Allie Young saddled up, slid her feet into stirrups and started on a two-hour trail through her homeland of Navajo Nation, with a group of eager early voters in tow. They were heading to the polls on horseback. There are only a few available polling stations for Navajo voters, many of whom have limited access…
Arizona election officials of both parties repudiated a tweet from President Donald Trump that again pushed the baseless allegation that voting by mail fosters election fraud and suggested that the November election should be delayed “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.” Trump has repeatedly promoted, without evidence, unverified claims that voting-by-mail is susceptible to fraud, largely in response to Democratic calls for all-mail balloting to ensure that people can vote safely amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The president reiterated those claims on Thursday, along with a more novel argument that the alleged fraud may necessitate moving the date of the Nov. 3 general election. “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. Democratic and Republican election officials in Arizona took issue with both the election fraud allegations and the suggestion that the election be delayed. “I have no words. It’s very disappointing,” said Yavapai County Recorder Leslie Hoffman, a Republican.
The state and national Democratic parties are challenging a state law that denies some people the right to vote because they forgot to sign their mail-in ballots. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court here points out that state lawmakers last year agreed to require county election officials to give people five business days to “cure” their ballots if it appears that the signature on the envelope does not match what is on file. But attorney Alexis Danneman said Arizona law does not offer a similar option for those who simply failed to sign the envelope. “If not remedied by 7 p.m. on Election Day, their votes are simply not counted,” she wrote. “Voters who are in fact registered to vote, and who did in fact timely submit their mail ballots, will have their votes disregarded without due process.” The issue, she said, is not academic. Danneman said Maricopa County officials rejected 2,209 unsigned mail-in ballots in the 2016 general election and 1,856 two years later. Overall, she said, officials in the state’s largest county rejected 18,420 mail ballots due to lack of signatures from 2008 through 2018. And Danneman said this isn’t just a Maricopa County problem. She said Pinal County officials rejected 131 ballot for missing signatures or similar reasons in 2018.
Voting rights advocates called on Arizona officials Tuesday to send a ballot to every registered voter for the primary and general elections this year and take other steps to ensure people can safely vote during the coronavirus outbreak. Citing infections linked to Wisconsin’s primary earlier this month, the groups said nobody should risk their health to cast a ballot. They want election officials to send ballots to everyone while preserving in-person voting opportunities for those who prefer it or can’t vote by mail, such as living in remote areas of Native American reservations. They also want extended deadlines for in-person early voting and voter registration. The moves are critical “so we don’t end up in a situation where we’re tracing back new coronavirus cases…to people who were exercising their fundamental right to living in a democracy by voting,” said Aaron Marquez, western states director for Vote Vets, an advocacy organization for progressive veterans.
A coalition of election officials, health experts and voting rights advocates collected more than 1,000 signatures urging Gov. Doug Ducey and legislative Republicans to let ballots be mailed to all voters. Calling it a “vote-by-mail plus” model, the coalition led by All Voting Is Local Arizona said mailing ballots to every voter would not preclude the state from still offering polling places on election day in August and November. In fact, Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen said that mailing ballots would allow her office to allocate scarce resources and manpower to areas of the county that most need in-person voting options. Voters in urban areas have easy access to mail, while rural voters — particularly those on Arizona’s Indian reservations — still need the option to vote in-person. “Allowing the counties to mail ballots to all registered voters will alleviate the burden that the counties currently have in finding and staffing all of our election day polling locations,” Hansen said.
A Democratic lawsuit challenging Arizona’s absentee ballot deadline is citing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling about the Wisconsin primary to support its case, arguing that the decision to allow absentee ballots to count in Wisconsin if they were postmarked on or by Election Day should also apply in Arizona. In a supplemental memo filed Tuesday in federal court, lawyers for a trio of plaintiffs argued that the high court’s ruling bolsters their complaint that requiring absentee ballots to be returned — rather than postmarked — on or by Election Day leads to the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters when their overdue ballots are rejected. The Supreme Court ruled on Monday of last week that absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s primary had to be postmarked by April 7, the date of election, but could be counted as long as they were received by April 13. Typically, absentee ballots in Wisconsin must be received on or by Election Day to count, making the decision a victory for Democrats as they seek to ease voting restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. Marc Elias, a Democratic elections lawyer involved in both cases, said precedent may be helpful in the legal push against Arizona’s deadline, which has emerged as the first test of whether lower courts will follow the Supreme Court’s lead. The original suit was filed in November.
