'Chaos': GOP officials in AZ county cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands in election fights

Two Republican county supervisors in a solidly red Arizona county are costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in multiple unsuccessful election-related crusades in the courts.

The Guardian reports that Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd — who both sit on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors — have now been subpoenaed as part of a possible investigation by the Arizona Attorney General's office. Both Crosby and Judd have tried consistently to switch the county's ballot-counting process to a hand count rather than a machine count, resulting in various lawsuits against the county, along with subsequent legal settlements totaling roughly $300,000. Despite Cochise County voting for former President Donald Trump in 2020 by a 19-point margin, Crosby refused to certify his county's election results even after a judge compelled him to do so.

The AG's office wouldn't confirm to the Guardian whether an investigation was ongoing, but both Crosby and Judd were summoned to grand jury proceedings in November. The lone Democratic member of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors told the publication Votebeat that state investigators asked her about hand count and ballot certification issues.

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Even though the two officials have had their losing battles settled, the AG's investigation is ongoing. Elisabeth Tyndall, who is chair of the Cochise County Democratic Party, said "the poison continues to spread" while Crosby and Judd wage costly legal battles.

“It’s this cascading effect of creating distrust and creating chaos around basic maintenance [of] elections, things that shouldn’t be controversial. It’s a yes or no vote,” Tyndall told the Guardian. “It shouldn’t be a knockdown, dragout about whether mail-in elections are valid.”

Voters in Cochise County attempted to recall Crosby in May, though petitioners fell just 600 signatures short of meeting the ballot access deadline. According to the Guardian, approximately 60% of the signatures gathered were from Republican voters who wanted the supervisor to face accountability for his costly election denialism. Crosby is now facing a Republican primary challenger in the 2024 election.

"I have been an elections integrity proponent since before it became popular,” Crosby wrote on the far-right crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where he has raised just under $3,000 of his $100,000 goal in a bid to cover his legal costs. "I have heard that a grand jury subpeona [sic] is almost a guaranteed indictment. If that is the case, I would expect to go to trial, and be stuck with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of court costs and legal fees. If my legal adversary is successful in defeating me, it will intimidate other AZ County Supervisors into falling in line with the globalist plans of compromised elections, and forced use of voting machines."

READ MORE: Federal court hands major loss to Arizona election deniers