Grassroots Group Investigates 2022 Arizona Attorney General’s Race, Concludes Improprieties Helped Mayes Win

The grassroots organization We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA) presented a video review last week of election improprieties in the 2022 election, stating that it believes these improprieties contributed to Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes’ victory over Republican Abe Hamadeh by 280 votes.

Shelby Busch, who leads WPAA, and WPAA’s attorney Bryan Blehm, who represented Kari Lake in her election challenges, said they believe thousands of votes were not counted for Hamadeh, including 9,000 that have been destroyed.

Abe Hamadeh Evidence Cover-up and an Election Vacated in Cochise County. They prioritize a fatally flawed system over your vote. “What is the remedy if they were disenfranchised…….there is no remedy” -Cochise County Attorney Correa. pic.twitter.com/YIVFwMa2lX

— We the People AZ Alliance (@WethePeopleAZA1) June 5, 2025

Blehm said, “I think 2022 was, you know, sort of the way to cover up for 2020 because Kris Mayes is absolutely never going to investigate what happened in Arizona in 2020.” He said by the time the Department of Justice investigates, the evidence will all be gone.

The group discussed 9,000 provisional ballots that were destroyed from the 2022 election, which AZ Free News reported earlier in June. Since federal law only requires saving ballots for 22 months (state law requires six months), the ballots have all been destroyed.

Busch said there was “disenfranchisement” in the 2022 election due to many voters being told they could only vote provisional ballots, which were never counted.

The pair played a video clip of Carol Ayotte, GOP chair of Legislative District 27, speaking to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. She said 5,000 Republicans’ voter registrations were changed from Republican to Party Not Designated (PND). Many other voters found their voter registration switched to another county, unbeknownst to them.

Ayotte said it happened after they visited the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division, or its online site, Service Arizona, for a reason not related to their voter registration.

Busch said when the voters’ registrations were switched to PND, they were unable to vote in the Republican primary, including the Presidential Preference Primary.

She played a video clip of Zach Chira, the assistant county manager who previously served as chief of staff to former Supervisor Bill Gates, responding to Ayotte and explaining how the glitch happened. He said the voters didn’t check the opt-out box for automatically updating their address when they conducted a transaction like re-registering a motor vehicle in another county. He was interrupted by someone from the county who told him to stop testifying.

Busch said progressive election attorney Marc Elias sued the county over the glitch, and the judge ruled that it must be an opt-in feature.

Busch said they found additional issues, such as canceled voter registrations and ballots mailed to addresses where voters don’t live. She said counties found up to a 600 percent increase in provisional ballots, which were not counted. Many of the affected voters were longtime, consistent voters who said election workers failed to inform them that their provisional votes would not be counted.

Busch said they found many voters who registered a car and registered to vote, but their voter registrations never went through. She said they provided evidence showing they had registered. Some voters even brought their voter registration cards with them to the polls, but were still told they weren’t registered.

Additionally, Blehm said in Maricopa County, “we found video evidence that they had actually changed the software program on the tabulators after Logic & Accuracy testing.” In Pinal County, Busch said when election workers started feeding the ballots in at central tabulation, the results weren’t “matching the actual physical ballots, and the number of ballots counted were not reconciling.”

Busch said her group was unable to get the evidence admitted in court about the voter registrations that were changed to other counties. After the trial court judge failed to issue a ruling for months, they appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court. The court refused to hear their appeal, stating that it should have been addressed in the lower court, and her attorneys were sanctioned for filing a premature appeal. The court noted that the case couldn’t be appealed because the lower judge had issued no order; however, by the time the trial judge issued a ruling, the case had progressed nowhere.

AZ Free News reported on the legal difficulties. “The counties reportedly did not discover the thousands of uncounted provisional ballots due to a delay in response from the counties to Hamadeh’s legal team. The tardiness of the counties’ response times — along with a superior court judge’s months-long delay in signing his orders — jeopardized and ultimately resulted in the defeat of Hamadeh’s legal challenge to the 2022 election.”

AZ Free News stated that former Arizona Secretary of State staffer and data and elections reporter for ABC-15 Arizona, Garrett Archer, criticized Hamadeh for posting about the 9,000 destroyed ballots. “Now….now they burned 9,000 ballots,” Archer said in a post on Tuesday. [Abe Hamadeh] has a former troll run his social media. I have to think this is coming from that person. Because this take is delusional.”

Hamadeh responded, “No, they stole it. Burned 9,000 uncounted ballots. But I appreciate the political class and corrupt judiciary for giving me decades of knowledge in a condensed one year period of time — I will use it wisely!”

The Abe Hamadeh War Room account posted the article on X with commentary, “The uncounted ballots WERE destroyed, & with them, the only chance of enfranchising Arizonans after the stolen 2022 election. We were told it would be against the law for them NOT to do so. So is Garrett Archer willfully misinformed or deliberately lying?”

Archer shot back at the account, “It’s been a weird start of the week where the staff of an AZGOP congressman and allies are attacking me because they think potential non-citizens should have voted in 2022.”

Merissa Hamilton, grassroots leader of EZAZ, responded to Archer.

“The puppet hasn’t looked at the 1000+ affidavits from the voters in question referenced by [Abe Hamadeh],” she said. “The puppet is fabricating accusations to support disenfranchising legal citizen longtime voters. He’s also fabricating that the Congressman had his day in court, which would infer the evidence was seen. The cases were rejected without trials even though the state intentionally hid evidence from the first case and the judges knew this.”

The Abe Hamadeh War Room’s account pinned posted on X states, “Congressman [Abe Hamadeh] refused to be the victim of a stolen 2022 election. He didn’t move past it. He moved forward to Congress, where he could help ensure a crime like that never happens again. Now, he is leading on Election integrity & putting Americans First.”

The remainder of the WPAA video discussed a 2023 all-mail election in Cochise County that was essentially thrown out due to election improprieties. A judge found that the county failed to send ballots to approximately 11,000 inactive voters (voters whose election mail was returned as undeliverable or who moved without updating their address). The settlement will require the county to conduct a redo of the election and include in-person voting.

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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kris Mayes” by Kris Mayes. 

 

 

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