Arizona

Arizona: Maricopa County Recorder sues county supervisors over election powers | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap is suing the county’s supervisors, claiming they are illegally trying to seize control of the county’s elections. The lawsuit, which Trump-aligned group America First Legal filed Thursday on Heap’s behalf, claims that the supervisors “engaged in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections.” It specifically states that Heap wants control over the information technology staff that manages the county’s voter registration system, and that the board has prohibited him from accessing certain areas of the elections building that he needs entry to for early voting purposes. The legal action comes after a months-long feud over control of elections between Heap, a Republican who took office in January, and the Republican-controlled board. The dissension has cast doubt on the officials’ ability to work together to run the elections in the closely scrutinized swing county. Read Article

Arizona: Mohave County supervisor pushes for legal immunity for hand counted ballots | Howard Fischer/Arizona Capitol Times

Ron Gould contends that Mayes constitutes a “real threat” to his powers and duties to certify elections simply because he believes that supervisors should be able to order a complete hand count. However, so far, he has been unable to make his arguments after a trial judge last year dismissed his lawsuit, stating that he had not shown any imminent threat of prosecution. Now Gould is asking the state Court of Appeals to issue a ruling declaring he has a legal right to pursue the case and directing Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bradley Astrowsky to let him present his evidence. The new bid is getting a fight from Assistant Attorney General Alexander Samuels. He is telling the appellate court that Gould’s claims are “speculative,” especially as he has “not articulated a concrete plan to violate the law” in the future. And there’s something else. Samuels pointed out that state law requires the use of electronic tabulation of ballots, not the kind of hand count that Gould has pushed for in the past and may be seeking in the future. He noted that Gould is not challenging the legality of that law, but simply wants a declaration that he can’t be prosecuted for breaking it. Read Article

Arizona: Ruling lets Cochise County throw out local election result over mail-ballot mistake | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

An Arizona judge is allowing Cochise County officials to throw out the results of a local tax election after challengers identified a requirement in state law that they said the county didn’t follow — one that applies only to a specific kind of election and that other counties haven’t followed in the past. The case involves the county’s May 2023 all-mail election on a proposed tax to fund construction of a new jail. The Arizona Court of Appeals found last year that the county erred by not sending ballots to its 11,000 inactive voters. Because of that error, the county supervisors’ plan to redo the election is reasonable and legal, visiting Judge Michael Latham of the Cochise County Superior Court ruled May 22. Arizona counties typically send ballots only to active voters, but the appeals court found that for local taxing district elections — such as the Cochise jail election — the law required officials to send ballots to inactive voters as well. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County proposal to send out unsolicited mail ballots has a history | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

When Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap proposed sending mail ballots for a July election to a group of voters who hadn’t requested them, the suggestion seemed to come out of nowhere. Heap’s plan especially shocked his fellow Republicans, including the county supervisors, who have been clashing with him over election policy and who quickly voted to try to block it. GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda told Heap in a letter that his plan would be ill-advised and illegal. But Heap has defended his plan as a way to avoid disenfranchising rural voters who would otherwise have to drive unreasonably long distances to vote in person. And there’s some history that helps explain why Heap, who is aligned with the GOP’s arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and who campaigned on a platform of “election integrity,” would suggest such a move. Read Article

Arizona judge deals blow to case over 2020 Republican electors | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

An Arizona judge has ordered state prosecutors to send back to a grand jury a case in which Republicans were charged last year for their alleged roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, potentially jeopardizing the high-profile indictments. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam J. Myers sided with the Republicans and found that prosecutors failed to provide the grand jury with the text of an 1887 federal law that is central to the Republicans’ defense. The law, known as the Electoral Count Act, spells out how presidential electoral votes are to be cast and counted. “We are extremely pleased with the court’s ruling, and we think the judge got it exactly right,” said Stephen Binhak, the attorney who spearheaded the effort to get the case back to a grand jury. The decision is a major setback for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who promised to appeal the ruling so she could keep the prosecution going. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State seeks legal guidance as counties chart their own path on voter registration glitch  Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

To ensure equal treatment of all voters, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is seeking legal guidance on how to address more than 200,000 voters whose registrations do not meet the state's citizenship requirements. Fontes wrote in a May 7 letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes that county recorders, who handle voter registrations, have approached the issue differently. He's seeking uniform guidance in order to avoid potential lawsuits challenging election outcomes. Read Article

Arizona GOP passes ‘impossible’ voting bill requiring 4,000 new polling locations | Caitlin Sievers/Arizona Mirror

