Arizona

Arizona: It all turns on Maricopa County: Takeaways from a day of glitches, conspiracies and a lawsuit | Robert Anglen, Sasha Hupka and Corina Vaenk/Arizona Republic

The likely outcome of Arizona’s statewide races hinges on what happens in Maricopa County after an Election Day that saw voting equipment glitches, ink-stained conspiracies and a lawsuit to extend polling hours. County election officials closed out the night with a promise to continue counting all ballots cast in the 2022 midterms. The tally already includes more than 880,000 ballots they had counted by midnight Tuesday. They estimated residents cast 248,000 ballots in person at polling stations on Election Day. Equipment problems that affected at least 30% of the county’s voting centers and prompted a lawsuit by the Republican National Committee will not delay results or interrupt the tabulation process, election officials said.

Full Article: Maricopa County election glitches, conspiracies and a lawsuit

Arizona county’s plan to hand-count ballots blocked by judge | Bob Christie/Associated Press

A judge on Monday blocked a rural Arizona county’s plan to conduct a full hand-count of ballots from the current election — a measure requested by Republican officials who expressed unfounded concerns that vote-counting machines are untrustworthy. The ruling from Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey F. McGinley came after a full-day hearing on Friday during which opponents presented their case and called witnesses. An appeal of the judge’s decision is likely. Election Day is Tuesday. McGinley said the county board of supervisors overstepped its legal authority by ordering the county recorder to count all the ballots cast in the election that concludes on Tuesday rather than the small sample required by state law. The opponents who sued to stop the proposed hand-count — a group called the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans — argued that state law only allows a small hand-count of early ballots to ensure the counting machines are accurate. Group members argued that a last-minute change would create chaos and potentially delay certification of the election results. Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra also opposed the plan for the expanded count and testified about how it could delay results and imperil ballot security.

Full Article: Arizona county’s plan to hand-count ballots blocked by judge | AP News

‘We’re Afraid’: Arizona Town That Inspired Debunked Voter Fraud Film Braces for Election Day | Jack Healy and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

It was a jumpy, 20-second video clip that touched off a firestorm: During a local primary election two years ago, the former mayor of this farm town of San Luis, Ariz., was filmed handling another voter’s ballot. She appeared to make a few marks, and then sealed it and handed a small stack of ballots to another woman to turn in. That moment outside a polling place in August 2020 thrust this town along the southern border into the center of stolen-election conspiracy theories, as the unlikely inspiration for the debunked voter fraud film “2,000 Mules.” Activists peddling misinformation and supported by former President Donald J. Trump descended on San Luis. The Republican attorney general of Arizona opened an investigation into voting, which is still ongoing. The former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for ballot abuse — or what the attorney general called “ballot harvesting” — a felony under Arizona law. Ms. Fuentes is one of four women in San Luis who have now been charged with illegally collecting ballots during the primaries, including the second woman who appears on the video. But there have been no charges of widespread voter fraud in San Luis linked to the presidential election. Liberal voting-rights groups and many San Luis residents say that investigators, prosecutors and election-denying activists have intimidated voters and falsely tied their community to conspiracy theories about rampant, nationwide election fraud. The film “2,000 Mules,” endorsed by Mr. Trump, has helped to keep those claims alive, and is often cited by election-denying candidates across the country.

Full Article: Town That Inspired Debunked Voter Fraud Film Braces for Election Day – The New York Times

Arizona: Pinal County rejects ballot hand count sought by supervisor | Robert Anglen/Arizona Republic

Pinal County will not conduct an expanded hand count of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 election. The Pinal County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday unanimously rejected a plan to increase the percentage of ballots counted by hand in order to ensure voting machines are accurate. Republican Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh, who sought the expanded hand count as a more reliable test of voting machines, ultimately voted against his own proposal after a barrage of community opposition. “This is what good government should look like,” he said, praising the nearly two-hour meeting as an important hearing on individual concerns. Cavanaugh’s comments contrasted with his opening remarks, when he raised the issue of “dismantling” voting machines before checking himself and saying he wasn’t going to talk about that. He shifted instead to voting machine accuracy. “There has been concern and commentary from both sides of the aisle, the most notable, of course, President Trump … saying elections are stolen,” he said. “I’m not getting into the issue of whether there’s code in the machines that change the vote.”

