17.04
Monitoring
Principle 17 - Evaluate Issues and Remediate Deficiencies
Attribute 17.04 - Depending on the entity's regulatory or compliance requirements, the entity may also be required to report issues externally to appropriate external parties, such as the legislators, regulators, and standard-setting bodies that establish laws, rules, regulations, or standards to which the entity is subject.
>>>Navigational Buttons<<<
- Index of Attributes
- Previous Attribute - 17.03
- Next Attribute - 17.05
Jamie's Story
No examples are available to illustrate governance gaps for this attribute.
Election Anomalies
Arizona Senate Allegations
Arizona Senate allegations arose from MC's failure to recognize the Arizona Senates Oversight Role. These allegations were investigated and reported on by the Arizona Attorney General's Office 2020 General Election Investigation. These allegations would not have occurred had MC leadership taken action to identify, investigate and remediate internal control issues associated with the 2020 General Election.
Governance issues identified from Arizona Attorney General's Office 2020 General Election Investigation of Arizona Senate allegations of Maricopa County Election Department - Drop Box Collections issues.
The drop box collection issues would not have been submitted to the AZ AG had MC leadership cooperated with the Arizona Senate. MC leadership did not value the Senates oversight.
As of September 2026, the Maricopa County website seeks to dispel suspicions of inappropriate use Sharpie Markers under the heading "2020 Election Myths."
In chain of interrelated events and actions, Maricopa County claims the root of the problem was long lines at voting centers; "federal law requires counties to work to avoid long voting lines." This appears to relate to this Attribute, 17.04.
For an effort to comply with Federal law, there is no documentation to support their claim that Sharpies were needed. The offer excuses and defend actions in the absence of any investigation and creation of corrective actions. Maricopa County claims long lines were occurring because of delays needed to clean the ballot tabulators, which had become fouled with ink. The transfer of ink to the tabulators was attributed to the use of ballpoint pens; the ink had not dried before running through the tabulator. They claim the issue only occurred at the voting centers because the ink always had enough time to dry for early mail-in ballots.
It's a weak explanation, If that was truly the problem, why they returned to ballpoint pens at the voting centers?
