‘Ballotship’ prepares Arizona officials for election-threat scenarios

 This story has been updated to reflect the discovery of a mysterious white powder sent to the Secretary of State’s office on the afternoon of Oct. 15. Law enforcement is investigating the incident. 

An alert popped up on Jared Smith’s monitor. “Cyberattack!” splashed across the screen. Two rogue OpenAI agents had taken control of the county election network on this, the first day of early voting. The rogue agents threatened to dump voter information onto the dark web unless the county paid a steep ransom: $200 million in the next hour.

The dimly lit conference room in Florence’s election center was quiet at first. Then discussion erupted among the two dozen county employees surrounding Smith, who is Pinal County’s deputy elections director. Who on the team should take the lead? Who else needs to know? What agency? What officials? And who has to act? What must staff do operationally? Is there a policy? What do they tell voters? And how? 

Smith, sporting a costume captain’s hat, directed the employees’ comments. A 20-something county employee with shaggy, dirty-blonde hair and a black suit jacket typed the room’s ideas into a keyboard. Employees from county emergency management, IT, the attorney’s office, voter registration, and early voting sat in reclining office chairs tucked into rectangular tables that formed a U-shape around the room’s perimeter. A sheriff’s deputy leaned against the back wall. The chief information security officer with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office tapped his empty Coke bottle on the wood table.

The scenario presented as real. But rogue OpenAI agents weren’t actually threatening to release voter data — at least, not on that particular recent afternoon. 

Instead, the call was coming from inside the house. 

In another conference room on the other side of the VOTES (Voter Operations Technology and Election Services) center in Florence, a team of another 25 county employees created the scenario and deployed it against their colleagues. Welcome to Ballotship. 

“We’re drilling through worst-case scenarios,” Michael Moore, the chief information security officer with the Secretary of State’s Office, told Phoenix New Times at the exercise. “Whether that’s some sort of cyber-event, physical event, a weather event or logistical issues — anything that could disrupt elections. If anything like this happens on Election Day, they’ll be able to recover as quickly as possible.” 

With the election now weeks away, Pinal County is preparing through a cutting-edge, first-of-its-kind, AI-powered tabletop exercise. And it’s not just Pinal County preparing for potential threats. Statewide, the Secretary of State’s Office facilitated three tabletop exercises for Arizona’s 15 counties to participate in to prepare for the 2026 midterms — one in Flagstaff, another in Phoenix and the last in Tucson.

Officials in Arizona learned quickly that the scenarios that they were running in anticipation were anything but make-believe. On the afternoon of Oct. 15, the same day New Times published its cover story about threats to the election, the Arizona Department of State received an envelope filled with white powder. A member of the staff opened the envelope, according to a statement from Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

“This is a sobering moment that highlights the reality of election administration in this country today,” Fontes said.

He thanked his staff for acting quickly and law enforcement for its response. The disturbing envelope and its contents would not scare him or anyone at his office from doing their jobs to safeguard the election.

“As the election closes in, we know that threats will continue,” he said. “We are on high alert to protect everyone on our team that is working overtime to serve Arizona.”

With November approaching, these exercises matter more than ever. Election officials and security experts said unprecedented threats may challenge elections in ways they’ve never seen before.

Artificial intelligence technologies are rapidly spreading increasingly plausible disinformation. Deepfakes are difficult to detect. Earlier this year the U.S. picked at war with Iran, an opponent who may see an election as an optimal cyberattack target. The Trump administration has floated deploying federal agents to polling stations. Protests may erupt near any suspected federal interference. And longstanding issues aren’t out of the question, either. Unexpected weather emergencies on Election Day, such as flooding, fires, or power outages at polling stations, could force election employees to adapt.

“We’re ready for just about everything outside of Godzilla attacking,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Secretary of State, said in a September phone interview with New Times. “But you know what? We still have to concern ourselves with the church lady who doesn’t show up on time with the keys to open up the polling place.”

And it’s a good thing they began when they did. 

The night after the 2020 presidential election, a crowd of Trump supporters gathered outside of Maricopa County’s election center in downtown Phoenix. Fox News called Arizona for former President Joe Biden the night prior. Conspiracy theories spread that election workers deliberately didn’t count Trump votes. Outside the building some 200 protesters, some armed, chanted “stop the steal” and “count my vote.” Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones showed up at the protest the following night.