Full Article: Pinal County rejects ballot hand count sought by supervisor

Arizona’s Republican Attorney General gives county OK for full ballot hand counts | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Arizona’s Republican attorney general has issued an opinion saying county officials can hand-count all ballots in at least five races from the Nov. 8 election, a move that gives a green light to GOP officials in at least two counties who have been clamoring for hand counts. The efforts to hand-count ballots are driven by unfounded concerns among some Republicans that problems with vote-counting machines or voter fraud led to former President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. The new attorney general opinion led the two Republicans on the three-member Cochise County board of supervisors to boost their plan to hand-count some races in both early and Election Day ballots. They had pledged to pare back the effort on Wednesday. Under state law, the local leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties would have to provide hundreds of volunteers to do the counts. At a fiery meeting Friday, Democratic Supervisor Ann English said she’ll do everything she can to stop the county Democratic Party chair from providing those workers. “It would be my fondest hope, that if I have any authority, any way that I can convince the chair of the Democratic party in Cochise County not to provide people for this fiasco that will be my intent,” English said. “Because I think that every day that we’re discussing this, then people are wondering ‘what’s wrong with our elections.’ ” … The hand count would take place along with the machine count, and the machine count will be used for the legal results.

Full Article: Arizona AG gives county OK for full ballot hand counts | AP News

Arizona: Justice Department says ‘vigilante ballot security efforts’ are likely illegal | Marshall Cohen/CNN

The allegations “raise serious concerns of voter intimidation,” the Justice Department wrote, adding that “vigilante ballot security efforts” and “private campaigns to video record voters” likely violate the federal Voting Rights Act. “Citizen-led election monitoring activities are more likely to put voters in reasonable fear of harassment, intimidation, coercion, or interference with their voting rights,” DOJ added. The department did not take a formal position on what the judge should do. The lawsuit pits the League of Women Voters against several right-wing groups that have promoted false claims about voter fraud and the 2020 election. The group accused the groups of sending vigilante poll watchers, including some with guns and wearing tactical gear, to videotape and intimidate voters at drop boxes.

Full Article: DOJ weighs in on ballot drop box intimidation lawsuit

Arizona’s Bulwark Against Trumpism Was Just a Mirage | David Siders/Politico

On a stage backed up to a rodeo ring between a barbecue restaurant and a petting zoo, dusk fell over the Arizona desert and several thousand Kari Lake supporters fell into prayer for Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, for “the army of patriots that you are raising up in this hour” and, ultimately, for a “divine turnaround” in Arizona. The event was a rally for Lake, and following the supporter who said the prayer, Austin Smith, a Republican state House candidate, told rallygoers they were “chosen” — a state of “pioneers, ranchers, working-class families” in conflict with forces of a “global world order.” “We want to make sure that Arizona is the Wild West, right?” he asked. With their Lake flags and buckets of beer, the crowd erupted. The opening lines of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” blared and Lake strode on stage. Two years ago, the current occupant of the office Lake is seeking, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, had certified Joe Biden’s victory, the first for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since 1996, infuriating then-President Donald Trump and his supporters. The Republican state House speaker, Rusty Bowers, also resisted Trump’s pressure campaign, then testified before the Jan. 6 committee about it. Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state and, now, Lake’s opponent in the gubernatorial race, had overseen the election.

