An election certification fiasco in Cochise County, Arizona illustrates potential coming delays and problems

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2024/08/case-in-arizonas-cochise-county.html

In the 2022 mid-terms, in spite of some gerrymandering done by the Republican legislature, Arizona's statewide elections fell to the Democratic candidates. It was close, but Katie Hobbs was elected governor, Adrian Fontes was elected Secretary of State, Kris Mayes was elected Attorney General. Only the superintendent of public instruction, a minor post compared to the top three, went to a Republican.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, a rabid, vocal Trumpie, who thought Trump's endorsement put the election in the bag for her, was furious. She launched lawsuits right and left, in the teeth of evidence showing the election was conducted fairly and the counts were accurate. The balance of Democratic votes ensuring the victory came from the two most populous counties in the state, Pima, with a population of just over a million, and Maricopa, with a population of almost five million. In several of the counties outside these two, local supervisors and election clerks followed a plan to delay certification of the vote, a move they thought would flip the governor's race to Lake, who lost by just under 20,000 votes.

In Cochise County, the two Republican supervisors, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, refused to accept the county results, claiming that the counting machines were rigged, in spite of the fact that Lake received the majority of the votes, as did Juan Ciscomani, the Republican who flipped congressional district 8. While officials in several other counties which were holding back decided to follow court orders to certify their counts after audits showed their accuracy, Judd and Crosby ordered the county election clerk to hand count the 58,000 ballots, a procedure that was in violation of state law. Facing a deadline and knowing this was against the law, the clerk refused, and resigned under duress.

With the certification deadline approaching, Cochise county's refusal to certify votes was on the verge of disenfranchising all 58,000 voters, Republican and Democrat. Without the margin he had won in Cochise County, Ciscomani would have lost the District 8 Congressional seat by 10,000 votes. Lake's total margin would have been reduced by a further 10,000 votes and the state legislative positions, all involving districts which included voters outside of the county, would have gone to Democrats, flipping the legislature to Democratic control.

Court pressure finally pushed one of the Republican supervisors, Judd, to vote with Democrat Ann English to certify the ballots, while Crosby held out. The Secretary of State, who was also Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, accepted the ballot count. But Judd's actions, along with Crosby's earned indictments for felony counts of failing to certify an election as required by law. They were also the object of a lawsuit filed by the former county elections supervisor for the hostile work environment they had created for her.