Inside the concrete tabulation center, Moore worked as the information security officer for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. He pushed back against conspiracy theorists and online misinformation, including the debunked, now-infamous “Sharpiegate.”

“We seem to be a hub, a hot spot for conspiracy theories and disinformation,” Moore said.

Election-related threats across the state have only become more varied since then. In the past six years, people have set ballot boxes on fire. Others have left white, powdery substances inside mail to election officials. Some encouraged people to steal pens from polling locations to prove a conspiracy theory. President Donald Trump has already cast doubt on this year’s election, calling Maricopa County “very, very dishonest” after the county’s election services vendor erroneously mailed more than 3,000 early ballots nearly a week ahead of schedule. 

On Election Day in 2024, bad actors made 15 bomb threats to polling locations statewide, Fontes said. Arizona’s election officials hadn’t trained staff for bomb threats. Still, drawing on preparation and coordination from tabletop exercises, election officials responded quickly, and the state didn’t have any major disruptions. “We had one polling place in a very rural county where voting was halted for only 20 minutes,” Fontes said.

This year, cybersecurity is at the top of Moore’s threat list. Iran is pissed, and it’s “very possible,” he said, that the state could see some sort of cyberattack targeting elections. A physical situation is also possible. People may be protesting near or around voting locations, leading to verbal clashes that spiral unpredictably.

Election officials could receive bomb threats at polling locations, as they did in 2024. Generative AI has really “amped that up” as it has expanded people’s ability to create deepfakes and other synthetic content, Moore said. State election officials will also be monitoring social media for election misinformation and disinformation.

“We’re all working together to make sure that we’ve got plans and contingency plans on top of those plans,” Fontes said. “I have confidence in the grit of the Americans who run our elections here in Arizona. Their determination to make sure to preserve American democracy will get us through 2026, come hell or high water.”

“Goals for today,” Pyche said to the group ahead of the exercise. “Think about that interdepartmental cohesion, the relations that you have. Try to continue to make that stronger. Learn what types of tasks or what types of things other departments can do for you. What types of information they can share with you.” 

Pinal County officials participated in one of the state’s tabletop exercises earlier this year, but Dana Lewis, the county recorder, took an extra step with a county-specific exercise created by ReadyForTuesday, patterned after the board game “Battleship.”

“We’ve done some hackathons and tabletops, but never as a full team being able to work together to discuss what we know as subject matter experts,” Lewis told New Times after the exercise. “Each one of the people that were in the rooms today plays a key part of that process.” 

Pyche, wearing a gray fleece sweatshirt over a blue-patterned polo and khaki shorts with a lanyard hanging out of the pocket, ran the show. He sported short brown hair and thin rectangular glasses, and he chewed gum as he strode between the two conference rooms. He worked with Lewis to develop the scenarios county employees would play out. All of the scenarios are based on real situations that have happened in local elections nationwide.

“Unlike many other functions of government or industry, Election Day is a single day when you have to get it right,” Pyche told New Times. “You have to keep going. You can’t just do it on a different day.” 

Lewis selected two team captains: Smith and Cyndi Martinez, the county’s deputy recorder. They put on costume boat-captain hats and threw on Ray Ban-style sunglasses to complete the look. Members from each department stood up as Pyche called their department. The two captains picked teammates and shuffled their crews into one of two smaller rooms on the opposite side of the center’s main conference room.

Shortly after settling in, the games began. 

“Omg! Everything’s on fire,” said Martinez, reading the post’s caption aloud to her team of 25 county employees. “We don’t know where to go; we’ll have to come back and vote tomorrow.” 

“This screams Jared,” Martinez quipped as she rested her hand on her chin. She peered at the screen through her pear-shaped glasses. The fire was the brainchild of the other team, dubbed Citizen Coyote, created using ChatGPT. Martinez’s team, named VoteBot, jovially brainstormed how to respond. 

Employees shouted out ideas. Taylor, a 20-something with long, wavy highlighted black hair, typed the team’s ideas on a black keyboard into ReadyForTuesday’s “ballotship” program. They’d have to call the fire department, evacuate voters, assess whether the fire destroyed ballots, contact affected voters, provide an alternative polling location and get the word out on social media.

Pyche whistled and threw a camo bouncy ball at the ground as he floated between the two rooms, checking on their status. ABBA and the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald boomed in the background as employees strategized.

