Arizona: Federal appeals court tosses GOP lawsuit seeking to purge 1.27 million voters | Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that tossed out a lawsuit by Arizona Republicans that accused the state of violating federal law and sought to purge up to 1.27 million voters from the rolls. In 2024, then-Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Gina Swoboda, who is now running for the nomination of her party for Secretary of State, along with Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi and unsuccessful 2018 Republican Secretary of State candidate Steve Gaynor sued Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and accused the state of violating the National Voter Registration Act. The lawsuit claimed that Fontes failed to purge over a million ineligible and unaccounted for voters from the state’s registration rolls, costing the Arizona Republican Party time and resources on voter education and mobilization claims. However, a trial court judge concluded that they had no standing to sue. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Read Article

Arizona Is Now at the Center of Election Investigations | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Nick Miroff/The Atlantic

Kristi Noem was fighting to keep her job, she held an election-security event at a Homeland Security Investigations field office in Scottsdale, Arizona. In the past, she said, the state had been an “absolute disaster on elections,” and ensuring the security of election equipment was her responsibility. She also urged Congress to pass President Trump’s voter-ID bill. The message was less surprising than the location. HSI, the agency’s investigative branch, devotes most of its efforts to going after transnational drug cartels and human-trafficking networks, not to securing domestic elections.A week after the event, Arizona’s acting special agent in charge for HSI, Matthew Murphy, told the state attorney general’s office that his office was now probing the 2020 election in Arizona, according to a person familiar with the details of the meeting. A state investigator asked why the government was scrutinizing the results, given that they had already been litigated and investigated. Murphy made clear that he was acting on “direction from D.C.,” the person told us, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The HSI investigation in Arizona, which has not previously been reported, comes as the FBI has embarked on a separate election probe in the state. “This is not a joint investigation” with HSI, a person familiar with the FBI investigation told us. HSI headquarters and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice are coordinating the investigation, which is focused on identifying alleged voter-fraud activity and related potential enforcement actions, according to a person familiar with the effort. Read Article

Arizona officials want county recorders to tell them if they get a subpoena amid ongoing federal probes of state’s elections | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Arizona’s top law enforcement official and chief election officer are warning county officials not to hand over full, unredacted voter files to the federal government amid probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into the state’s 2020 election. Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — both Democrats — wrote in a joint letter to county recorders that disclosure of such materials to the U.S Department of Justice would “violate both federal and state law.” They urged the recorders, who control voter registration data, to “fulfill your oath by declining any such illegal demands.” Mayes and Fontes stopped short of promising litigation against anyone who gave voter information to the federal agencies, though they hinted at it. “Our offices are committed to upholding the sanctity of Arizona’s elections and democratic process,” the letter read. “We will pursue to the fullest extent of the law all possible remedies to ensure the integrity of Arizona’s elections and the privacy rights of its citizens.” Read Article

Arizona: Cochise County asks feds to investigate disputed claims about voting machine testing — again | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Four years after a conservative southeastern Arizona county tried to defy election laws, it may be gearing up to do so again. The Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted on Feb. 24 to send a letter to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asking her to investigate whether the laboratories charged with testing voting machines nationwide were properly accredited ahead of recent elections. Cochise County officials have doubted the laboratories for years, despite the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s reassurances that they were properly accredited. Those doubts were part of what prompted two of the county’s supervisors to vote to delay the certification of its election results past the legal deadline in November 2022. A judge ultimately ordered the supervisors to certify the midterm election results, but their doubts about the laboratories — and the voting machines they test — have apparently persisted. The board sent an identical message to the U.S. Department of Justice less than six months ago. Read Article

Arizona’s ICE-at-polls bill is dead for now, but backers can revive it | Caitlin Sievers/Arizona Mirror

People packed into an Arizona Senate Committee room on Friday, waiting hours to protest a Republican plan to station federal immigration officers at Arizona polling places in November. But those protestors were disappointed when the measure was suddenly spiked at the end of the six-hour meeting because its sponsor was ill, according to Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee Chairwoman Wendy Rogers. The failure to hear the bill in the committee on Friday likely kills the specific piece of legislation, though the idea is likely to be resurrected. Friday was the deadline for legislative committees to consider legislation in its chamber of origin. But there are parliamentary moves that allow proposals that failed to be revived. Read Article