Full Article: Arizona’s Bulwark Against Trumpism Was Just a Mirage – POLITICO

Arizona: Cochise County supervisors approve hand count of election ballots | Sarah Lapidus/Arizona Republic

The Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted Monday to require a full hand recount of ballots for the Nov. 8 election, despite dire warnings from attorneys and others that the move was unlawful and would result in a lawsuit and a potential loss of state funding. During a four-hour meeting and public testimony, Republican supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd voted for the measure put forth by Crosby. Supervisor Ann English, a Democrat, voted against it. “It’s about the people, its about our right to vote and how our votes are counted and feel confident in the election process,” Judd said during the meeting. State Elections Services Director Kori Lorick called into the meeting on behalf of the Secretary of State’s Office and said the board would face a lawsuit if the hand-count proposal passed. A state lawmaker also warned the board that he would request that the attorney general investigate the board’s move, which could result in the withholding of state funds to Cochise County. Lorick also said it would be “impossible to complete an accurate hand count of an election with dozens of races on the ballot without redirecting critical resources needed to run the election.” With just two weeks until the election, she warned the proposal would cause voter confusion.

Full Article: Cochise County supervisors approve hand count of election ballots

Arizona: Early voters in midterms report harassment by poll watchers | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

A voter in Maricopa county, Arizona, claims a group of people watching a ballot drop box photographed and followed the voter and their wife after they deposited their ballots at the box, accusing them of being “mules”. The voter filed a complaint with the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the US Department of Justice and the Arizona attorney general’s office for investigation, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office. The incident allegedly occurred at a Mesa, Arizona, outdoor drop box on the evening of 17 October. Early voting, both in person and via mailed ballots, began on 12 October ahead of the midterm elections. “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot drop box filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the drop box and accusing us of being a mule. They took a photographs [sic] of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film,” the voter wrote in the complaint. In Arizona, voters can only drop off ballots for themselves, people in their households or families, or people they’re providing care for. Other states don’t ban so-called ballot harvesting. The practice became illegal in Arizona in 2016.

Full Article: Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchers | US midterm elections 2022 | The Guardian

Arizona: Cochise County continues pursuit of hand-count despite warnings | Jen Fifled/AZ MMirror

Supervisors in Cochise County said Tuesday they are intent on voting on a proposal to hand-count all ballots cast in November’s election, despite repeated warnings from their lawyer that the plan would be illegal. Deputy Cochise County attorney Christine Roberts repeatedly told the supervisors that state law does not give them the authority to conduct a full hand count of ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters, and even if it did, it isn’t legal to change election procedures this close to an election. She may be able to prevent them from moving forward. The county attorney’s office must approve items before they are placed on a supervisors meeting agenda, County Administrator Rich Karwaczka told Votebeat after the meeting. “The county attorney would block something they believe is unlawful,” he said, adding that allowing a vote on an illegal proposal would increase the county’s liability and risk. Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, both Republicans, want to continue using vote-counting machines this election, and to add a full hand count, as first reported by Votebeat. Together, they’re a majority on their three-person board. With Election Day only a few weeks away and early voting already under way, they didn’t offer details about how it would work or who would bear the costs.

Full Article: Cochise County continues pursuit of hand-count despite warnings | State | eacourier.com

Arizona county mulls ballot hand-count, but lawyer says no | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Officials in a southeastern Arizona county were prepared to move ahead with a plan to hand count all ballots in November’s election alongside the normal machine count on Tuesday, but at the last minute the county attorney told the board they had no legal authority to do so. The advice from Chief Deputy Cochise County Attorney Christine Roberts seemed to stun two members of the county board who are pushing the hand-count, egged on by voters who believe in false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. They had brought the proposal to the three-member board just a day before early voting starts and ballots are mailed to residents across the state for the Nov. 8 election. “In this case, I don’t get where we would be breaking the law if we chose to train a group of volunteers and put them the driver’s seat for a minute hand-counting,” Republican Supervisor Peggy Judd said. “I don’t know that this is something that we can’t look into. I feel very strongly that we can.” Judd said she was acting to try to assuage voters who believe there are problems with voting systems in the state, although she praised Cochise County’s elections department and county recorder, who together oversee elections. Republican Supervisor Tom Crosby also proposed the hand-count, while board Chair Ann English, a Democrat, did not take a public position.

