(25 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
 
++BEGINS AND ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Phoenix, Arizona – 25 June 2024
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheriff Russ Skinner, Maricopa County:
“Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our press conference and follow up to the arrest of 27-year-old Walter Ringfield, who stole a digital magnetic key from the MCTEC facility in Phoenix on Thursday, June 20th.”
++BLACK FRAMES++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheriff Russ Skinner, Maricopa County:
“From my understanding, the stolen digital magnetic key is something that has the potential to actually log into the tabulation machines of MCTEC, so you can understand the concern, and the implication that might have. The impact of this theft is estimated over $20,000. That is part of the criminal damage charge that you see with this, because now, MCTEC has to go through and ensure the integrity of that security and reprogram those machines and those keys. And this is all because of one person's criminal action. But this reinforces our commitment to election security. It's the cornerstone of our democratic principles. And beyond the investigations, Maricopa County staff members continue to take proactive stance on election security. That includes regular collaboration with local leadership, Maricopa County leadership, even our city and municipality leadership, as well as local, state and federal authorities. Let me make this clear: MCSO and our partnership will stand vigilant and take the necessary actions to ensure our community, our staff and our facilities remain safe and secure throughout the election cycle.”
++BLACK FRAMES++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Gates, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors:
“We are Maricopa County. So, we work very closely with the county Republican Party. And in fact, when this issue came about last Friday, we quickly reached out to the county Republican Party, and one of the things we haven't talked about yet today is all of the protocols that are in place that have ensured that this very unfortunate incident has not affected election security in any way. And one of the things that we did and in fact I have this, so in case you haven't seen it, this is the black security key. So, this is an example of what the keys look like. And so, once we had this incident and once we learned that this security key had gone outside of the ballot tabulation center, we reprogramed the tabulation machines and that deactivated this. The additional measure that we took was that we did a brand-new logic and accuracy test, and we reached out to all of the county political parties and invited them to be a part of that logic and accuracy test. In addition, yesterday morning we reached out to the county Republican party, all of the county parties, and gave them a briefing on this criminal situation.”
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Gates, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors:
“Under normal circumstances this is just used on Election Day. This is for the Election Day tabulators. So, the folks who are involved in that, going out to the 223 vote centers that will have across Maricopa County on July 30th, on primary day, this will be out there. What we do at the beginning of each day, we do an inventory check and make sure that we have all of these black security keys. We did that on Friday morning. We found that one was
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
Authorities are investigating whether a 27-year-old temporary election worker had political motivations when he stole a fob that allows access to vote tabulators in Arizona's largest county.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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