Arizona’s top election official asked lawmakers Wednesday to let counties run elections entirely by mail later this year if it’s necessary to protect election workers and voters from the coronavirus outbreak. As public health officials recommend increasing restrictions on social interactions, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said the state needs to “prepare now for any eventuality.” About 80 percent of Arizonans have voted by mail in recent elections. “It is vital we build more flexibility into the law, even if only on a temporary basis,” Hobbs wrote to legislative leaders. Her request comes a day after thousands of voters cast a ballot in the Democratic presidential primary amid extra sanitation precautions. Some voters wore masks and gloves and took pains to maintain the recommended six feet of separation between people, while poll workers were instructed to regularly clean surfaces.
Arizona is among four states that will proceed with its Democratic primaries on Tuesday, as public health officials call for social distancing and an end to mass gatherings during the new coronavirus pandemic. Officials say that there will not be a better time to hold elections, and they maintain that they can do it safely. But they have stopped short of urging people to go out and vote. The risks of voting on Tuesday depend on several factors, including who else goes, where and how one votes, and how well-sanitized polling stations are. “We have no guarantee that there will be a safer time to hold this election in the near future,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said Monday afternoon during a press conference with other state leaders, including Governor Doug Ducey. “The longer we wait, the more difficult and dangerous this will become.” She urged voters to “make a decision that is right for you.” Characterizing voting as different from other gatherings, like concerts or sporting events, Hobbs and three other secretaries of state, from Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, said in a joint statement on Friday that voting could be done safely, in part because “polling locations see people from a nearby community coming into and out of the building for a short duration.”
A Superior Court judge has stopped Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes from sending ballots to all voters who aren’t on the early voters list for Tuesday’s Presidential Preference Election. Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed suit Friday for the emergency order after the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said Fontes disobeyed their orders to not mail out the ballots. “The Maricopa County Recorder cannot unilaterally rewrite state election laws,” Brnovich said in a press release. “Fontes is creating chaos in our elections during an already difficult time. In times of crisis, the public looks to our elected officials to follow the law – not make reactionary decisions for political gain.” Hobbs wrote a letter to Fontes this afternoon calling his actions illegal. “I want to reiterate what I communicated to you on the phone this morning,” Hobbs wrote. “My Office’s position is that you do not have legal authority at this stage to mail a ballot to all voters who have not requested one. The lack of an express statutory prohibition is irrelevant. If your view were correct, counties apparently have had authority to conduct countywide all-mail elections all this time.”
Arizonans still vote on paper but much of an election unfolds online, from finding a polling place to requesting a mail ballot.
Cyber security experts worry election officials in some of the state’s counties are not doing enough to secure their websites and prevent fraudsters from sowing disinformation or spreading confusion. Most of the county recorders in Arizona are not using one of two basic safety measures that cyber security firm McAfee is encouraging local governments adopt. The company is urging election officials to use web addresses ending in .gov as well as secure sockets layer — encryption commonly used on websites that handle passwords, credit card information and other sensitive data. Without these measures, it could be easier for saboteurs to hijack a website and steal users’ data or provide false information, particularly heading into an election that experts anticipate will be targeted with disinformation.
Arizona officials are considering tougher cybersecurity standards for the state’s elections ahead of 2020, according to a proposed set of protocols the Secretary of State’s Office published this week. Some of the changes come after The Arizona Republic highlighted concerns about policies included in a first draft of a manual that county officials across the state will use to administer next year’s election. Experts contacted by the newspaper pointed to provisions that did not mandate the use of encryption in some circumstances or would allow officials to re-use USB sticks when working with election systems. The Secretary of State’s Office toughened policies on both of those issues in its final draft of the election procedures manual, published this week. Digital security is just a small piece of the proposed manual, which totals more than 500 pages. But cybersecurity has drawn particular scrutiny amid concerns about meddling in American elections.