Full Article: Arizona county mulls ballot hand-count, but lawyer says no | AP News

Arizona: DOJ: Man threatened to kill election officials | Jose R. Gonzalez/Arizona Republic

An Iowa man arrested Thursday is accused of threatening to kill Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman and an official at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Mark A. Rissi, 64, of Hiawatha, Iowa, was charged with two counts of making a threatening interstate communication and one count of making a threatening telephone call, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Rissi was taken into custody in his city of residence and on Tuesday had an initial court appearance at a Cedar Rapids, Iowa federal courthouse, according to the DOJ. Rissi is suspected of leaving an expletive-filled voicemail on Sept. 27, 2021, for a Maricopa County Board supervisor and telling the official he and others were going to “lynch” him for “lying” about the 2020 election results, according to a department press release. On Tuesday, Hickman’s office confirmed he was the county board supervisor Rissi was said to have threatened. A statement from Hickman said he has been threatened “numerous times” in the past two years, along with some of his other colleagues on the board.

Full Article: DOJ: Man threatened to kill election officials in Arizona

Arizona election integrity unit found little fraud, exacerbated suspicions | Beth Reinhard and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

Republicans across the country have embraced an aggressive tactic this year as they seek to tout baseless claims that voter fraud is a serious threat: arming state agencies with more power and resources to investigate election crimes. Virginia’s Republican attorney general earlier this month announced a new election integrity unit staffed with more than 20 attorneys and investigators “to increase transparency and strengthen confidence in our state elections.” Georgia legislators recently empowered the statewide police agency to launch election probes. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last month described the arrests of 20 people for alleged illegal voting as the “opening salvo” of a new elections police force. But a Washington Post examination of an earlier endeavor in Arizona to systematically ferret out voter fraud found it has turned up few cases — and that rather than bolster confidence in elections, the absence of massive fraud has just fueled more bogus theories and distrust. After investigating thousands of complaints in the past three years, a special unit in the Arizona attorney general’s office created to crack down on illegal voting and other election-related crimes has prosecuted just 20 cases in a state of more than 4 million voters. The total represents a slight increase from the 16 cases brought by the office in a previous six-year period, according to court filings and hundreds of pages of public records.

Full Article: Arizona election integrity unit found little fraud, exacerbated suspicions – The Washington Post

Arizona is ground zero in the battle over ‘the big lie’ | Ethan Bauer/Deseret News

Rusty Bowers is a worried man. Retreating to a dark room within his suite at Arizona’s sun-baked capitol complex, he sinks into a couch, tall and slender in a purple dress shirt. With a prominent mole above his left brow, the speaker of the state’s house looks you in the eye as he talks — until the conversation turns to the subject of his fears. Then his gaze drifts and he stares into the distance, speaking of the “world of hurt” he believes his political rivals will unleash should they prevail in the midterm elections this November. Remarkably, those rivals are from his own party. Bowers is a lifelong Republican and a staunch conservative who regularly votes along party lines on issues like taxes and abortion. He holds a 92 percent rating from the NRA, a 20 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona and abysmal reviews from environmental organizations like the Sierra Club. Unlike some prominent members of the GOP, he supported former President Donald Trump throughout his term in office, though it ended on a sour note. “He did some good for this country, for which I’m grateful,” Bowers says, “but he’s unfit to serve as our president.”

Full Article: Arizona election: Candidates take sides over “the big lie” – Deseret News

Mark Finchem Says Biden Didn’t Win in 2020, and He Has Big Plans for Elections in Arizona | Katherine Miller/The New York Times

Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for Arizona’s secretary of state, talks a lot about tracking: procedures, processes, audits, the path a ballot takes from voter to tabulator. He’s a member of the Arizona State House of Representatives and has a formal way of speaking, full of numerical legislation titles and terminology, but also talks about things seen and unseen. Like a number of other Republican nominees for secretary of state this year, Mr. Finchem claims the last presidential election was fraudulent. “Here’s why we know it didn’t happen,” he told an interviewer who had just suggested Arizona may have actually voted for Joe Biden in 2020. “It’s nonsense intuitively. Leading up to the election, this would be August, September, October. It first started off that you’d see a Trump train of maybe a dozen cars, and this is in my community. It’s one community, but I think it’s fairly representative of Arizona. You’d see a Trump train of maybe a dozen cars.” The hosts start cracking jokes about Biden trains behind gas stations these days, but in the interview, Mr. Finchem remains undeterred and unlaughing: First it was 12 cars, then 24, then 48, culminating in a three-mile Trump train. This is the kind of thing Mr. Finchem will abruptly say amid talk of election procedure. In November 2020, Mr. Finchem was part of a hearing in Arizona where Rudy Giuliani aired claims of election fraud; Mr. Finchem went to Washington on Jan. 6. He wants to decertify the 2020 election and for Arizona to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan organization funded by participating states that helps them to find potential voters and determine duplicate active registrations. He also could win in Arizona this year; the state has been decidedly close the past several elections. His public comments tend to be premised on the possibility of rampant voter fraud — which, in actuality, takes place rarely — and to reflect a kind of individualism that’s a part of the tech and society we already have, where individuals routinely arbitrate and police disputes online.

Full Article: Opinion | Mark Finchem Says Biden Didn’t Win in 2020, and He Has Big Plans for Elections in Arizona – The New York Times

Arizona GOP candidates appeal ruling against hand counts | Associated Press

The Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state on Wednesday appealed a federal judge’s ruling that threw out a lawsuit they filed seeking to require the hand-counting of ballots in November’s election. Lawyers representing governor candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem filed a notice saying they would ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive their lawsuit. The pair sued in April, repeating unfounded allegations that vote-counting machines are not secure. Named in the lawsuit is Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the state’s top election official and the Democratic candidate for governor, and the majority Republican Maricopa County board of supervisors. U.S. District Judge John Tuchi dismissed their lawsuit late last month, saying they lacked the right to to sue because they failed to show any realistic likelihood of harm. He also noted that their lawsuit must be brought in state, not federal, court and that it is too close to the election to upend the process. “The 2022 Midterm Elections are set to take place on November 8,” Tuchi wrote in is ruling. “In the meantime, Plaintiffs request a complete overhaul of Arizona’s election procedures.”

Full Article: Arizona GOP candidates appeal ruling against hand counts | AP News

Arizona GOP candidates lose bid to ban ‘exploitable’ voting machines | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service

A federal judge in Arizona dismissed a suit Friday seeking to ban electronic voting machines ahead of the November midterm election, brought by Republican candidates who claim the machines may have security flaws. In the suit, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem claimed an injunction to stop the use of voting machines was necessary since the “voting system does not reliably provide trustworthy and verifiable election results.” Former President Donald Trump — a frequent purveyor of baseless election fraud claims — has endorsed Lake and Finchem in their respective races. Lake and Finchem claimed that voting on paper ballots and hand-counting those votes was the only efficient and secure method for proceeding in November. In arguments, the pair contended that contractors found some concerns after completing a partisan audit of the 2016 presidential election. Chiefly, the contractors allegedly found cybersecurity best practices weren’t used, antivirus software patches were neglected, computer logs were cleared, and some files were missing from the election management system. U.S. District Judge John Tuchi on Friday found the supposed evidence conjectural and not concrete. “Ultimately, even upon drawing all reasonable inferences in plaintiffs’ favor, the court finds that their claimed injuries are indeed too speculative to establish an injury in fact, and therefore standing,” wrote Tuchi.

Full Article: Arizona GOP candidates lose bid to ban ‘exploitable’ voting machines | Courthouse News Service

Arizona: Maricopa County recorder says threats against election officials unlikely to stop,  | Gloria Rebecca Gomez/Arizona Republic

The state’s top elections official received a death threat last year. It wasn’t the first, and he fears it won’t be the last. On Tuesday, 50-year-old Missouri resident Walter Lee Hoornstra was indicted on suspicion of sending a threatening voicemail to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in May 2021. In it, Hoornstra warned Richer to stop speaking out against the Arizona Senate audit, or Richer would “never make it to (his) next little board meeting,” according to the indictment. Baseless claims that fraud occurred during the 2020 election sowed mistrust among voters, and election officials have borne the brunt of their vitriol. Across the country, election officials have resigned after dealing with relentless harassment. Richer estimates that he’s received thousands of hateful messages during his tenure since January 2021. So many that the threat from Hoornstra, at that point, wasn’t enough to cancel meetings or give him pause. “This would’ve been one of a deluge of voicemails, emails and social media messages at this time,” Richer said Thursday in an interview with The Arizona Republic. Allegations from the Arizona Senate audit inspired many of the messages, Richer said. Hoornstra’s voicemail came after the audit’s Twitter account falsely accused election officials of deleting electronic databases. In fact, contractors had simply been looking in the wrong place for the information, Richer said.