Arizona: ICE at the polls: Republicans push plan to require agents at all polling places | Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

Polling shows that Americans want to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the murders of two American citizens in Minnesota amid a violent surge to round up immigrants as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, but Arizona Republicans want to require ICE officers to be stationed at polling places this year. This week, the Arizona Senate will take up a proposal to force all 15 of the state’s counties to sign an agreement with ICE “to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location within this state where ballots are cast or deposited.” The Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee is slated to take up the strike-everything amendment to Senate Bill 1570 either Wednesday or Friday. (The committee has scheduled nearly 60 bills for hearings over the two meetings, but it’s unknown which measures will be considered on which day. This is the final week for legislative committees to hear bills.) Read Article

Arizona primary to move up 2 weeks under bipartisan legislation | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Arizona will permanently move up its state primary election date under a new law that will also give voters more time to fix signature problems on early ballots and codify where party observers may watch election activity. The Arizona House voted unanimously on Feb. 2 to pass the legislation, which will move the primary from the first Tuesday in August to the second-to-last Tuesday in July. That will ensure that election officials can meet federally mandated deadlines to send out general election ballots to military and overseas voters, even if a statewide recount delays the finalization of the primary results. The legislation passed the Arizona Senate with a similarly bipartisan vote on Thursday, and was signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday. The 2026 primary election date will now move from Aug. 4 to July 21. Read Article

Arizona has lost more top election officials than any western state since 2020 | Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

In the five years since the 2020 presidential election, during which Republicans sowed doubt in election systems by spreading evidence-free “fraud” claims, a new report shows that Arizona counties have had more turnover in local election administration than any other western state. In fact, all 15 of Arizona’s counties have experienced turnover in at least one chief election position. The report by Issue One, a nonpartisan political reform nonprofit, shows that all 15 of Arizona’s counties experienced turnover, with the vast majority of them leaving due to personal reasons. After Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020, the Grand Canyon State became an epicenter for bogus election fraud claims manufactured by Donald Trump’s supporters. That led to things like the Arizona Senate’s sham “audit” of the 2020 presidential election — even though it was run by vocal Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists, it turned up no evidence of fraud — and efforts by candidates to overturn their election losses, often citing unfounded claims of fraud. Read Article

Arizona GOP leaders ask Arizona’s high court to let counties reject election results | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

The state’s top two Republican lawmakers are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to rule that county supervisors don’t have to accept the vote total figures they get from election officials. In a new filing, attorneys for Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro argue that supervisors have “discretion” to determine whether to certify…

Arizona: In ‘uncertain times,’ lawmakers introduce bill to improve voting access, cybersecurity | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes on Wednesday announced new legislation that would seek to improve voting access and provide funding to improve the cybersecurity of state and county election systems. During a press conference, Fontes called the legislation, called the Voters First Act, a “research-based, common-sense proposal to modernize, standardize and prioritize the voting process across all 15 counties in Arizona.” The act, which was introduced by Democratic party leaders in both houses Wednesday, includes statewide restoration of Arizona’s permanent early vote list, which allows voters to receive ballots by mail for early voting, and applies the state’s 75-foot “voter protection zone” to ballot drop boxes and voting locations. It would extend the early voting period, allow the state to accept private grant funding to educate the public about the basic facts of statewide elections and allow ballots to be collected and processed continually on election day, for faster results. Read Article

Arizona Democrats say election transparency bills will jeopardize security | Joe Duhownik/Courthouse News Service

Arizona’s Senate Elections Committee moved to support a handful of bills that would increase public access to voter records, though Democrats say the measures would lead to safety concerns by publishing personal voter information. The elections committee, chaired by Flagstaff Republican Wendy Rogers, voted 4-2 to pass two bills that Republicans say will increase transparency. Senate Bill 1038 would require a county recorder to make publicly available the full, unredacted vote cast record after an election. Senate Bill 1040 would require the full, unredacted voter registration roll to be made downloadable via an internet portal. In July, a state judge ruled that full vote cast records are not public records according to current law. Read Article

Arizona Legislature scrutinizes new elections manual, potential for litigation looms | Kiera Riley/Arizona Capitol Times

