Arizona: Hackers? No, human error plagues Arizona primary voting | Associated Press

For all the worries about Russian hackers and other cyber-vandals, voting problems this week in Arizona served as a reminder that one of the biggest threats to fair elections is plain old human error. That appeared to be the case during Tuesday’s primary, when dozens of polling places in the state’s most populous county opened late because the voter verification machinery had not been set up. The Maricopa County recorder, the official in charge of running elections in and around Phoenix, said the contractor hired to connect the tablet-like devices didn’t send enough workers to complete the job on time. The contractor insisted it dispatched more people than the county requested.

Arizona: Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes defends his office | Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes rode into office in 2016 in the wake of a “presidential preference” election that went terribly wrong, with people standing in line for too long at too few polling places. So when 62 of the County’s 503 polling places failed to open on time Tuesday morning, it begged comparison. Fontes, a Democrat, claims it is not the same at all. The company hired to set up the voting equipment, he said, did not send the number of technicians the county had contracted for, and so he had to “up-train” county employees to plug in wires and get the equipment ready for election day. The company said it did its job, and the problems were on the county end. 

Arizona: Maricopa County election issues may have stemmed from misunderstanding | Arizona Republic

After a frustrating day at the polls Tuesday, voters were left asking what exactly went wrong and who was to blame. Voters were delayed and detoured for hours when dozens of polling places failed to open on time during Maricopa County’s primary election, and technical issues with electronic voting machines abounded across the county. A document The Arizona Republic obtained from the county Wednesday reveals some of the problems could have stemmed partly from a misunderstanding between the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and the contractor it hired to set up electronic voting systems at the polls.

Arizona: Voting problems: Who is to blame? | Arizona Republic

When voting began at 6 a.m. Tuesday, 62 Maricopa County polling places were not ready for voters. The check-in equipment that allows poll workers to verify voters’ identity had not been set up, leaving some voters unable to secure ballots for hours.  The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office blamed its IT contractor for the issues. The Tempe-based contractor pointed the finger back on an unprepared recorder’s office. Regardless of fault, thousands of Maricopa County voters found themselves bouncing between voting locations, casting provisional ballots or, in some cases, giving up on voting altogether. “This is not a hiccup,” Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes conceded. “This is a serious concern where voters across Maricopa County couldn’t get voting.”

Arizona: Officials knew of issues with voting machines a day before Tuesday’s primary | The Hill

Arizona officials knew on Monday about issues plaguing voting machines at certain polling locations, a day before the state’s primary elections, according to The Associated Press. Polling sites across the state have faced technical difficulties throughout the day, as voters pick nominees for U.S. House and Senate seats, as well as state and local offices. Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said at a press conference Tuesday morning that his office had been alerted to issues with voting equipment when troubleshooters were testing polling sites on Monday, The Arizona Republic reported.

Arizona: Election officials, Insight Enterprises swap blame for voting issues | Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and a Tempe-based technology company are trading blame for problems that caused dozens of polling places to fail to open on time Tuesday. The county hired Insight Enterprises, a global information technology contractor, to set up voter check-in equipment on Monday and provide technical support on Tuesday, the Recorder’s Office and an Insight representative agreed. But the explanations diverge from there. The check-in equipment lets poll workers verify the identity of a voter and print a custom ballot. The equipment uses an internet connection to access the voter registration database and connect to the printer. If voters cannot check in or print a ballot, they cannot vote. The Recorder’s Office said the contract called for 103 Insight employees to set up polling sites Monday, but only 73 technicians showed up, according to an email the office sent to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and county executives. Insight begs to differ.

Arizona: What happens next to John McCain’s Senate seat | Politico

Sen. John McCain held his seat in the Senate for nearly 32 years. After McCain’s death Saturday, it will fall to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to name his successor. State law gives Ducey, a Republican, the power to fill the Senate vacancy for the next two years, until a special election is held in 2020 to select a person to complete the final two years of McCain’s term. The seat will then be up again for a full six-year term in the 2022 election. Arizona law also stipulates that the appointee must be from McCain’s party. Ducey has avoided any discussion in recent months about which Republican he might appoint to fill McCain’s seat, citing respect for the senator and his family. “Out of respect for the life and legacy of Senator John McCain and his family, Governor Ducey will not be making any announcements about an appointment until after the Senator is laid to rest,” said Daniel Ruiz, a spokesman for Ducey.

