Assistant AG investigating election posts derisive tweets

The assistant Arizona attorney general who issued a legal ultimatum to Maricopa County election officials was criticizing them and raising dubious claims about procedures 10 days before she sent her demand.

Jennifer Wright, who leads the state’s Election Integrity Unit, suggested county officials were incompetent and claimed they weren’t counting votes fast enough in a series of Twitter posts that began on Election Day.

Wright also posted support of Republican candidates and issues before the Nov. 8 election that her office is now calling into question.

Wright’s Nov. 19 letter galvanized Republican hard-liners seeking to cast doubt on the reliability of the voting system and election results in Arizona’s most populous county.

The letter also has boosted the profile of the Election Integrity Unit, which has faced criticism from those same Republicans for not doing enough to unearth widespread fraud.

Neither Attorney General Mark Brnovich nor Wright responded to interview requests from The Arizona Republic.

Wright’s letter says county officials potentially violated state election law and demands they respond before certifying election results on Nov. 28.

It punctuates a legal career built on voting reform efforts and her ties to groups accused of disenfranchising voters and spreading election fraud claims.

“Incompetence on top of incompetence,” Wright wrote in back-to-back tweets on Nov. 9. “In all my years of election work, it has never taken this long for Maricopa to report Election Day Results. Never. Ever. Ever.”

The claim is not true. The county doesn’t even begin to process ballots dropped off on Election Day until the Thursday after the vote. County officials say on average it takes 10 to 12 days to tally all votes.

In an Election Day tweet, Wright photographed her boot and complained about wait times.

“I forgot to wear comfortable shoes. 2 hours and waiting,” she posted, adding two red-faced emojis.

Although she didn’t say specifically where she was waiting, a follower asked: “Jen, please tell us that you haven’t waited two hours to vote?”

Wright also retweeted a Nov. 8 tweet from Brnovich calling on voters to alert him to problems at voting centers.

“Having an issue at the polls? You’re not alone, and our office wants to track any problems you may be having at your voting site. Please file a complaint with our Election Integrity Unit here,” Brnovich said.

Who is Jennifer Wright?

Wright stepped onto the local political stage in 2011 with a failed bid for Phoenix mayor. She ran as a Tea Party Republican in a crowded field in which she branded herself as a “native Phoenician, economist, lawyer, and activist.” She ran on a campaign of limiting government and supporting small business.

She won backing from former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., for whom she worked in 2010, and former state Senate President Russell Pearce, powerful voices in the conservative movement and border hawks who took tough anti-immigration positions.

Her activism on social media has evolved from straight politicking to include culture war screeds. She frequently lashed out at vaccines (“vax pushers won’t be satisfied until birth rates are near zero”); COVID-19 (“Seriously, they aren’t done using COVID to violate civil liberties”); and transgender issues (“parents, your kids are pressured to deny their biological sex”).

Wright identifies her Twitter account as personal, but she used it to promote her office and make statements on the importance of election integrity. She also used it to lampoon Democrats and support Republican candidates in the 2022 election.

In the days and weeks before the election, Wright retweeted a post saying Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly supported “the killing of the unborn,” endorsed Republican state Sen. Nancy Barto and supported positions advanced by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh.

The Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday would not answer questions about whether Wright’s tweets pose a conflict of interest, violate office policy or suggest bias in the Election Integrity Unit.

County leaders back election department

Wright’s Nov. 19 letter asks county officials to respond point-by-point on printer issues that prevented tabulation machines from reading ballots on Election Day in about 30% of polling stations.

Conservative candi

dates and legislators have seized on the problems to claim Republican voters were unable to cast ballots, leading to Democratic victories in the races for the U.S. Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general.

And they are using Wright’s letter as a prime example.

The Arizona Freedom Caucus, part of a multistate Republican group that prioritizes election integrity, accused Maricopa County election officials of blatant violations of the law.

“On Saturday, the Attorney General’s office demanded a response to vast evidence that they have grossly broken the law,” the caucus said in a statement. “They have yet to justify their lawlessness.”

Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, maintains that voters were not disenfranchised and were given options that allowed their votes to count.

“I am disheartened by the attacks on the integrity of Maricopa County’s 3,000 election workers,” he said in a statement to The Arizona Republic. “Our team counted 1.5 million ballots within a normal timeframe and in accordance with Arizona law.”

Gates said the county remains committed to transparency and intends to answer Wright’s questions publicly.

“We are looking forward to sharing those facts with the Attorney General and the voters of Maricopa County during our canvass on November 28,” he said.

In the meantime, Republicans are calling for new elections, want hand counts of ballots and criminal investigations of election officials. They say the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors botched the election

Lake has claimed victory in her race despite unofficial results showing she lost by more than 17,000 votes. Hamadeh on Tuesday filed a lawsuit calling on a judge to prevent certification of election results. His lawsuit used the same word Wright used in her Nov. 9 tweet: incompetence.

Voters “deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the general election by certain election officials,” said the lawsuit, in which Hamadeh was joined by the Republican National Committee. “Pervasive errors by our election officials resulted in the disenfranchisement of countless Arizonans.”

GOP secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem mounted a social media campaign calling for a new election, making near daily claims of rampant fraud, all without proof.

Finchem says ballots were mishandled, thrown into trash bags and improperly trucked to tabulation centers. He has raised concerns of money laundering, voter suppression and corruption. He has said on Twitter the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors cannot be allowed to certify results.

“You indeed represent the cancer tearing this nation apart!” Finchem said in a Nov. 20 Twitter post. “What you’ve done is obscene. Nothing less than a new election with paper ballots, hand counting by precinct on Election Day will satisfy the legal voters.”

Unofficial results from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office show Finchem lost the election by more than 120,000 votes statewide.

Lake, Hamadeh and Finchem were endorsed by former President Donald Trump and built campaigns on unproven allegations that the 2020 presidential election in Arizona was rigged in favor of President Joe Biden.

Renewed attention

Trump’s 2020 defeat in Arizona brought renewed attention to the Election Integrity Unit. It was besieged with thousands of voter fraud claims, and Republican lawmakers called for Brnovich to investigate Maricopa County’s election system.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann in 2021 launched a review of every ballot cast in Maricopa County. The largely debunked hand count found Trump lost. But reports to the Senate downplayed the numbers and instead raised questions about the county’s election process.

Brnovich issued a preliminary report in April. The Election Integrity Unit found “serious vulnerabilities” in procedures but no crimes. Investigators suggested the county lacked adequate methods to verify voter signatures on early ballots and found holes in its chain of custody for ballots deposited in drop boxes.

Election officials derided the findings and accused Brnovich of trying to placate election deniers. Republicans, meanwhile, especially those who pushed election fraud theories, criticized Brnovich for not making more prosecutions.