County in Arizona refuses to certify vote
PHOENIX — Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the 2022 election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
State election officials had said they would sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors missed Monday's deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass. The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don’t do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county’s votes would be excluded.
That would threaten to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
A Cochise County voter and a group representing retirees filed a lawsuit late Monday asking a judge to order the board of supervisors to canvass the election. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office had previously said it would sue if the county missed the deadline.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Arizona law requires county officials to approve the election canvass, and lawyers in several counties warned Republican supervisors they could face criminal charges for failing to carry out their obligations.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That's not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
Officials in a northeastern Pennsylvania county where paper shortages caused Election Day ballot problems deadlocked Monday on whether to report official vote tallies to the state, effectively preventing their certification of the results.
Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses.
They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County, the state's largest, including metro Phoenix, for a problem with some ballot printers. Officials in Maricopa County said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Navajo, a Republican-leaning county, and Coconino, which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday. In conservative Mohave and Yavapai counties, supervisors voted to canvass the results despite their own misgivings and several dozen speakers urging them not to.
"Delaying this vote again will only prolong the agony without actually changing anything,” said Mohave County Supervisor Hildy Angius, a Republican. The county last week delayed its certification vote to register a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County.
In Cochise County, GOP supervisors abandoned plans to hand count all ballots, which a court said would be illegal, but demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results. On Monday, they said they wanted to hear again about those concerns.
There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.
Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits1.
Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters.”
Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs