View source for 2020: The Event

The November 2020 general election was the event that led me on a long
tortuous path of discovery. Ultimately, I concluded there is governance
problem within the Arizona Counties.

Like a lot of people nationwide, I watched in amazement as Maricopa
County took weeks to count the ballots following the election. Then
there was the audit count, canvasing, allegations, and lawsuits. When
was it going to end?

Regardless of your political beliefs, most people could agree that
Maricopa County’s Election Performance was anomalous, even if you
thought the outcome was fair or unfair. Most people focused on the
election outcome as a measure of fairness.

Some people might consider me strange; I was more interested in the
anomalies than the outcome. I keep pondering about what the county was
going to do with those anomalies? Or, were they simply going to ignore
them.

My interest in those election anomalies was influenced by my career. I
had retired before the 2020 general election. I worked for a large
company, which operated in the financial sector. My last position
involved Corrective Action Plans (CAP). In my role, CAP was a process
used to investigate financial anomalies to ensure that my company wasn’t
sued by a client or fined by a regulator.

CAP became a regulatory requirement following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002 (SOX). The bill was enacted because of accounting scandals in major
publicly traded companies, including Enron, Tyco International,
Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, and WorldCom. These scandals cost investors
billions of dollars when the share prices of affected companies
collapsed. Lawmakers intervened to restore public confidence in the
stock markets.

The SOX Act sought to ensure investors could make appropriate trading
decisions by improving financial reporting accuracy, establishing strict
internal controls, and holding corporate executives personally
accountable. It focused heavily on executive responsibility, auditor
independence, and criminal penalties to prevent fraudulent practices.

Initially, my company did not embrace CAP when the process was rolled
out. For many employees, it seemed like an unnecessary burden. It was
just more documentation to do what they would have done anyway. The
culture failed to immediately recognize that this roll out was a federal
obligation, Under the law, a formal means to document deviations from
standards was necessary so the problem could be evaluated for
compliance, investigated for cause and corrective action plans
established to resolve the problem. CAP became the term used to describe
how problems were identified and resolved.

Federal regulators identified poor CAP implementation problem. A fine
ensued, which was followed by an awakening. Federal regulators were
using CAP as an oversight tool to ensure financial fraud would not
recur. Soon thereafter, CAP was relied upon to consistently resolve
issues that warranted attention; CAP became a way of doing business and
was no longer considered an obstacle.

I saw CAP transform a culture from “let’s just get this done” to “let’s
do this the right way.”

I began to see problems differently; they became CAP opportunities. What
can we learn from this problem to improve performance.

Though retired, I dwelled on these election anomalies. I wanted to
understand what happened.


Deviation #1: [[Principle 1 - Demonstrate Commitment to Integrity and Ethical Values#1.01|Principle #1 - 1.01]]

== Timeline ==

# [[Preface]] — Author's introduction
# [[2020: The Event]] — The November 2020 general election anomalies
# [[2001: The Journey Begins]] — Starting to ask questions about lessons learned
# [[November 2024: Midterm Election]] — The Katie Hobbs situation
# [[December 2024: Gaining Support]] — Resolution submission
# [[April 15, 2025: Public Records Request]] — Public Records Request process
# [[May 15, 2025: Let’s Play Hot Potato]] — Public Records Request runaround
# [[August 3, 2026: Submitted Complaint]] — Formal complaint submission

== Navigation ==

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
! colspan="3" | Quick Navigation
|-
| style="width: 33%; text-align: center;" | [[Main Page|🏠 Main Page]]
| style="width: 33%; text-align: center;" | [[The Story|📖 The Story]]
| style="width: 33%; text-align: center;" | [[Governance Analysis|📊 Governance Analysis]]
|}

== Related Governance Principles ==

* [[Governance Analysis|📊 Governance Analysis]]
* [[What is a CAP?|❓ What is a CAP?]]
* [[About the Green Book|📗 About the Green Book]]
* [[Author Bio|✍️ About the Author]]
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