Some aspects of how to secure Arizona’s elections from hackers and fraudsters may seem obvious. Change the passwords on equipment every once in a while, for a start. Oh, and make it complicated, with some numbers and uppercase letters tossed in. Of course, there is a lot more to fending off cyber attacks. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office is writing a new manual for county election officials and its first draft includes additional provisions on security. While experts praise some of those measures as big steps to prevent tampering, they are raising concerns about potential vulnerabilities with other measures. County officials who administer elections can adopt tighter security standards than those set by the state, but the new election procedures manual will set out the minimum requirements that local officials must follow. It revises policies last updated in 2014. Among the provisions that raised concerns is a suggestion that a USB stick used to transfer files from one device to another can be re-used if it is cleaned and reformatted.
The road from Washington to St. Petersburg apparently passes through Arizona – at least the cyber-road does. That’s according to the long-awaited Mueller report on the two-year investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Buried in the 448-page report is a little more than a page that said Russian intelligence officers used a “leased computer” in Arizona to help funnel information that was stolen from hacked Democratic Party computers. About half of the page on the Arizona server is redacted because the information relates to an “investigative technique” – one of the areas blacked out from the report, along with information about grand jury testimony, ongoing investigation and privacy concerns. The unredacted portions do not reveal where in Arizona the leased computer was located or which company might have leased it.
Arizonans could face a use-it-or-lose situation with the Permanent Early Voting List under a bill approved by a Senate committee on Thursday. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senate Bill 1188 on a 4-3 party-line vote, with Republicans supporting the measure and Democrats opposing it. Voters who want to automatically receive an early ballot in the mail for every election can sign up for the Permanent Early Voting List. Under SB 1188, anyone who doesn’t vote in either the primary or general elections for two consecutive election cycles would be removed from the list, though they would still be registered to vote. At least that’s what the sponsor’s intent was. The bill may accidentally be much stricter than intended.
Senate Republicans advanced a controversial bill that would bar Arizonans from dropping off their early ballots in person at polling places, but GOP holdouts appear likely to stop it from going any further. Republican Sens. Kate Brophy McGee and Heather Carter were silent during the contentious, hour-long debate over Senate Bill 1046 on Wednesday. However, both said afterward that they will vote against the proposal, which will be enough to defeat it, presuming no Democrats break with their caucus to support it. Brophy McGee said she believes there are other Republicans who are also opposed to the bill. Republicans have a 17-13 advantage in the Senate, and can only afford a single defection on a party-line vote.
Nearly a quarter million Arizonans who dropped off their early ballots at polling places on Election Day in November would lose that ability in future years under a bill that passed its first legislative hurdle in a Senate committee on Thursday. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed three election-related bills sponsored by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale. One of those bills, Senate Bill 1046, would require voters who receive early ballots in the mail to return them only by mail, rather than bringing them to polling places before or on Election Day. People who don’t mail in their ballots would be able to vote at a polling place, but would have to wait in line and go through the same process as other in-person voters. The committee passed SB1046 on a 4-3 party-line vote, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats in opposition.
A federal appeals court will give Democrats a new chance to argue that an Arizona law banning “ballot harvesting” is illegal. In a brief order, the majority of the judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said they want to review and reconsider a 2-1 ruling by one of their panels last year that upheld the 2016 law, which bars Arizonans from collecting and delivering the ballots of others. In that ruling, the majority brushed aside complaints from the state and federal Democratic parties that the Republican-controlled Legislature had no evidence of fraud from the practice. Nor were they persuaded by arguments that the restriction has a harsher effect on the voting rights of minorities than on Arizona residents in general.
What hope there might be for democracy in America is ill-served by a United States Senate that is, by design and in practice, strikingly unrepresentative. Voters got a reminder of that in November. They cast 52,539,754 ballots for Democratic Senate candidates versus just 34,787,898 for Republican contenders, yet Mitch McConnell’s GOP caucus actually expanded its majority. But that’s not the worst of it. The Senate is so antidemocratic that candidates who are rejected by the voters can still end up taking seats in the chamber. Case in point: Martha McSally. McSally was the Republican nominee for an Arizona US Senate seat this year, and she got beat. The voters chose Democrat Kyrsten Sinema by 55,900 votes. Yet, come January, McSally and Sinema will both be senators. That’s because, on Tuesday, Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, appointed McSally to fill the state’s other Senate seat. She’ll replace another unelected Republican senator, Jon Kyl, whom Ducey appointed to serve a portion of the Senate term to which the late John McCain was actually elected in 2016.
