After 2024 incident, Maricopa County examines hiring process for temporary election workers

A search of Walter Alphonso Jamel Ringfield Jr.’s last name on the Maricopa County Superior Court website in May 2024 should have revealed he had been charged with theft eight months earlier.

But a Maricopa County vendor conducting background checks on hundreds of temporary election workers searched his name as “Jamel Ringfield, Walter Alphonso” according to his county employee file, which was included in a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office investigative report obtained by Votebeat through a public records request.

The report shows no records were found with that version of his name.

Ringfield, now 29, was hired. He was employed for fewer than 30 days in June 2024 when a surveillance camera captured him swiping a security fob used to access ballot tabulation machines and keys from a work station in the tabulation room of the Maricopa County Elections Department, according to the report and what officials said at the time.



https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2025/12/22/walter-ringfield-maricopa-county-elections-theft-berrydunn-audit/