With the 2025 Elections Procedures Manual in effect, the Legislature is now taking a fine-toothed comb to each provision, potentially teeing up another round of litigation. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Attorney General Kris Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs all signed off on the 2025 Elections Procedures Manual on Dec. 23, bringing to a close the odd-year process of promulgating a playbook for election workers and officials. But as the 2025 EPM takes effect, ongoing litigation over the prior draft puts some provisions in limbo, and a new set of eyes could spark another round of legal challenges. Per state law, the secretary of state, in consultation with county election officials, must draft a new manual every odd-numbered year and seal it with a final sign-off from the governor and attorney general. Read Article

Arizona: Appeals court deals final blow to GOP’s elections rulebook challenge | Caitlin Sievers/AZ Mirror

After nearly two years of court rulings, with wins and losses on both sides, one of the Republican challenges to Arizona’s elections rulebook is finally finished. On Dec. 5, the Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed a legal challenge to the state’s 2023 Election Procedures Manual that had been brought by the Republican National Committee, the Arizona Republican Party and the Yavapai County Republican Party. Every two years, the secretary of state is tasked with creating a new EPM, outlining procedures and rules for county elections officials to implement state election laws when they conduct elections in the state. The manual carries the force of law, and must be approved by the governor and attorney general — offices both currently held by Democrats — before it’s published. Read Article

Arizona: Lawsuit seeks change to Independent Party’s name | Ray Stern/Arizona Republic

The decision to let the state’s No Labels Party change its name to the Arizona Independent Party should be declared unlawful and reversed, a new lawsuit demands. Citing worries of “a virtual certainty of substantial voter confusion and frustration,” the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s suit targets Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who made the October decision to make the name change official on Dec. 1. The commission, which filed the lawsuit Dec. 2 in Maricopa County Superior Court, charges that Fontes’ decision interferes with the agency’s duties to support candidates and educate voters and election officials, violating the 1998 Citizens Clean Elections Act that created the agency. The commission oversees public campaign financing for eligible candidates and provides voter education, including organizing candidate debates. Read Article

Arizona proposal would end automatic mail ballots for early-voter list | Gary Grado/Votebeat

A Republican state lawmaker who is also running for secretary of state has introduced a proposed ballot measure that would overhaul early voting in Arizona by eliminating the early-voter list, shortening the time to cast early ballots, and requiring proof of citizenship to receive an early ballot. State Rep. Alex Kolodin, who as a lawmaker and a former lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party has pushed to abolish the state’s early-voter list, said in a press release that he’s pushing legislation to put the measure on the ballot because “Arizonans are tired of excuses and chaos on Election Day.” Some provisions of his proposed measure are already in state law, including a poll closing time of 7 p.m. on Election Day and a voter ID requirement. Read Article

Arizona: Johnson to Seat Grijalva, Seven Weeks After She Was Elected | Anushka Patil/ The New York Times

Speaker Mike Johnson plans to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona as a member of Congress on Wednesday, according to his office, 50 days after her election, as the House returns from an extended recess. Ms. Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election on Sept. 23 for the Arizona seat left vacant by the death of her father, Representative Raúl Grijalva. Mr. Johnson had since refused to seat her, despite several opportunities to do so, public pleas, a Democratic pressure campaign and, eventually, a federal lawsuit brought by Ms. Grijalva and the attorney general of Arizona that argued that Mr. Johnson had no authority to continue to stall. The delay prevented Ms. Grijalva from freely entering and moving about the Capitol complex, or having access to the budget or the materials she needed to do her job. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, she told NPR that she had not heard directly from Mr. Johnson’s office about the swearing-in and that she was “90 percent” confident it would happen at last. She said on social media on Monday that she was traveling to Washington after hearing from news reports and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, that she could soon be seated. Read Article

Arizona: Judge won’t halt audit of Maricopa County voter registration system | Gary Grado/Votebeat

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday rejected Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s request to halt an audit of the county’s voter registration system and election technology.Judge Scott Blaney wrote that he was initially concerned voters’ personal information would be at risk, but was “credibly informed” that the county and vendor had a comprehensive nondisclosure agreement and the vendor’s personnel had undergone background checks. Blaney also found “that the Recorder has not established that the Board’s actions with regard to the assessment violate any Arizona statute.”What’s the dispute? The emergency hearing over the audit of the voter registration system on Monday was one part of a larger legal fight between Heap and the county Board of Supervisors over how election duties and authority should be divided between them. Read Article