A judge has ruled that Arizona lawmakers violated the state Constitution on multiple fronts when they passed a sweeping overhaul of campaign-finance laws in 2016. Those changes illegally limit the power of the voter-approved Citizens Clean Elections Commission to police campaign-finance laws and illegally create loopholes for spending limits, the ruling states. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Palmer ruled that the changes are unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The ruling is the latest twist in a fight over Senate Bill 1516, a major rewrite of campaign- finance laws that the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey pushed in 2016.
Few people do things perfectly on the first try. There’s a learning curve, whether it’s a gymnast tumbling across an arena floor, a professional baseball player throwing his first pitch … or managing a data system essential to Mohave County’s 2018 General Election. That last example has been a cause for concern with Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson after an almost 36-hour delay in obtaining voter registration data after this year’s election. The delay was caused by e-poll staff unfamiliar with the county’s electronic polling software. Now Johnson has requested reimbursement from e-polling provider Robis Inc. for the county’s lost time. Mohave County began its contract in 2016 with Robis Inc, with the company acting as Mohave County’s vendor for electronic poll books, using a software known as Ask Ed. According to Johnson, data collection from Mohave County’s e-poll book software was seamless in 2016. The previous project manager left Robis in 2018, however, and a new project manager was assigned to Mohave County.
The constitutionality of Arizona’s law giving Governor Doug Ducey the right to control the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the passing of John McCain has been challenged in federal court. A group of plaintiffs led by William Tedards filed the action against Ducey and Senator Jon Kyl yesterday and asks that the Governor be required to call for a special election within six months. Their contention is that the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (text below) which requires that U.S. Senators be elected invalidates the Arizona law (also below) that the special election for a Senate vacancy can only be held at a biennial general election. McCain passed away in August, too late for Governor Ducey to add a primary and general election to be held by November 6, 2018. Instead, he appointed former Kyl to the seat, even as Kyl indicated that he might very well only stay in the position through the end of 2018. That would permit the Governor to make a new appointment for another two years, for a total of 28 months.
Nearly 7,000 voters would have had their early ballots rejected over problems with their signatures if Maricopa County hadn’t initiated a new policy of attempting to “cure” those ballots after Election Day. According to data provided to the Arizona Mirror by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, 7,240 early ballots had signatures on their envelopes that required further review after Election Day. The majority of those ballots were dropped off at polling places on Election Day. County election officials began contacting voters who dropped off early ballots on Election Day and whose signatures needed further review on Nov. 8, two days after the election. The outreach effort allowed the county to verify the signatures on 6,933 of the ballots, which was nearly 96 percent of the ballots that election officials reviewed for potentially mismatched signatures.
The Navajo Nation has dropped a legal claim that could have delayed formal certification of the general election results. But the tribe still contends early voting procedures used in three Arizona counties violate the rights of tribal residents. And an attorney for the tribe, Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, said Monday that unless there is a deal, they will be back in court. At a brief hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Dominic Lanza agreed to essentially put the legal dispute on the back burner. In a blistering statement from the bench, however, the judge blasted the tribe’s attorneys for waiting until this past Tuesday to file suit for a temporary restraining order on a narrow issue that would have delayed announcing a final vote tally for all races statewide.
The Navajo Nation is seeking a court order to allow tribal members to fix problems with signatures on early ballots in Arizona’s general election — a request that could delay the state from certifying ballots next month. Voters statewide were given more time to address mismatched signatures after Republicans alleged in a lawsuit that Maricopa and Pima counties contacted voters illegally after Election Day about signatures on ballot envelopes that didn’t match those on the voter file. A lawsuit filed this week by the largest American Indian reservation makes a broader argument to count ballots that Navajos properly filled out but didn’t sign. It alleges Navajos have fewer opportunities to participate in early voting and not enough translators to tell tribal members with limited or no English proficiency how to complete early ballots so they aren’t thrown out. The tribe said more than 100 votes cast by Navajos were disqualified.
