elections director earned a $25,000 bonus this month, despite reporting the November midterm election’s results with glaring inaccuracies, Votebeat Arizona reported.
After prior Elections Director David Frisk resigned earlier this year due to problems with the primary election, county Recorder Virginia Ross was brought in to oversee the county’s elections on a short-term contract for more than $200k.
Ross was in the position for less than four months and oversaw numerous failures, which were revealed last week as part of the results of a statewide recount.
In one miscount, for example, revised results revealed that Democratic attorney general candidate Kris Mayes won her race against Republican opponent Abe Hamadeh by only 280 votes.
Hamadeh challenged the race in a lawsuit last month, and re-upped his request for a retrial last week, arguing that Ross’s false election results prove the count total is inaccurate.
“Unfortunately, the recount identified more problems in an election already riddled with process failures,” his motion for a new trial states. “This further demonstrated that the vote count totals are likely inaccurate, with thousands of Arizonans’ votes not counted, thus casting further doubt about the actual result.”
Ross even admitted during a November interview that her poll workers were not adequately trained, and that she knew they weren’t following proper procedures when a ballot didn’t scan properly.
“We had a couple of instances where our poll workers needed a little more training on how to handle that scenario,” she said at the time.
Pinal County Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh said at a supervisors meeting on Wednesday that Ross’s $25,000 bonus should be rescinded.
“If errors were known to the board we would have not likely canvassed,” Cavanaugh told Votebeat prior to the meeting, referring to the supervisors’ Nov. 21 vote to certify the election results. “If we had not canvassed, Virginia Ross would not have received her $25,000 bonus.”
Good journalism by @JenAFifield. 👇
“If errors were known to the board we would have not likely canvassed” – Kevin Cavanaugh, Pinal County Supervisor
— Abe Hamadeh (@AbrahamHamadeh) January 5, 2023
Instead of sticking around to assist Pinal County in its efforts to recount and verify the botched election results, Ross resigned on Dec. 1 and moved to Texas the same week.
