Arizona

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

As Arizona Republicans revive lawsuit to stop early voting, Attorney General won’t defend the state | Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

The Republican Party has restarted its lawsuit to end early voting in Arizona, but the state won’t have a key official defending the practice: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has dropped out of the case. The decision not to defend the early voting system came from a mutual agreement between the Republican Party of Arizona, which filed the complaint, and the Attorney General’s Office, court records show. It is not clear who initiated the move to leave the lawsuit. “I’ll let the AG’s office comment on that,” said attorney Alexander Kolodin, who is representing the state party. Brnovich’s office did not reply to a query about why he agreed to the move. But in a filing to the Mohave County Superior Court, state Solicitor General Brunn W. Roysden III stated the Attorney General’s Office agrees to be bound by the outcome of the lawsuit, including any appeals. The state GOP moved their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of early voting to Mohave County after the state Supreme Court last month declined to take up the matter, saying it needed to start in a lower court. A hearing is scheduled for June 3.

Full Article: Attorney General Mark Brnovich won’t defend early voting in GOP case

Arizona would likely see recounts after every election under popular bill | Jen Fifield/AZ Mirror

Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, would likely be required to recount all ballots cast in every election moving forward if a proposed change to state law passes. The bill, awaiting a final vote as early as today in the Arizona Legislature after garnering bipartisan support, would vastly widen the margin of votes between candidates that triggers an automatic recount in primary and general elections, for almost every type of race. The change would prompt more frequent recounts in large and small counties alike. In the 2020 general election, it would have triggered two statewide recounts and two countywide recounts in Maricopa County, including the presidential race which Joe Biden won narrowly in the state. The stated goal is to build voter confidence in election outcomes in a battleground state where margins are often tight and recounts are currently rarely allowed. State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, who introduced Senate Bill 1008, says it would still only require recounts on races that are very close. “Here is an opportunity to help reinforce the process,” Ugenti-Rita said. “To give the voters confidence that, when races are razor tight, we make sure they were counted accurately.”

Full Article: Arizona would likely see recounts after every election under popular bill

Arizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service

The Arizona Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over whether the state Senate has the authority to conceal records from an audit of the 2020 presidential election. American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed suit in 2021 after Arizona Republicans contracted the private firm Cyber Ninjas to audit the results of the 2020 election. The now-defunct Cyber Ninjas found President Joe Biden was lawfully elected but identified what it considered to be 53,304 questionable ballots. Maricopa County investigated the authenticity of those ballots and determined that only 37 may have been illegally cast. The case landed before the Arizona Supreme Court after the Arizona Court of Appeals and a trial judge rejected the state Senate’s assertion that legislative privilege granted some documents protection against disclosure. The state’s high court has barred the court-ordered release of the records while it considers the case. Andy Gaona of Coppersmith Brockelman, representing American Oversight before the court Tuesday, argued that legislative privilege is not a political tool to hide information. “[Legislative] privilege is not intended to benefit individual legislators; it is not intended to protect them from embarrassment,” Gaona said. “It is not intended to allow them to shield communications as they see fit. What it’s intended to do is to benefit the public by ensuring that their elected representatives — and this is what Appeals says — are not held either criminally or civilly liable for their actions.”

Full Article: Arizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Courthouse News Service

Arizona: Maricopa County officials want record ‘corrected’ after election fraud report by Attorney General | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors asked Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday to correct the record after publishing controversial interim findings on the integrity of the 2020 election. Brnovich’s interim findings, sent to the state Senate on April 6, cited concerns over signature verification, chain-of-custody procedures and the use of private money in the election. The bipartisan board’s letter to Brnovich comes after an executive session Wednesday during which the board and the county recorder unanimously decided to refute his findings with correspondence. “It’s disappointing that we have to write this in response to an office that saw fit to take no action for all of 2021 until the politics changed,” said Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, at the executive meeting Wednesday. “I have been so disappointed on so many levels with Republican electeds, Republican colleagues, Republican friends.” Richer told the board Brnovich’s report caused his staff trouble and threats. “But I’ve never been more disappointed than when somebody omits information, misstates information and besmirches the good name of the hard-working people in my office and reopens vitriol, hate and threats that they shouldn’t have to deal with,” Richer said. Later, the board questioned whether Brnovich released his report after pressure from his party and from former President Donald Trump.

Full Article: County officials want record ‘corrected’ after election fraud report by Arizona AG | Courthouse News Service

Arizona GOP candidates sue to block use of voting machines in upcoming midterms | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service

Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state sued state and county officials to bar the use of electronic voting machines ahead of the midterm election in November. In the federal complaint filed Friday and made available Monday, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem claim an injunction to stop the use of voting machines is necessary since the “voting system does not reliably provide trustworthy and verifiable election results.” Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Lake and Finchem in their respective races. Lake and Finchem want a federal judge to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in the state in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. They claim voting on paper ballots and hand-counting those votes is the only efficient and secure method for proceeding. The candidates claim there is a history of voting machine failure in Arizona and abroad. Additionally, they contend state officials neglected security procedures and claim Dominion Voting Systems, a voting software company, lied and ignored a state legislative subpoena inquiring about the data relating to the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. Dominion is not named as a defendant in the complaint. Lake announced the lawsuit at one of her political rallies in Morristown, Arizona, in March alongside the founder and CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell. Lindell teased a class-action suit at the rally, with over 300 plaintiffs supposedly committed.

Full Article: Arizona GOP candidates sue to block use of voting machines in upcoming midterms | Courthouse News Service

Arizona lawsuit seeks to ban ballot-counting machines | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Full Article: Lawsuit seeks to ban ballot-counting machines in Arizona | Govt-and-politics | tucson.com

Arizona: How a Trump ally got his unfounded voting-machine audit push in front of federal cyber agency | Betsy Woodruff Swan, Lee Hudson and Zach Montellaro/Politico

Full Article: How a Trump ally got his unfounded voting-machine audit push in front of federal cyber agency – POLITICO