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Screenshot via Arizona Senate

Shiva Ayyadurai gave a presentation on an analysis he did of Maricopa County early ballot envelopes as part of the Arizona Senate’s so-called election “audit.” In it, he made a series of misleading statements about supposed “anomalies” he found, all of which are easily explained and stem from his ignorance of elections administration.

The audience in the Senate gallery oohed and aahed as Shiva Ayyadurai drew its attention to a “verified and approved” stamp that appeared behind a triangle on the image of an early ballot envelope, unsubtly suggesting that it might have been pre-printed that way. 

“It’s almost as though it was imaged on there. I don’t want to say Photoshopped, but put on there. But it’s quite fascinating. I’m sure there’s some explanation for this,” Ayyadurai said. The remark elicited laughter from an audience largely composed of audit supporters who believed, without factual basis, that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump, a position Ayyadurai himself has aggressively promoted.

It turns out there was an explanation, and a simple one at that. But Ayyadurai appeared to have absolutely no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. That shortcoming would be a consistent theme as he presented his findings as part of the so-called audit of the election in Maricopa County, portraying commonplace occurrences and standard procedures as potentially suspicious. 

And Senate President Karen Fann has asked the attorney general to investigate Ayyadurai’s obviously false findings.

Ayyadurai, known to his fans online simply as Dr. Shiva, is an MIT-trained engineer and entrepreneur known for his disputed claim that he invented email. He has a history of promoting discredited and debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, including during a day-long event at the downtown Phoenix Hyatt several weeks after the election that featured Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. 

The claim about the triangle on the early ballot envelopes was perhaps the most attention-grabbing of the numerous findings he presented during a presentation on Sept. 24, as the team that led Senate President Karen Fann’s review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County.

“I would consider this potentially a critical anomaly,” Ayyadurai said. 

But to those who understand how elections work, the “critical anomaly” was anything but. In fact, it’s not only not an anomaly at all, it’s exactly how the systems used to safeguard the election are designed to work.

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Keep those masks on, kids

The Marana Unified School District Governing Board ended their special meeting on Wednesday with no action on requiring face masks on Marana school campuses.

Board member John Lewandowski called the Sept. 28 emergency meeting on the previous day and planned to make a motion for the institution of a mask mandate. Marana school campuses have gone to mask-optional status since their previous mandate ended on Sept 29.

New data from a recently released study by the CDC, co-authored with Pima County, showed K-12 schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to experience a COVID outbreak. Data was taken from 999 public schools in Pima and Maricopa counties.

Board member Hunter Holt surprised the Board on Wednesday by making a motion to relinquish the authority to institute a mask mandate to Superintendent Dr. Dan Streeter. 

“My motion is to give Dr. Streeter sole authority to implement and remove any sort of mask mandate from here on out,” Holt said.

Holt said he trusted Streeter to make the proper decision. He also said that COVID case numbers have improved in Marana. The Arizona Department of Health Services has recorded a slow decrease of overall COVID cases in Pima County since the August surge. Pima County K-12 schools are still considered to have high transmissibility, according to ADHS. 

“This is really ridiculous. John called this meeting so the five of us could vote on re-imposing a mask mandate and now Hunter has come in from left field and has thrown this curveball,” said board member Tom Carlson. "Obviously, Dr. Streeter doesn’t know what to say on this.”

Streeter seemed confused by the surprise motion and recommended the Board vote no. The motion to give Streeter mandate authority failed.

Lewandowski then asked the board to extend the mask mandate. The motion was not seconded. Marana Unified School District will remain mask-optional until the board decides otherwise.

“I was very disappointed,” Lewandowski said after the meeting.

“I thought I was doing what was in the best interest of kids and staff for safety.”

Lewandowski pledged to ask Board President Dr. Maribel Lopez to revisit the subject at a future meeting but said she could choose not to include it.

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Education advocacy groups on Tuesday filed hundreds of thousands of signatures to block Gov. Doug Ducey’s sweeping income tax cuts, the largest in state history, from going into effect and forcing a public vote on them. 

For that to actually happen, at least 118,823 of the 215,787 signatures the Invest in Arizona coalition submitted must be deemed valid by elections officials. If they are, Arizona voters will decide the fate of the tax cuts in November 2022.

Ducey’s income tax cuts, which serve as his legacy policy achievement during his two terms as governor, dramatically reform Arizona’s tax system. Instead of a progressively graduated system with a maximum rate of 4.5%, Arizona will shift to two income tax rates: 2.55% for people who earn $27,272 annually and 2.98% for those who earn more than that. Legislative budget analysts estimate those cuts will cost the state about $1 billion in revenue.

The median household income in Arizona is about $62,000, which will realize a tax savings of $42 under the new proposal. The benefit of the tax cut skyrockets as income increases: Households making at least $500,000 will save $10,000; those making at least $1 million save nearly $45,000; those making more than $5 million will save nearly $350,000 a year. (Those estimates by legislative budget analysists also include the effects of legislation capping the maximum income tax rate at 4.5%, even for those subject to the Invest in Education surcharge. That law will go into effect.) 

The referendum is a reaction to the tax cuts Ducey championed, and which serve as his legacy policy achievement during his two terms as governor. The tax cuts themselves came in response to, and were designed to blunt the effect of, the Invest in Education Act on wealthy Arizonans. That measure, which voters approved in 2020, imposes a 3.5% surcharge on income greater than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples, with the money directed to public schools to increase teacher pay and boost overall funding.