Republican lawmakers passed legislation that would cost Arizona counties tens of millions of dollars every election year and would force them to attempt to find 4,000 new voting locations, something that county election officials described as impossible. House Bill 2017 passed through the Senate by a 17-12 party line vote on Tuesday. Sponsored by Rep. Rachel Keshel, a Tucson Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, the proposal would ban in-person early voting and the use of vote centers where any registered voter within a county can cast a ballot. Instead, it would require the use of precincts capped at 1,000 registered voters apiece. Most counties use voting centers, which allow any registered voter to show up and cast a ballot at any polling site in the county. Under the precinct model, only voters assigned to a precinct can vote there, and if they vote at the wrong location, their ballot won’t be counted. Read Article

Arizona: American-made voting equipment might not be ready by 2029 | Howard Fischer/Arizona Capitol Times

On party-line votes, both the Republican controlled House and Senate have approved legislation spelling out that, beginning that year, the Secretary of State’s Office cannot certify vote-recording and vote-tabulating equipment unless each and every part of the machine, including all components and software, are “sourced from the United States.” House Bill 2651 also says the equipment must be assembled in the United States. The measure now goes to Gov. Katie Hobbs. The only thing is, there are no voting tabulation machines available that meet those conditions according to Jenn Marson, a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of Counties. And it is her organization’s members who would have to comply. She told lawmakers there are probably companies that could meet the deadline. But the problem, Marson said, comes down to this: What if they can’t? Read Article

Arizona: As Cochise County trial approaches, a judge throws out rules for certifying elections | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

When two Republican Cochise County supervisors delayed their certification of the county’s 2022 election results, a judge forced them to certify, pointing to language in Arizona’s election manual that says they have no choice. A state grand jury later charged the two supervisors with two felonies — conspiracy, and interference with the secretary of state’s duty to certify the election. And two secretaries of state have sought to make the rules about supervisors’ duties more explicit. A recent court ruling, though, challenges the long-held presumption in Arizona that supervisors have no discretion when certifying election results. The court threw out that section of the Elections Procedures Manual entirely, saying it goes further than the statute supports. Read Article

Arizona’s Mohave County approves security marks on ballot paper for 2026 | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona’s Mohave County plans to add security features to its ballot paper for the 2026 midterm election, a measure officials hope will improve voter confidence. The features could include watermarks or invisible fibers, according to a contract with election printing vendor Runbeck Election Services that county supervisors unanimously voted to approve Monday. The features will cost somewhere between 10 to 15 cents a ballot, according to Runbeck’s proposal. About 83,000 Mohave County voters cast ballots in the last midterm election. Read Article

Arizona: Fox News report feeds false claim about 50,000 noncitizens on voter rolls | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona has not identified up to 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, nor have counties begun canceling any voter registrations, despite news reports over the weekend suggesting otherwise. The misleading claims showed up in reports by Fox News and other outlets that mischaracterized a recent legal settlement between Arizona counties and the grassroots organization Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as EZAZ.org. Sunday’s Fox News story carried the headline “Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.” It said that the settlement led to all counties beginning “the process of verifying and removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, including nearly 50,000 registrants who did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship.” Read Article

Arizona voter citizenship rulings lead to disparate treatment for voters across state | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona voters who haven’t proven their citizenship are being treated differently across the state as they try to update their voter registration, in some cases seeing their registration suspended entirely until they provide proof, Votebeat has found. The disparate treatment across county lines comes as election officials decide how to comply with recent court rulings on state laws governing proof of citizenship, according to the responses nine out of 15 county recorder offices provided to Votebeat. The confusion over how to treat these voter updates is the latest complication arising from Arizona’s unique laws, which require voters to document their citizenship in order to vote in state and local elections. Read Article

Arizona: Longtime voters receive letters asking for proof of their citizenship | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona counties are starting to send letters to some longtime voters telling them that they must provide documentation proving their citizenship before they vote again, prompting annoyance and confusion across the state. Around 200,000 longtime residents, or roughly 5% of the state’s voter roll, will eventually get such letters because they were caught up in a decades-long state error tracking proof of citizenship. Affected voters will need to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other documents proving their citizenship. If they don’t, they’ll eventually be restricted to voting only in federal elections, or be kicked off the voter rolls entirely. Some of these voters have been registered for decades. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State says Trump’s election order is a ‘power grab’ | Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

President Donald Trump has issued a wide-ranging executive order that would wrest the ability of states to control federal elections, arguing the country has a "patchwork of voting methods" that his order seeks to streamline. The March 25 order sparked alarm among voting rights groups, with Democratic attorney Marc Elias promising an imminent legal challenge. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called it a "power grab," and predicted it could derail the mid-term elections of 2026. "(I)t appears as though this is another one of the administration’s building blocks in an attempt to avoid having to face the voters in 2026,” Fontes told Democracy Docket, an organization Elias founded that tracks election litigation. Read Article