Full Article: Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer talks threats, voter vitriol

The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment | Robert Draper/The New York Times

R​​ose Sperry, a state committeewoman for Arizona’s G.O.P., answered immediately when I asked her to name the first Republican leader she admired. “I grew up during the time that Joe McCarthy was doing his talking,” Sperry, an energetic 81-year-old, said of the Wisconsin senator who in the 1950s infamously claimed Communists had infiltrated the federal government. “I was young, but I was listening. If he were here today, I would say, ‘Get him in there as president!’” Sperry is part of a grass-roots movement that has pushed her state’s party far to the right in less than a decade. She had driven 37 miles the morning of July 16, from her home in the Northern Arizona town Cottonwood to the outskirts of Prescott, to attend the monthly meeting of a local conservative group called the Lions of Liberty, who, according to the group’s website, “are determined to correct the course of our country, which has been hijacked and undermined by global elites, communists, leftists, deep state bureaucrats and fake news.” That dismal view of America today was echoed by nearly every other conservative voter and group I encountered across the state over the past year. Arizona has become a bellwether for the rest of the nation, and not just because of its new status as a swing state and the first of these to be called for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. It was and has continued to be the nexus of efforts by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the 2020 election results. At the same time, party figures from Trump down to Rose Sperry have sought to blacklist every Arizona G.O.P. official who maintained that the election was fairly won — from Gov. Doug Ducey to Rusty Bowers, speaker of the state’s House of Representatives. Such leaders have been condemned as RINOs, or Republicans in name only, today’s equivalent of the McCarthy era’s “fellow travelers.”

Full Article: The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment – The New York Times

Arizona county that saw election snafu to waive city costs | Bob Christie/Associated Press

An Arizona county where the Aug. 2 primary election was beset with multiple issues that led to the firing of its election director will waive the costs for running municipal elections in 11 cities and towns and plans to hire an outside election expert to review what went wrong. The five-member Pinal County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to waive more than $100,000 in costs it planned to bill the cities and towns for running the local elections. Seven cities and towns had local races left off early ballots that required the county to mail about 63,000 supplemental ballots. And County Attorney Kent Volkmer told the board that four other municipalities were affected by Election Day missteps that led to ballot shortages at about 20 of the county’s 95 polling places. “As the county manager clearly indicated, we fell below the expectations of our customers,” Volkmer told the board. “So I believe if this board is so inclined, I think there is good cause to waive for all of the various entities that we serve the municipal and town elections for.” “I think that’s a good idea due to the issues at hand,” Board Chair Jeffrey McClure. Last week, McClure had called the election issues “a major screwup” and Elections Director David Frisk was fired the next day. He had just been hired in March.

Full Article: Arizona county that saw election snafu to waive city costs | AP News

Arizona Attorney General Debunks Trump Supporters’ Election Fraud Claims | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

Accusations that hundreds of ballots were cast in Arizona in 2020 in the name of dead voters are unfounded, the state’s Republican attorney general said on Monday in a sharply worded letter to the president of the Arizona Senate, who has advanced false claims of voter fraud. The attorney general, Mark Brnovich, wrote in his letter to Senator Karen Fann that his office’s Election Integrity Unit had spent “hundreds of hours” investigating 282 allegations submitted by Ms. Fann, as well as more than 6,000 allegations from four other reports. Some of them “were so absurd,” he wrote, that “the names and birth dates didn’t even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election.” The claims in Ms. Fann’s complaint stemmed from a heavily criticized audit of the 2020 election that the company Cyber Ninjas conducted last year in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa. That audit found no evidence for former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen from him; in fact, it counted slightly fewer votes for Mr. Trump and more for Joseph R. Biden Jr. than in the official tally. A subsequent report from election experts accused Cyber Ninjas of making up its numbers altogether. Nonetheless, Ms. Fann sent the accusations of dead voters to Mr. Brnovich’s office in a September 2021 complaint. “Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” Mr. Brnovich wrote in his letter. His office concluded, he wrote, that “only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of the election.”

Full Article: Arizona Attorney General Debunks Trump Supporters’ Election Fraud Claims – The New York Times

Advocates for Arizona’s ‘fake electors’ plan had legal doubts, new report finds | Ronald J. Hansen/Arizona Republic

Some of those involved in submitting presidential electors for President Donald Trump in Arizona after he had lost the state in 2020 knew their plan was legally dubious and want to keep its low public profile as long as possible, according to a report published Tuesday. Citing previously undisclosed emails, the New York Times painted the picture of an effort in key swing states, including Arizona, the closest contest in the country, that was both desperate and probably wouldn’t pass legal scrutiny. Their plan was to submit papers to Congress suggesting Trump won the states, even though certified results showed then-President-elect Joe Biden had won them. Trump’s allies hoped the dual slates of electors would serve as a justification for slowing or reversing the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of Biden’s victory. After Vice President Mike Pence refused to consider the “fake electors,” a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, halting the process for hours. Long before then, those pushing the long shot plan knew they stood on shaky ground, the Times reported. People familiar with the plan at the time have told The Arizona Republic that while the strategy was legally questionable, they didn’t view their activity as criminally wrong.

Source: Report shows Arizona electors knew of ‘fake election’ legal doubts

Arizona: Sharpie misinformation bleeds into primary | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

Election officials in Arizona’s largest county won’t soon forget #SharpieGate — the social media uproar that emerged after the 2020 election based on the false claim that Sharpie pens provided at the polls would ruin ballots before they were counted. Now, as Maricopa County gears up for Arizona’s primary election on Tuesday, it’s facing a repeat of the same false theories in response to an announcement by election officials that they were switching to Pentel brand felt-tip pens on Election Day. “DO NOT use the felt tip pen they will try to give you,” one Twitter user wrote Thursday. “#SharpieGate all over again in AZ. Bring your ball-point pens,” wrote another, in a tweet that called election officials “treasonists” and accused them of trying to “rig the primaries.” The county provides felt-tip pens to voters at the polls on Election Day because the pens have quick-drying ink that won’t smudge the ballots or produce wet splotches that jam up onsite tabulators. That can require the machines to be cleaned, causing long lines at the polls. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer on Twitter urged those voting in Tuesday’s primary to “PLEASE PLEASE” use the provided pens to prevent machine problems and keep voting running smoothly.

Full Article: Pen misinformation bleeds into Arizona primary | AP News

Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem doesn’t trust elections. Now he wants to run them. | Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

Mark Finchem tells the story of a late-night search for three men suspected of pulling off a string of robberies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, three decades ago. An officer with the local police department at the time, Finchem stopped a suspicious vehicle but didn’t have the evidence needed to make an arrest. As turned back toward his car, he noticed the stopped car’s trunk was slightly ajar and got a bad feeling. He later learned a man was in there with a sawed-off shotgun. “I knew when I got out of my car something was wrong,” Finchem said. “I didn’t know what.” That’s how he views the 2020 presidential election, the event that has catapulted him to national notoriety and is propelling his bid as Arizona’s next secretary of state. Something was wrong, he felt. “People see things they know are just wrong, but they don’t know what,” he said in an interview late last year. He says he’s here to sort it out for them. Finchem, 65, is finishing his fourth term as a Republican state representative from Oro Valley. He’s a prominent proponent of false claims that Donald Trump was cheated out of the presidency. While court hearings, audits, congressional scrutiny and even a homegrown ballot review by the state Senate have failed to produce evidence of such fraud, Finchem maintains he has the proof. Thus far, he hasn’t convinced political leaders or the courts.

