An Arizona judge is allowing Cochise County officials to throw out the results of a local tax election after challengers identified a requirement in state law that they said the county didn’t follow — one that applies only to a specific kind of election and that other counties haven’t followed in the past.

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The case involves the county’s May 2023 all-mail election on a proposed tax to fund construction of a new jail. The Arizona Court of Appeals found last year that the county erred by not sending ballots to its 11,000 inactive voters. Because of that error, the county supervisors’ plan to redo the election is reasonable and legal, visiting Judge Michael Latham of the Cochise County Superior Court ruled May 22.

Arizona counties typically send ballots only to active voters, but the appeals court found that for local taxing district elections — such as the Cochise jail election — the law required officials to send ballots to inactive voters as well. A voter’s status is changed to inactive only if their election mail is returned as undeliverable, or if the recorder gets notice that they have moved but can’t reach them.

Latham’s ruling did not directly void the results of the election, in which voters approved the jail tax by 750 votes out of 25,032 ballots cast. But it will effectively do so, by allowing county supervisors to move forward with a proposed settlement with the residents who challenged the result. In that settlement, the county agrees to stop collecting the tax, at least until a new election can be held.

“The Court of Appeals already ruled that the election was fatally flawed due to the disenfranchisement of approximately 11,000 voters,” Latham wrote, finding that the settlement calling for a new election was a reasonable way for the parties to resolve that issue.

The Arizona Court of Appeals and Supreme Court had assigned Latham to determine whether the county’s error in leaving out 11,000 inactive voters was enough to have changed the outcome of the election. But that was before talks of a settlement began, and Latham didn’t make a determination on that question.

Latham’s approval allows the supervisors to reach an agreement that invalidates the election results — even without a finding that the mistake changed the outcome of the election.

This will probably be the first and last election in the state in which officials are held liable for not sending ballots to inactive voters.

That’s because, after last year’s appeals court ruling, lawmakers passed a bill, House Bill 2129, that made clear that counties should not send ballots to inactive voters. The bill saw rare bipartisan support in the split Legislature, and Gov. Katie Hobbs signed it May 13.

Election challenges are more common, but redos are rare

Cases challenging election results over procedural flaws have become more common across the country in recent years, such as the recent challenge to the North Carolina Supreme Court election.

But judges rarely order a redo or overturn results, especially without a finding that errors or fraud changed the outcome of the election.

Arizona has seen nearly every aspect of its election processes challenged in recent years, including in 2022, when gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake claimed that Maricopa County’s ballot printing problems, along with fraud, led to her loss. But judges have mostly thrown out the cases, finding that there was no clear and convincing evidence that any problems affected the outcome of the election.

One recent exception was in the November 2024 election, when Maricopa County put incorrect voter instructions on ballots for a local school board race. A judge ordered a redo of the election, but it never happened because some candidates ultimately dropped out.

Jim Barton, a Phoenix election lawyer who represented a candidate in that case, said he believes that instance and the Cochise County election are different from the cases challenging statewide results, because of the scale of the errors involved and the likelihood that they would have affected the results.

“I think it’s probably the right result,” Barton said about the Cochise County case. “Eleven thousand people didn’t get their ballot.”

Fontes motion to intervene rejected

In Cochise County, the supervisors initially defended the results of the tax election against the residents’ challenge, but new county supervisors who opposed the structure of the jail tax took office in January, and didn’t believe the election had been run fairly. They asked Latham to approve the settlement agreement with the residents, in which the county would agree to stop collecting the tax and to hold a new election.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, tried to intervene and block the settlement. Fontes told the court that the office had an interest in seeing that “election contests are decided not by a handshake deal between the challenger and the government entity conducting an election.”

But Latham rejected Fontes’ motion in his May 22 ruling.

Phoenix election lawyer Andy Gaona said the settlement, which awards $130,000 to one of the plaintiffs, Daniel LaChance, to use for attorney fees, “is little more than a political gift from Cochise County to the plaintiffs and should concern all Arizona voters.” Latham’s refusal to allow Fontes to intervene is concerning as well, he said.

“I hope this is an isolated incident in an election contest, because no one other than the County was in the case to defend the action, but am worried about the precedent this ‘settlement’ might set going forward,” Gaona said.

The settlement puts the jail tax — which has already collected more than $10 million — on hold at least until a new election can be held. Supervisors on May 6 ordered a new election to take place in November, and the question on the ballot will propose a different structure for a new jail tax that current supervisors prefer.

The case is a win for the residents who sued, including LaChance, who has attempted, without success, to challenge the state’s election procedures before.