Arizona judge could throw out a Cochise County election over quirk in state law | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A quirk in an Arizona statute governing all-mail elections for local taxing districts could prompt a judge to throw out the results of one such election in a case that could have legal repercussions around the state. The case calls into question the results of Cochise County’s May 2023 election, in which voters narrowly approved a new tax for a county jail. But without a legislative fix to the way the statute is written, other similar elections could be vulnerable to challenges in the future. The dispute involves a claim by four residents who sued the county to have the election nullified, arguing that ballots for the jail-tax election should have been sent to the roughly 11,000 inactive voters in the county, among other complaints. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State Proposes Alternative to Defunded National Election Security Program | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

After the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) cut funding to its election security programs, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) is taking matters into his own hands and forming an alternative program to fill CISA’s void for state and local election offices. According to a memo obtained by Democracy Docket, Fontes’ office wants to form a new organization called VOTE-ISAC, “an independent organization committed to safeguarding elections and restoring international confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes.” The idea for the program is to fill the void left by CISA’s crucial Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). Read Article

Arizona voter proof-of-citizenship laws blocked by federal appeals court | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Two Arizona laws that restrict voting by people who don’t prove their U.S. citizenship are “unlawful measures of voter suppression,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. The appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 2023 decision from the U.S. District Court of Arizona that found many provisions of two 2022 Republican-backed laws unconstitutional. That includes one provision that prohibits voters who don’t prove citizenship from voting for president, and another that prohibits them from voting by mail. The judges also found that the state must allow voters who don’t prove citizenship to vote in federal elections even if they use a state voter registration form. Read Article

Arizona: Critics of new ballot security bill zero in on sponsor’s links to key vendor | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona Republican lawmakers are again proposing to require security features on the state’s ballot paper, but Democratic skeptics are responding by pointing to a potential conflict of interest involving the proposal’s leading advocate. State Sen. Mark Finchem’s bill, SB1123, would require the state to use ballot paper with specific security features — such as a hologram, barcode and watermark — that he says would ensure only “legitimate” ballots are cast in the state’s elections. Finchem, a Republican, attempted to get the requirements into law a few years ago, and they were written into the rules for a pilot program that the state approved funding for in 2022. But that pilot program was scrapped, amid concerns about the potential conflicts involved. Read Article

Arizona proposal to speed up election results faces Hobbs veto threat | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Republican lawmakers in Arizona pledged after the November election to find a way to speed up election results, but it appears unlikely this year that they’ll send Gov. Katie Hobbs a bill that she would actually sign. The most likely alternative: Voters will see a related question on their ballot in 2026. Republicans have been moving ahead on the conventional legislative route. The Arizona House voted Tuesday to advance a bill, HB2703, that would rein in one major cause of vote-counting delays: the ability of voters to drop off their mail ballot at polling places on Election Day. That’s how nearly 1 in 10 Arizona voters cast their ballots last November, which meant election officials had to spend days afterward checking voter signatures on hundreds of thousands of ballot envelopes before they could be counted. The bill is likely to move to the Senate soon and the Senate president has introduced an identical bill, signaling this is likely to reach Hobbs’ desk soon. Read Article

Arizona election officials struggle to resolve proof-of-citizenship mixup | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Because of a 20-year-old government foul-up, about 200,000 Arizona voters will need to come up with proof of their citizenship soon in order to protect their full voting rights, and they might not even know about it yet. County officials waited six months for the Secretary of State’s Office to give them the final list of affected voters who need to be contacted, and clear legal guidance on how to do that so voters are treated fairly across the state. After all, in a few counties, the next elections are coming up in March or May. Read Article

Arizona State senator revives election conspiracies in Senate committee | Joe Duhownik/Courthouse News Service

An Arizona Senate committee advanced three bills aimed at election integrity in a meeting rife with unproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 and 2022 elections. In the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee meeting Wednesday, state Senator Mark Finchem, a Republican from Phoenix, parroted a theory from the popular documentary “2,000 Mules” that “hundreds of thousands” of fraudulent ballots were shipped into Arizona and other swing states during the 2020 election. The creator of "2,000 Mules" has since admitted that the film was inaccurate and removed it from all platforms. In order to combat the apparently nonexistent threat, Finchem introduced Senate Bill 1123, which would require all paper ballots to be outfitted with watermarks, holographic foil, unique barcodes, invisible ink or any other unique marker that could be used to track ballots and ensure they were printed and distributed in the state. Read Article