Full Article: Arizona secretary of state primary 2022 candidate: Mark Finchem

Arizona: Top election officials in Yavapai County leave amid threats | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Full Article: Top election officials in Arizona county leave amid threats – The Washington Post

Arizona: GOP poll watcher training casts unfounded suspicion on Arizona elections | Jen Fifield/AZ Mirror

The Republican National Committee is telling potential Arizona polling place observers that there are “festering problems” in how elections are run, such as security issues with vote-counting machines and problems with voter rolls, as it trains them for the state’s upcoming primary election. The RNC training delivers the message that the “2020 election had serious problems,” worrying experienced former election officials and lawyers who have trained observers in the past and who say the point of training should be simply to encourage observers to watch for violations of law at the polls without disturbing the peace. Republican Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, who as an attorney led Republican observer training in the 2000s, said the messaging concerns him because his focus was always on providing a straightforward picture of what was legal and what was not at the polls. “It’s not about kind of ginning people up, which is what that sounds like,” Gates said. “That’s the narrative, though.” Votebeat watched an RNC Zoom training at the invitation of an attendee, and separately received information about an in-person training from an attendee, after an RNC spokesperson said that reporters were not allowed to attend.

Full Article: GOP poll watcher training casts unfounded suspicion on Arizona elections

Arizona lawmaker Rusty Bowers details the pressure put on him by Trump and Giuliani | Ximena Bustillo/ NPR

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, told the committee during today’s hearing about the pressure put on him by former President Donald Trump and his allies, including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Bowers testified that Giuliani told him of allegations of voter fraud committed by undocumented immigrants or dead people who were listed as having voted. Bowers said he and other GOP legislators pushed for explanations into the theories and for Giuliani to provide sufficient evidence to justify recalling the state’s presidential electors. “In my recollection,” Bowers said of Giuliani, “he said, We have lots of theories we just don’t have the evidence.'” Bowers said Giuliani pressured him to call the Arizona legislature back into session — a unilateral move Bowers said he cannot do — to recall the electors that would be going to President Biden after Biden beat Trump in the state. “It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired,” he said, growing visibly emotional. “I would not do it.” The former president asked him to hold a hearing to investigate allegations of fraud in Arizona, he said, but added he didn’t think the evidence “merited a hearing.”

Full Article: Lawmaker Rusty Bowers details the pressure put on him by Trump and Giuliani : NPR

Arizona: Lawsuit vs. voting machines factually flawed, Maricopa County claims | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Full Article: Lawsuit vs. voting machines factually flawed, Maricopa County claims | Arizona and Regional News | tucson.com

Arizona early voting upheld by judge, rejecting GOP attempt to end it | Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

There’s nothing unconstitutional about Arizona’s early voting law, a Mohave County judge determined Monday. The ruling, knocking down a lawsuit from the Republican Party of Arizona, is a win for the state’s election officials and Arizona voters who use the early-voting system, a vast majority of the electorate. And it’s another setback for the state party, which has argued the practice violates the Arizona Constitution’s requirement for ballot secrecy. Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen boiled down the essence of the case in his four-page ruling to this: “Is the Arizona Legislature prohibited by the Arizona Constitution from enacting voting laws that include no-excuse mail-in voting? The answer is no.” He noted that the no-excuses mail-in voting that lawmakers approved in 1991 provides protections for secrecy. For example, the ballot return envelopes are designed in a way to ensure the voter’s choices are not visible. In addition, the envelopes are “tamper evident” so election workers can notice if someone has tried to open the ballot envelope. Jantzen denied the Republican Party’s case as well as its request for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked almost all early voting for the Nov. 8 general election. That would have required millions of Arizona voters to obtain their ballot at the polls and cast it there.

Full Article: Arizona early voting upheld by judge, rejecting GOP attempt to end it

Arizona Governor Ducey vetoes ‘vague’ voter cancellation bill | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Full Article: Gov. Ducey vetoes ‘vague’ voter cancellation bill | Government-and-politics | tucson.com