Arizona: Johnson sets record refusing to swear in Adelita Grijalva for 36 days after she won election | Caitlin Sievers/Arizona Mirror

U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva unwillingly set a record on Wednesday with her 36-day wait to be sworn in to represent the state’s 7th Congressional District.The Tucson Democrat easily won a Sept. 23 special election in the deep blue southern Arizona district formerly represented by her father Raúl Grijalva, who died of cancer in March. But Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has refused to swear in Grijalva, using a range of excuses, the most frequent of which is the federal government shutdown, which began Oct. 1. Read Article

Arizona Supreme Court hands Democrats win on election policy, but GOP changes still possible | Ray Stern/Arizona Republic

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes praised a recent decision by the state Supreme Court that gives him more control over election policies, calling a lawsuit that prompted the ruling a political ploy. The Oct. 16 decision declared that the Arizona Administrative Procedure Act, a comprehensive set of rules found in state law governing the workings of state agencies, cannot bind the creation of the state’s Elections Procedures Manual. The elections policy manual is updated every two years by the Secretary of State’s Office. It serves as a guidebook to election policy in the state but must comply with state and federal law. Once approved by the governor and state attorney general, it’s a crime to deviate from it during elections. Read Article

Arizona says it will sue Mike Johnson if he does not swear in new rep – and likely trigger the release of the Epstein files | Joe Sommerlad/The Independent

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been threatened with legal action by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes over his ongoing failure to swear in her state’s new Democratic congresswoman-elect, Adelita Grijalva. Grijalva, 54, won a special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district on September 23, comfortably beating Republican Daniel Butierez by picking up 69 percent of the vote to his 29 percent, and will, eventually, succeed her late father, Raul Grijalva, who passed away in March. In a letter sent to the speaker on Tuesday, Mayes wrote: “Arizona’s right to a full delegation, and the right of the residents of CD 7 to representation from the person they recently voted for, are not up for debate and may not be delayed or used as leverage in negotiations about unrelated legislation.” Read Article

Arizona Election rulebook submitted for approval despite threatened GOP lawsuit | Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

The Election Procedures Manual, which must be revised and approved every two years, has undergone changes after previous Republican lawsuits challenged provisions in it. Some of those changes included deleted examples of what constitutes voter intimidation and deleting a paragraph saying that the secretary of state could finalize the state’s election results without a particular county’s results if the officials missed the state deadline. “Every voter, in every corner of Arizona, should have the same fair and secure election process,” Fontes said in a statement Wednesday about the submission. “The EPM makes that possible.” The manual also aims to try to alleviate ballot printing errors that have plagued election officials in recent years. Both Hobbs and Mayes must sign off on the EPM by December for it to take effect. Read Article

Arizona: Federal court blocks election manual’s rule on voter intimidation | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A panel of judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ rules restricting activity around polling places cannot be enforced. The judges let stand another rule related to what happens if counties don’t certify their election results. The ruling will shape Arizona’s next Election Procedures Manual, which instructs election officials on how to comply with state election laws. While Fontes already released a new draft manual for the 2026 elections, he will be revising the rules until they are approved by the attorney general and governor by the end of this year. Read Article

Arizona counties defy attorney general opinion on voters caught in proof-of-citizenship error | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Thousands of Arizona voters caught up in a state record-keeping error will lose at least some voting rights if they don’t prove their citizenship, despite a recent opinion from the state attorney general saying they should remain fully eligible to vote. In Maricopa County, affected voters who don’t provide documentary proof of citizenship in time will be allowed to vote only in federal elections, according to public records obtained by Votebeat. And neighboring Pinal County will continue to suspend the registration of any voters affected by the error if they try to change their address or otherwise update their record without providing citizenship documentation, the county recorder’s office confirmed. Read Article

Arizona’s Cochise County, known for election turmoil, may challenge state laws again ahead of 2026 | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