Arizona: Judge upholds law barring collection of mail-in ballots | Associated Press

A judge has upheld a 2016 Arizona law that bans groups from collecting early mail-in ballots from voters and delivering them, marking the second time this year that a legal challenge to the statute has failed. U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes on Friday dismissed the latest challenge to the statute that bans anyone but caregivers or family members from delivering a completed early ballot to a polling place. The lawsuit was filed by Democratic activist Rivko Knox, who said the law caused her to stop delivering ballots for voters who request assistance. Rayes rejected arguments from Knox’s attorneys that the law was unconstitutional because it’s trumped by federal statutes and violated her free-speech rights.

Arizona: State isn’t updating voter addresses, lawsuit claims | Associated Press

Voting rights organizations are suing Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan over concerns that her office isn’t updating voters’ addresses. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona on Monday announced the lawsuit from multiple voter rights organizations including the League of Women Voters of Arizona. They’re concerned that Reagan’s office doesn’t update voter registration information when someone changes their address on their driver’s license. Reagan’s office last week rejected a request from the ACLU to change more than 500,000 voter registration addresses to what is listed on driver’s licenses. She cited concerns about a lack of voters’ consent. Instead, she says her office has coordinated with the Arizona Department of Transportation to make those changes next year.

Arizona: ACLU lawyers file suit over Arizona voter address updates | Associated Press

Voting rights organizations are suing Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan over concerns that her office isn’t updating voters’ addresses. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona on Monday announced the lawsuit from multiple voter rights organizations including the League of Women Voters of Arizona. They’re concerned that Reagan’s office doesn’t update voter registration information when someone changes their address on their driver’s license. Reagan’s office last week rejected a request from the ACLU to change more than 500,000 voter registration addresses to what is listed on driver’s licenses. She cited concerns about a lack of voters’ consent. Instead, she says her office has coordinated with the Arizona Department of Transportation to make those changes next year.

Arizona: Judge to decide legality of Arizona law prohibiting collection of mail-in ballots | Arizona Daily Star

Attorneys for a Democratic activist told a federal judge Friday that there is a legal and constitutional right for her and others to deliver someone else’s ballot to polling places. And Spencer Scharff asked Judge Douglas Rayes to immediately quash the law and allow what’s known as “ballot harvesting” to once again be legal in time for the Aug. 28 primary. Scharff argued that federal law specifically allows individuals to deliver “mail” — and essentially compete with the U.S. Postal Service — as long as they don’t charge for the service. In these cases, he told Rayes, people like his client, Rivko Knox, who have been collecting early ballots for years, are doing that simply as a service.

Arizona: Prosecutors say Russian hackers leased servers in Arizona, Illinois | Associated Press

Exactly seven months before the 2016 presidential election, Russian government hackers made it onto a Democratic committee’s network. One of their carefully crafted fraudulent emails had hit pay dirt, enticing an employee to click a link and enter her password. That breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was the first significant step in gaining access to the Democratic National Committee network. To steal politically sensitive information, prosecutors say, the hackers exploited some of the United States’ own computer infrastructure against it, using servers they leased in Arizona and Illinois. The details were included in an indictment released Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller, who accused the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, of taking part in a wide-ranging conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The companies operating the servers were not identified in the court papers.

Arizona: Challenge filed to law barring collecting of mail-in ballots | Associated Press

Another legal challenge has been filed to a 2016 law that bars groups in Arizona from collecting early mail-in ballots from voters and delivering them as part of get-out-the-vote efforts. The lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks to bar officials from enforcing the law and alleges the statute is unconstitutional because it’s trumped by federal law. It argues the state is trying to regulate the delivery of mail-in ballots, even though federal law lets private citizens mail items that belong to others if they do so without getting paid. Nearly two months ago, a federal judge rejected another attempt to overturn the Arizona law, ruling that the people who challenged the law didn’t prove that the election practices unjustifiably burden voting or were enacted to suppress minority turnout.

Arizona: Lawsuit seeks to remove ‘ballot harvesting’ ban | Arizona Daily Sun

A new lawsuit seeks to block Arizona from enforcing its ban on “ballot harvesting” for the upcoming election, claiming the state has no legal authority to regulate who can and cannot deliver someone else’s mail. In legal papers filed in federal court here Tuesday, attorney Spencer Scharff is arguing that only Congress has the right to regulate the U.S. mail. And he said that once someone puts a ballot into an envelope which has prepaid postage on it, it becomes “mail.” What all that means, said Scharff, is a 2016 statutes that makes it a felony to collect early ballots and deliver them to polling places is preempted by federal law. And he is asking U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Rayes to put the law on “hold” until there can be a full hearing on the issue.

Arizona: State Settles Suit Over Handling of Voter Registration | Associated Press

Arizona officials announced Monday a settled lawsuit that says thousands of residents are being disenfranchised by the way the state handled voter registration applications that don’t provide proof of citizenship. The suit filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens and Arizona Students’ Association against Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes. The lawsuit claimed the state’s voter registration process was unduly burdensome, as people who use a state-produced application and fail to provide proof could not vote in both state and federal elections.