Quickly, the 10 minutes were up, and ReadyForTuesday submitted VoteBot’s responses. “Ten minutes is obviously not enough time,” Martinez moaned. She slouched in front of the screen. 

“Go to the next round,” Pyche said, sticking his head into VoteBot’s conference room. “You didn’t hit them; they didn’t hit you.” 

Every 20 minutes, the program served the teams a new disaster scenario to tackle. Staff evacuated a polling station in a rural area of the county after finding a series of unidentified backpacks around the building. A monsoon the night before caused severe flooding on U.S. Route 60. The flood cut off voters from a main polling station. On Election Day, the county’s server, which contains all voter information, crashed. With each new situation, the teams asked each other, “How do we respond?” 

As the afternoon wore on, employees got the hang of the software and the intensity ratcheted up. Employees began recognizing response patterns to understand how to respond to a disaster more quickly, while becoming more competitive in the disaster scenario they created. Some employees placed the camo eye black under their eyes as they prepared to sink the other team’s battleship. 

“We could spend time trying to think possible scenarios through,” Pyche told New Times during the exercise. “Actually getting into their county employees’ heads — so that it’s something jurisdiction-specific — allows them to contemplate what it would look like, but also contemplate how to respond to it.”

“Now that the post office issue is resolved,” he said to the panelists of elected leaders and election officials, “I’m concerned about the Department of Homeland Security sending people out to voting sites.” 

“I can talk about this a little bit,” Gabriella Cázares-Kelly replied as she brought a wireless mic to her mouth. Cázares-Kelly, the Pima County Recorder, explained from the stage of the First Amendment Forum on the second floor of Arizona State University’s Cronkite School that security is “baked into everything that we do.” Her office, for instance, has met with law enforcement partners and asked, “What if ICE shows up?” 

For months, the Trump administration has suggested sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places on Election Day. As recently as early September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said ICE agents could enter polling places to make arrests this November. More than 30 U.S. Senators, including Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, signed onto a letter later that month demanding that Mullin immediately halt any DHS efforts to “assert federal control over and undermine public trust” in the November elections. 

It’s illegal for armed federal employees to be at polling locations on election days, but given the Trump administration’s loose relationship with the law, election officials must consider the scenario as a potential emergency without precedent in living memory.

Cázares-Kelly explained to the audience that her team speaks with federal partners, including DHS and the FBI, during monthly security meetings with the Arizona Counterterrorism Information Center. (“Yes,” she added. “We have one of those.”) She has asked federal partners if they “‘have people coming to these locations?’ And the answer is no,” Cázares-Kelly said. 

Nonetheless, Cázares-Kelly’s team has a plan. If federal agents attempt to unlawfully enter a polling location, a team member will alert the county attorney’s office. An employee of that office will then “literally” run to a judge “who is waiting to issue a restraining order,” she said. 

“There’s no indication that any of us have received,” Cázares-Kelly said, gesturing to the other members of the panel, which included the director of elections at Maricopa County, “that we would be seeing federal agents specifically with the intention of federal interference.” 

These same conversations are happening across the Valley. On Thursday afternoon, Pinal County employees, after filling their bellies with mac-and-cheese, beef, focaccia, and carrot cake, put their eye black back on to prepare for the same scenario. Let’s say a masked man in body armor walks up to a polling station with a warrant. He claims he’s a federal agent. He demands access to the building. 

What do you do? This truly would be a new challenge.

“I’m unfortunately, like everybody else, concerned that political desperation will turn into an abuse of federal law enforcement power,” Fontes said. “We’re encouraging our voters to vote early so they don’t have to worry about potential shenanigans from the federal government on Election Day.” 

The Secretary of State’s office is also following the legal fight and has plans to contact county attorneys to respond “quickly if there’s something that’s happening that’s not legal,” Moore said.  

The ACLU of Arizona wrote a letter to all 15 county recorders and county board of supervisor members as a resource, outlining the state and federal statutes regarding federal agents at polling stations. The organization also has a hotline that voters can call if they do see something. 

A plan is in place. But election officials appear doubtful that such activity will happen. They’re expecting Department of Justice observers to come to the polls to ensure accessibility compliance as part of a “regular process,” Cázares-Kelly said.

She doesn’t think ICE will show at the polls. Fontes called the administration’s talk “really just saber-rattling.”

But given Arizona’s recent history of stochastic election interference and conspiracy thinking? Absolutely nobody is ruling it out.