How many Arizonans were unable to vote in the general election because they were purged from the rolls over out-of-date addresses that stemmed from violations of federal voting laws? State elections officials told The Arizona Republic this week that they had no way of knowing because there is no process to track voters affected by the routine removals. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office knew before Tuesday’s election that the registrations of about 390,000 Arizonans since November 2016 were not automatically updated when they changed the address on their driver’s licenses — a requirement under the National Voting Registration Act of 1993, unless a voter opts out of such updates. Some of those voters might, however, have cast provisional ballots, which can be counted if elections officials determine after the fact that they are legitimate. As of Friday, an estimated 50,000 provisional ballots have been cast across Arizona with an additional 11,000 out-of-precinct ballots from Maricopa County voting centers. This estimate does not include Mojave and Gila counties, which haven’t released data yet.
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Arizona and nationally are stoking claims of deliberate election fraud in the state’s U.S. Senate race as Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema await results of a vote that could swing in either’s favor. The tight race has left Republicans in jeopardy of losing a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 30 years. Though McSally held a lead in early-vote totals, the tally flipped in Sinema’s favor Thursday night. Updated results Friday evening kept Sinema with a 20,000-plus advantage, but an estimated 360,000 ballots remain to be counted. No group has brought forward allegations of specific criminal activity, although one Republican lawsuit addressed an equity issue over how early-ballot signatures are verified. … Amy Chan, former state elections director under Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett, tweeted, “Unfounded allegations of voter fraud are totally irresponsible and should rightly be condemned because they shake voter confidence & can affect future participation. Voter fraud in my experience is almost nonexistent.”
As the Arizona Senate vote count starts to tip into Democratic terrain, a judge Friday will hear a lawsuit by the GOP seeking to limit the tally — or expand it in the state’s conservative-leaning rural areas. Four local Republican parties filed a lawsuit Wednesday night challenging the state’s two biggest counties for allowing voters to help resolve problems with their mail-in ballot signatures after Election Day. If the signature on the voter registration doesn’t match that on the sealed envelope, both Maricopa and Pima County allow voters to help them fix, or “cure” it, up to five days after Election Day. Many other counties only allow voters to cure until polls close on Election Day.
The Arizona Republican Party has sent a letter to all county recorders alleging that some of them misused emergency early voting. It is unclear how many counties set-up emergency voting locations. At least five “emergency” voting centers were opened in Maricopa County for Saturday, Sunday and Monday voting. Both in person and turning in early ballots. In their letter, the GOP wrote that, “The Legislature has directed in no uncertain terms that in-person early voting must terminate ‘no later than 5 p.m. on the Friday preceding the election.” It goes on to say that an “emergency” consists of “any unforeseen circumstances that would prevent the elector from voting at the polls…In other words mere inconvenience is not permissible.”
Experts warn new technology intended to make voting on Election Day faster and easier also comes with new risks that could contribute to the problems it was intended to solve. And some of those experts say the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office hasn’t demonstrated it’s prepared for the myriad things that can go wrong. “Every other jurisdiction that I know of, except for Maricopa it sounds like, has a backup plan … to make sure you’re not just turning voters away or making them stand in line until you figure out what the technical problem is,” said Joe Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It sounds like (the recorder’s office) isn’t doing the right kind of contingency planning.” The recorder’s office has come under scrutiny since August’s primary election when 62 voting centers failed to open on time because the machines used to check in voters at the polling sites, known as electronic “SiteBooks,” hadn’t been set up.
Maricopa County residents have been purged from the voter rolls nearly 1.1 million times since the 2008 election. Nearly half, or 491,944, of the removals happened, as required by state statute, after the Maricopa County Elections Department mails a notice — an early ballot or a voter guide — to a voter and it is returned undelivered by the U.S. Postal Service. If the initial and subsequent notices are undelivered, the individual is designated “inactive.” Inactive voters who do not update their registrations or vote in the following two general elections are removed from the rolls. It’s a policy intended to ensure the rolls include only people who are eligible to vote, and, supporters say, it helps prevent fraud. The remainder of the purges are largely voters who moved out of the county or died.