Arizona: Distance, language can still pose challenge to Native American voting | Cronkite News

Arusha Gordon remembers hearing the decades-old stories from her Native American clients about the challenges of voting back then. Polling places were often miles off reservation and located in mostly white towns whose residents were not always welcoming, said Gordon, voting rights counsel for the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under Law. James Tucker heard the same stories from tribal members who said it was sometimes easier to skip elections completely. Those challenges are a thing of the past say Gordon and Tucker, the voting rights counsel for the Native American Rights Fund. But voting can still be a challenge for Native Americans, who may face language barriers, registration difficulties and a lack of access to polling places and government services that can ease the voting process. “It’s an issue that often gets overlooked,” Gordon said. “They (tribes) never get as many resources directed towards them.”

Arizona: Federal Judge Rejects Challenge to Ballot Collection Law | Associated Press

A federal judge has rejected a Democratic effort to overturn a 2016 Arizona law barring groups from collecting early ballots from voters as part of their get-out-the-vote efforts. The ruling issued by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Rayes Tuesday evening comes in a lawsuit filed shortly after the law was passed by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature. Rayes also rejected challenges by national and state Democratic groups that alleged the state’s policy of rejecting ballots cast in the wrong precinct was illegal. Democratic groups argue the law banning the collection of early ballots disproportionately affects minority voters. Gov. Doug Ducey has called it a common-sense law to protect election integrity. Violators of the law that bans anyone but caregivers or family members from delivering a completed early ballot to a polling place can face a felony charge.

Arizona: House passes GOP plan to overhaul redistricting commission | The Arizona Republic

Republicans in the Arizona House on Wednesday pushed through a proposal to revamp the commission that draws the state’s political boundaries. The House voted 32-25 to approve the measure to overhaul Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission, which sets political district lines that determine who represents voters in Congress and the state Legislature. The vote, with Republicans in favor and Democrats in opposition, came as lawmakers were working to put together and pass a final budget. Any changes to the commission require a vote of the people in the form of an amendment to the Arizona Constitution.

Arizona: 140,000 Maricopa County voters haven’t received registration cards | The Arizona Republic

Roughly 140,000 Maricopa County voters have not received ID cards, potentially leaving eligible voters in Tuesday’s special congressional election unaware that they can cast a ballot. County election officials said they haven’t sent cards out since December, blaming a printing delay.  The 8th Congressional District special election to replace ousted Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks in the West Valley is being watched nationally as a possible bellwether for the fall midterm elections.

Arizona: GOP House Speaker J.D. Mesnard cuts weekend voting proposal | The Arizona Republic

A bill to modernize elections that had broad support from both parties ran into a partisan buzz saw last week when the Republican House leader stripped key items such as weekend voting. The legislation would have allowed Arizona counties with the proper technology to keep early voting centers open from Saturday through Monday before Election Day, giving voters three more days to cast a ballot. The current prohibition on voting during the weekend dates to when election departments needed time to mark paper rosters by hand to note who cast early ballots before Election Day.

Arizona: Lawmakers at odds over a bill that could keep a McCain successor off the ballot this year | The Washington Post

State lawmakers in Arizona are sparring over legislation that would give a Republican successor to Sen. John McCain a pass on having to stand for election in November even if the ailing six-term senator resigns or dies before the end of next month. Leaders of the Republican-controlled state Senate say they plan a vote next week on the measure, which could have implications on control of the U.S. Senate and has intensified the spotlight on the health of McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling brain cancer. Democrats have cried foul and are vowing to block the bill, which they say reflects how worried Republicans are about defending GOP-held seats, even in a red state like Arizona. The state’s other U.S. Senate seat is also on the ballot in November, as Sen. Jeff Flake (R) is not seeking reelection.

Arizona: GOP Appears To Back Off Attempt To Rig Rules For McCain’s Senate Seat | TPM

Arizona Republicans appeared to back off their efforts Wednesday to rig the rules to keep Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) seat in their column, pulling from the state Senate floor a proposed change in state law that would have guaranteed a lengthy appointment from the GOP governor should the ailing senator leave office in the coming weeks. Statehouse Republicans seemingly tried to pull a fast one on their Democratic counterparts, quietly adding an emergency clause to a bipartisan bill to clean up special election laws in the state that would have handed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) assurance that he’d get to appoint a replacement for McCain through 2020.