When the Cochise County supervisors sat down to talk about elections in August, they were well aware of what happened the last time the county’s leaders tried to test the limits of state law. The rural Arizona county on the Mexican border is where, during the 2022 midterm election, two Republicans on the Board of Supervisors devised a plan to ditch the machines used for elections and instead hand-count votes, before a judge foiled their plan. They then delayed the vote to finalize the county’s results until the same judge ordered them to certify them. Supervisor Tom Crosby, who was re-elected last year, is awaiting a criminal trial on charges related to his actions during that election. And the county’s two new supervisors, also both Republicans, know his story well, and have been warned by the secretary of state about the election rules they must follow. Read Article

Arizona voters caught up in state error should keep full voting rights, attorney general says | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona voters who were caught up in a state error tracking citizenship should keep their full voting rights, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. Her opinion, issued Monday, marks a turning point in the debate among officials over how to handle the eligibility of the roughly 200,000 voters, who were erroneously listed in state records as having provided proof of U.S. citizenship even though they hadn’t been asked to. Arizona requires such proof to vote in state and local elections, and counties have been sending notices to voters to try to collect the information. Mayes, a Democrat, said county recorders cannot legally suspend these voters’ registrations or make them eligible only for federal elections if they now fail to respond to these notices. Read Article

As Arizona adopts new system for overseas voters, some officials sound alarmncern | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Overseas voters who are registered in Arizona are receiving their ballots this week in a new way for the state’s special congressional election — but at least a few county officials are worried that the new system isn’t ready, and say they didn’t have enough time to notify voters of the change. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced the launch of the new system on Friday for military and overseas voters who are registered to vote in Arizona and eligible to vote through the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. These voters will now cast their ballots through a web portal run by an outside vendor, technology company Enhanced Voting, rather than using an in-house system. Fontes’ office is promoting the change as a long-needed upgrade that will allow overseas voters to cast their ballots anonymously and fully electronically for the first time. “This new system is a leap forward in ensuring that every eligible voter, no matter where they are in the world, can easily cast a ballot that is both secure and truly anonymous,” Fontes wrote in a news release. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes cuts staff, citing tight budget | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is eliminating several top positions in his office, citing budget constraints. On Wednesday, his communications director confirmed that three staffers — George Diaz, director of government relations; JP Martin, deputy communications director; and Angie Cloutier, security operations manager — are being dismissed. Fontes’ office oversees statewide elections as well as the state library, archives, and business services. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County recorder privately lobbied supervisors for election control | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap privately pleaded with two county supervisors to support his bid for more power over the county’s elections, text messages obtained by Votebeat show. The messages, which county supervisors provided to Votebeat in response to a public-records request, include previously unreported behind-the-scenes conversations and confrontations as Heap negotiated with the supervisors board early this year over how to divide election duties in the closely watched swing county. “I really thought you guys would come through for me,” Heap wrote to Supervisor Mark Stewart, a fellow Republican, in March after a counterproposal from the supervisors. “This was the last straw for me, Mark.” Heap sued supervisors in June after the negotiations over an agreement governing the division of election duties fell apart. County supervisors countersued this month, and the lawsuit is pending in county court. The breakdown means that as the time to start preparing for next year’s midterm elections approaches, the division of duties between the recorder and supervisors remains in dispute. Read Article

Arizona election officials unload on Trump’s CISA after website hack | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Arizona election officials say a hack targeting a statewide online portal for political candidates resulted in the defacement and replacement of multiple candidate photos with the late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. While officials say the threat is contained and the vulnerability has been fixed, they also blasted the lack of support they’ve received from the federal government, claiming the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is no longer a reliable partner in election security under the Trump administration. Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for Arizona’s Secretary of State, told CyberScoop that his office first became aware that something odd was happening on June 23, while many officials were at a conference. One user managing the candidate portal noticed that one of the candidate images uploaded to the site didn’t “make sense” because it appeared to be a picture of Khomeini. The next day they were notified that candidate profiles going back years had also been defaced with the same picture. Read Article

Arizona: Hackers who breached election website aimed at other targets, too | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona officials say they have “moderate confidence” that the Iranian government or its affiliates are responsible for a cyberattack that breached the state’s candidate web portal last month, and say the same actors attempted to breach servers for other agencies in Arizona and elsewhere. The hacker gained access to a server at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on June 23 and began changing candidate profile photos that appear on the state’s election results website, according to office officials. The hacker changed all of the photos to the same image — a red and black image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution that established Iran as an Islamic republic. Read Article