The residents’ lawyer, Charles Johnson, called Latham’s opinion “excellent” and said it was thanks to LaChance and others that “the majority of voters and Cochise County have achieved justice.”

“Hopefully the attorney general and secretary of state will listen to reason and not appeal,” Johnson said.

Tim LaSota, the supervisors’ lawyer, said the ruling is “a vindication of Cochise County’s plan to address a difficult election situation and a repudiation of efforts by statewide officials to butt in, take over local elections, and disenfranchise Cochise County voters in the process.”

But Tami Birch, a Bisbee resident, said she does not believe the original election results should be thrown out. She doesn’t think the election was flawed, and said voters’ choice to build a new jail should stay in place. The county’s old jail offers unsafe conditions, she said, and the situation is urgent.

“My tax dollars need to be used ASAP to alleviate the unsanitary, unsafe, and unhealthy conditions,” she said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Update, April 15: Fox News deleted its story and published a new one late Monday with the headline “Arizona to verify up to 50K people from voter rolls who failed to prove citizenship.”

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Arizona has not identified up to 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, nor have counties begun canceling any voter registrations, despite news reports over the weekend suggesting otherwise.

The misleading claims showed up in reports by Fox News and other outlets that mischaracterized a recent legal settlement between Arizona counties and the grassroots organization Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as EZAZ.org.

Sunday’s Fox News story carried the headline “Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.” It said that the settlement led to all counties beginning “the process of verifying and removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, including nearly 50,000 registrants who did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship.”

“The story is wrong,” said Sam Stone, spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which led settlement negotiations on behalf of all 15 counties.

What county officials are doing as a result of the settlement, Stone said, is asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide an additional way for county officials to check voter citizenship.

Counties are not yet sharing voter information with DHS. Maricopa County will not do so unless it can submit the information securely and ensure that the citizenship checks are accurate, Stone said.

The settlement involves a case in which the conservative group America First Legal sued Arizona counties on behalf of EZAZ.org, claiming that election officials were not using all available databases to check voter citizenship, as required by state law. The settlement required counties to send a letter to DHS expressing their intent to submit voter information to get help checking citizenship; reminding the agency of its obligation under federal law to share database information with states; and requesting information about how to submit the voter information, said Merissa Hamilton, founder and chairwoman of EZAZ.org.

Still, Republican leaders such as Kari Lake, the State Department aide and 2024 Arizona Senate candidate, seized on the Fox report to claim that large numbers of noncitizens were voting in Arizona. Lake posted on the social media platform X that “it’s a pyrrhic victory knowing Arizona had to be sued into submission before agreeing to follow the law, & take upwards of 50K illegal voters off its rolls.”

Fox News and Lake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Fox News headline still appeared on its website with the same language as of midday Monday.

Election officials in Arizona counties already check a person’s citizenship in multiple ways under state laws that require proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections.

Only a handful of other states have passed such laws requiring proof of citizenship for registering to vote. Federal law requires only that a voter attest to their citizenship — under penalty of perjury — by checking a box on their voter registration form.

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on elections, as well as the SAVE Act, which passed the U.S. House last week, call for requiring citizenship proof nationwide.

In Arizona, around 49,000 active or inactive voters are eligible to vote only in federal elections because they did not prove their citizenship. Another 200,000 longtime residents will need to verify their citizenship status in the coming months because they were affected by a state error in tracking citizenship that was disclosed last summer.

Stone said most of these voters are likely U.S. citizens who simply haven’t submitted the necessary documents.

There’s no national database of U.S. citizens, so county officials in Arizona currently check driver’s license numbers, birth certificates, immigrant IDs and other documents to verify citizenship. The Department of Homeland Security can verify the citizenship status of potential voters individually, Stone said, but isn’t set up to check large groups of voters at once.

The request from Arizona county officials to the federal agency “is really for the creation of a system that would allow for an accurate comparison between county databases,” Stone said.

Trump’s executive order also called for DHS to share database information with states upon request.

America First Legal’s news release about the settlement between the counties and EZAZ.org did not imply that Arizona had 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.

James Rogers, senior counsel for America First Legal, wrote in the release that the settlement will help recorders “find and remove any aliens on their voter rolls.”

“It will also potentially enfranchise federal-only voters whose citizenship is confirmed,” Rogers wrote, “which would allow them to vote in State and local elections.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

A Navajo County grand jury has indicted the county’s recorder, Timothy Jordan, on three criminal charges in connection with a road rage incident just before the November election.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The Feb. 11 indictment accuses Jordan of disorderly conduct with a weapon, a felony charge, as well as two misdemeanors: disorderly conduct and false reporting to a law enforcement agency. Votebeat exclusively requested and obtained the indictment.

