A senior Justice Department official leading the federal push to clean up state voter rolls told Just the News this week that she personally witnessed what she described as either "incompetence" or "deliberate malfeasance" in Maricopa County elections, where she served as an election lawyer during both the 2022 and 2024 cycles.

The official, Dhillon, didn't mince words about what she saw on the ground in Arizona's largest county:

"You don't know whether it's incompetence or deliberate malfeasance, but either way, it is a shambolic, you know, bleep word show of an election process that leaves many citizens feeling like they shouldn't vote because they see the wrong paper being loaded."

Her comments arrived alongside a separate revelation: Maricopa County was recently forced to turn over election records to the FBI pursuant to a grand jury subpoena. That subpoena was justified, in part, by a memo authored by a congressional staffer who was dispatched to observe the 2024 elections there.

None of this is theoretical. A DOJ official is describing problems she saw with her own eyes, and a federal grand jury has deemed the situation serious enough to compel document production.

Ballots Treated Like Grocery Coupons

Dhillon's account zeroes in on Runbeck Election Services, the third-party contractor hired by Maricopa County to sort mail-in ballots at a facility miles away from the county's main election site. She described a systemic disregard for the legal requirements governing ballot security and transport:

"Runbeck, of course, runs the elections in Maricopa County, and many other places. It's a company that does that. And you know there's state laws that say, for example, when ballots are transported from a voting place to the central count area, there have to be police escorts, so they should be treated like gold. They should be treated like Fort Knox, and they're not."

Then came the comparison that should follow Maricopa County into every future election debate:

"They're treated like those coupons you get for…your grocery store, and that's outrageous."

State law requires police escorts for ballot transport. If those procedures aren't being followed, that's not an administrative oversight. That's a breakdown in the chain of custody for the most consequential documents a democracy produces.

The Congressional Memo and the FBI Subpoena

Just the News exclusively reported earlier this week that the congressional staff memo raised what it called "alarming" concerns about ballot handling at the Runbeck facility. The memo was authored after a staffer observed operations during the 2024 elections, and it helped form the basis for the FBI's grand jury subpoena compelling Maricopa County to hand over records.

Rep. Abe Hamadeh, a Republican from Arizona, had already asked the Justice Department last summer to investigate claims that the Runbeck facility breached protocols during the 2024 general election. He shared concerns, including the mixing of blank ballots with mail-in ballots and questions about whether proper security procedures were followed.

Consider the layers here:

• A sitting congressman formally requested a DOJ investigation into ballot handling
• A congressional observer documented problems serious enough to help justify a federal subpoena
• The FBI secured grand jury authority to compel election records
• A senior DOJ official independently corroborated the dysfunction from her own firsthand experience

This is not one disgruntled observer filing a complaint. This is multiple independent channels arriving at the same conclusion.

200,000 Ballots and a Signature Problem

Dhillon also pointed to unclean voter rolls in Maricopa County that she said violate federal election laws. But the voter roll issue is only one piece of a larger pattern.

The congressional staff memo included an estimate that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted without being reviewed, or "cured," in Maricopa County. That figure is more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing that the county itself had acknowledged.

If those numbers hold up under scrutiny, the gap between what Maricopa acknowledged and what may have actually occurred is staggering. A county that admits to 25,000 problematic signatures while potentially processing 200,000 without review isn't making a rounding error. It's operating a system where verification is optional at scale.

A Decade of Broken Trust

Concerns about election counting in Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, stretch back more than a decade. President Donald Trump and former gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake have raised concerns about the state's ballot distribution and counting systems. The Arizona Senate conducted a massive audit after the 2020 election and concluded there were severe irregularities.

Yet the audit did little to resolve disputes. The clashes continue into planning for the 2026 election.

This is the part that should trouble every voter, regardless of party. Maricopa County has been the epicenter of election integrity concerns for years. The response from county officials has not been transparency and reform. It has been resistance, followed by subpoenas, followed by more resistance. When the fix for broken trust is compulsory document production ordered by a federal grand jury, the system isn't self-correcting. It's being dragged toward accountability.

What Happens When Nobody Trusts the Process

Dhillon captured something in her comments that goes beyond ballot security protocols and signature matching rates. She described citizens who feel like they "shouldn't vote" because of what they see happening in front of them. Wrong paper loaded into machines. Ballots moved without legally required escorts. Voter rolls that don't meet federal standards.

Election officials love to lecture Americans about "faith in our institutions." But faith is not a demand you make of citizens. It's something you earn through competence and transparency. Maricopa County has offered neither.

The FBI now has the records. The Justice Department has an official who saw the problems herself. A congressional memo has laid out the concerns in writing. The question is no longer whether something went wrong in Maricopa County. The question is whether anyone will be held responsible before 2026 ballots start printing.