Arizona: New GOP-led elections committee in House signals voting debate isn’t over | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Republicans in the Arizona House have created a new committee that will take a comprehensive look at how the state’s elections are run, another sign that the state’s debate over election policy didn’t end with the 2024 election. GOP state Rep. Alex Kolodin will lead a panel called the House Ad Hoc Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-Style Voting Systems, according to an announcement Thursday, ahead of the Monday start of the new legislative session. Republicans have been saying for months that they want the state’s elections to be run more like Florida’s. Kolodin said he believes that means quicker election results, cleaner voter rolls, and better security for mail-in ballots. But it’s already clear that not everyone will agree on the changes, or that such changes would make the state’s elections better. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County’s new leaders pledge another election audit — but not like the last one | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Maricopa County’s new leadership will move immediately to commission an independent audit of the county’s election system, incoming supervisors announced at their first meeting Monday, but they promised that it will not be a repeat of the partisan, chaotic review of the county’s 2020 election results. The announcement came as the county swore in three new Republicans on the five-member board of supervisors. Minutes after being elected chairman, returning Supervisor Thomas Galvin affirmed that supervisors would soon hire what he described as a reputable firm to do a “comprehensive review” of election procedures and recommend improvements. Read Article

Arizona counties block access to cast vote records, citing law, privacy | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

After Kari Lake lost her U.S. Senate race in November, some skeptics cried election fraud. They doubted that so many people who voted for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who carried Arizona, would split their ticket and back Ruben Gallego, Lake’s Democratic opponent. In the past, local election analysts could counter such claims by analyzing a dataset known as the cast vote record — an electronic record of each anonymous ballot cast and all the votes recorded on it, including split-ticket votes. But for this election, they’ve hit a roadblock: They can no longer get that data. The counties that gave out their cast-vote record in the past now say that it is not a public record, or that they’ll provide only a heavily redacted version, without ruling specifically on whether the public is entitled to see it. Read Article

Arizona official who delayed county’s 2022 election certification didn’t have immunity, court says | Associated Press

An appeals court has rejected an Arizona official’s argument that felony charges against him for delaying certification of his rural county’s 2022 election results should be dismissed because he has legislative immunity. In an order Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s duty to certify the election results wasn’t discretionary. The court also said certifying election results is an administrative responsibility and that legislative immunity doesn’t apply to Crosby’s situation. Read Article

Arizona Judge blocks new election rules, including on certifying results | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes exceeded his authority in several instances when making changes to the state’s election manual last year, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday. The state will now be blocked from enforcing these particular rules, including one that would have allowed the secretary of state to finalize statewide election results without the results of a county, if the county failed to certify its results by the deadline. That rule had already been suspended by a federal judge in a separate case challenging Fontes’ manual. That challenge was filed in July in federal court by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. Read Article

How Arizona can get election results faster | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Four days after the election, with several congressional and state contests yet to be called, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen declared that it had “taken too much time” to count ballots. So Petersen made a promise to voters: He would reintroduce bills in the upcoming legislative session “to get election results, night of.” It was perfectly normal to not yet have final results at that point. In fact, it has sometimes taken as long as two weeks to finish counting ballots in the state, a timeline similar to that of other states that are friendly to voting by mail, such as California and Utah. But as national attention on Arizona, a swing state where contests can be close, has ramped up, pressure has mounted to count faster. And as unexpected delays sprang up across the state this year, including in rural counties that typically count quickly, the longer timeline fueled consternation among candidates and voters waiting for final results. Read Article

Arizona: With new leaders, Maricopa County’s well-guarded elections may see shake-up | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A new crew of Republican politicians will soon take control of Maricopa County’s high-profile elections, a major change for a key swing county that has for years contended with unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. The outgoing Republican officials built national profiles for fiercely defending the county’s elections against critics within their party. But the newcomers — also all Republicans — have signaled a different approach, saying they will be looking for ways to improve the system. The incoming recorder, Justin Heap, in particular, has been a consistent critic of the county’s elections, and is pushing for major changes. Heap, currently a Republican state representative, defeated incumbent Recorder Stephen Richer in the primary and went on to win the general election in a race that drew national attention. Read Article

Arizona: As Cochise County certifies election, Peggy Judd looks back at the vote that upended her life | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Peggy Judd knew exactly what she needed to do. Judd, a Republican on the board of supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, had to vote yes Wednesday on whether to certify the county’s presidential election results. If she didn’t, she would be not only breaking the law, but also violating the terms of her plea agreement. That’s because, two years ago, after the 2022 midterms, she made a different choice. She and another Republican supervisor voted to delay the certification of that election past the legal deadline. That decision made her one of a handful of local Republican officials around the country who unsuccessfully tried to halt or delay certification of an election. It also upended Judd’s life. Read Article