Arizona: State hires cybersecurity firm to manage risk across state government | StateScoop

Arizona announced Monday that it will use a single cybersecurity firm to monitor and manage the risks to computer systems in all 133 state agencies. The company, RiskSense, is based in neighboring New Mexico and was chosen over other potential vendors in part because of its software that rates a network’s vulnerability to cyberattacks with a proprietary scoring metric modeled on personal-credit ratings. “I can have productive business conversations with people who know little about IT and security,” Mike Lettman, Arizona’s chief information security officer, said in a press release.

Arizona: Election database targeted in 2016 by criminals, not Russia: source | Reuters

A hack on an Arizona election database during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign was carried out by suspected criminal actors and not the Russian government, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters on Sunday. The official was responding to a report on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” citing an internal government document that Russian hackers successfully infiltrated computer systems associated with at least four U.S. states, including Arizona, leading up to the 2016 election. Hackers working for the Kremlin breached systems in Illinois, a county database in Arizona, a Tennessee state website and an information technology vendor in Florida, according to the previously undisclosed Oct. 28, 2016, assessment from the Department of Homeland Security, according to the program. 

Arizona: Republicans fight to protect dark-money donors from voters | Salon

American cities have become increasingly liberal, while the Republican Party controls most state governments. In an effort to keep blue cities from passing local ordinances reflecting their values, Republicans legislators in state capitals have embraced pre-emption laws, preventing city governments from enacting all kinds of things: Protecting their residents from discrimination, for instance, or increasing the minimum wage. Now Republicans in the Arizona state legislature are using that power to protect the flow of dark money — cash spent on campaigns from secret donors — into state and local elections. It turns out some powerful national interests are involved in making sure that local communities don’t know who is spending money to influence their elections.

Arizona: Senate OKs GOP plan to revamp redistricting panel | Associated Press

The Arizona Senate split along party lines as it approved a Republican proposal to revamp the state commission that handles the contentious political issue of redrawing the state’s congressional and legislative districts once each decade. The measure approved Wednesday would increase the Independent Redistricting Commission to nine members with equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats and independents. The commission currently has two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent. Redistricting has high stakes in politics because the boundaries and makeup of districts can influence whether a party and individual candidates can win elections.

Arizona: Justice Department, Arizona Settle Spat Over Rushed Absentee Voting | Courthouse News

The federal government said Tuesday it has reached a deal with Arizona after the state failed to give absentee voters enough time to consider final ballots in a special primary election slated for the end of February. The agreement comes after the Justice Department sued Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan last week, claiming absentee voters were not given 45 days to consider the finalized ballot for a special election to fill a vacancy in the state’s 8th Congressional District. U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican, stepped down from the seat in December after he was accused of offering a female staffer $5 million to be a surrogate for his children. Gov. Doug Ducey ordered a special primary election for Feb. 27, with the general election set for April 24.

Arizona: Panel okays proposal for state lawmakers to tap U.S. Senate nominees | Arizona Capitol Times

Claiming they’re being ignored by John McCain and Jeff Flake, Republican state legislators took the first steps Tuesday to allowing them — and not the voters — to choose who gets to run for the U.S. Senate. On a 6-3 party-line vote, members of the House Committee on Federalism, Property Rights and Public Policy approved a a measure which would give lawmakers the power to nominate Senate candidates. Legislators from each political party would choose two nominees for each open seat, with the four names going on the general election ballot. HCR 2022 now goes to the full House. If it gets approved there and by the Senate, the change would have to be ratified by voters in November. In essence, the proposal would partly return Arizona to the way things were prior to 1913 when U.S. senators were chosen outright by the legislatures of each state, with no popular vote at all.

Arizona: Republican bill could allow Legislature to draw map of voters | Arizona Republic

Republican state lawmakers are pushing a November ballot proposition that would ask voters to overhaul the panel that draws Arizona’s political boundaries — a move that could affect which party holds power at the state Capitol. The proposition would also give state legislators the authority to potentially sketch their own district boundaries, as well as those of Arizona’s members of Congress. Supporters said the proposal is intended to make the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission — a bipartisan panel that was created to take that power away from the Legislature — larger and, thereby, more bipartisan. But Democrats and voter-advocacy groups say it’s a veiled attempt to dismantle the commission and let state lawmakers pick their voters through gerrymandering.

Arizona: Legislative leaders push redistricting commission changes | Associated Press

Republican leaders in the Arizona Legislature are pushing a proposal to dramatically overhaul the independent commission that draws congressional and legislative maps every decade. Redistricting is important because it can decide which party gets the majority of congressional and state legislative seats. It is a contentious issue nationwide. Senate President Steve Yarbrough’s proposal would expand the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission from five to eight members, all appointed by the Legislature. Three would be Democrats, three Republicans and two independents.