Jordan, a Republican, defeated the Democratic incumbent, Michael Sample, in the Nov. 5 election. As recorder, Jordan controls voter registration and early voting in the northern Arizona county. State law prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from holding public office.

The Navajo County Attorney’s Office initially transferred the case to Coconino County to prosecute because Jordan is now an elected official, according to a spokesperson for the office. But Coconino prosecutors then presented evidence of the alleged offenses to a Navajo County grand jury, according to the Coconino County attorney, because a criminal case must be heard by a grand jury in the jurisdiction where the offense occurred.

At an arraignment on Monday in Navajo County Superior Court, the court entered a not guilty plea on Jordan’s behalf, according to the court clerk’s office.

Jordan, 46, allegedly pulled out a gun during a conflict with two 18-year-old men who had been tailing his truck in an SUV on Oct. 23, according to a report from the Show Low Police Department. The incident took place near the parking lot of his child’s school.

He said in an interview with Votebeat that he pulled out the gun in self-defense after he “felt in fear for my life.”

Jordan’s accounts of the incident have shifted, according to the police report. He initially told the officer who responded to the scene that he did not pull out his gun, the report said, but later acknowledged that he took it out of his waistband as he approached the SUV.

According to the police report, Jordan also initially told the officer that the other men had guns, but then later told him they did not. In an interview with Votebeat last week, Jordan repeated his claim that the other men had guns, and denied telling the officer that they did not. Asked about this, a spokesperson for the Show Low Police Department said the report reflects the officer’s recollection of what Jordan said.

For their part, those two men later told a police officer they did not have guns and never got out of the SUV, according to the police report. Officers did not find any guns in the SUV.

When the police officer later asked Jordan why he had not been honest initially about taking out his gun, Jordan brought up his campaign for recorder, according to the police report.

“Timothy told me he was scared and nervous because he was running for office and knew what was at stake,” the officer wrote in the report.

Jordan was arrested and released after paying a $3,500 bail.

The driver of the SUV was initially charged with disorderly conduct and criminal damage. His charges were dismissed, according to the Navajo County Attorney’s Office. The passenger was fined $250 for disorderly conduct, according to court records. Votebeat was not able to find contact information for either man.

Jordan said he will present evidence to the court that he acted in self defense; he declined to share that evidence with Votebeat. He said he believes the charges against him are politically motivated.

Jordan, an Army veteran who recently worked in property management, moved to the area in 2021 and told Votebeat the recorder’s race was his first bid for public office.

Jordan told police he was hurrying to pick up his child from school at around 3:30 pm on Oct. 23 when he came to a stop sign at the same time as the SUV. He told an officer that he “kind of rolled” through the stop sign. The driver of the SUV told police that he was upset that Jordan had cut him off.

The accounts of what happened diverge from there, as documented in the police report: Jordan said the SUV began tailing him aggressively, while the SUV driver said that Jordan “brake checked” him. Jordan pulled over at the entrance to the school’s parking lot, and both sides told police they felt blocked by the other.

Jordan then got out of his truck. He told the officer that three men got out of the SUV, but the two men the officer interviewed said no one got out of their vehicle, and there was not a third person in the SUV.

Jordan told the officer “the driver and the front passenger began waving guns.”­

At this point in the interview, the officer wrote, “Timothy made a gesture with both of his hands as if he were shooting pistols from his hip.” He described the two guns, including the models, to the officer. He said they were pointing the guns at the ground, not at him.

When interviewing the SUV driver later, the officer wrote, the driver appeared confused when he told him Jordan had said they had pistols in their hands. He told the officer they did not have guns and did not own any.

The police report notes that the men were yelling at each other, and the officer wrote that Jordan told him “he was trying to use a tactic that is used to scare a bear away by yelling louder than the other males.

The men both told the officer, separately, that they knew Jordan had a gun at that point because they saw him reach for his waistband. The driver of the SUV told the officer he then sped off because he was afraid.

Initially, Jordan told the officer that he “had a firearm in his truck” but that he never pulled it out.

“I told Timothy he could’ve told me the truth and didn’t have to lie,” the officer wrote. “Timothy said he agreed and said he shouldn’t have lied to me.”

Later, the men in the SUV drove back to the school parking lot and threw a cup full of liquid at Jordan’s truck, the police report said.

In an interview with Votebeat, Jordan pointed to that, saying the other people involved in the incident wouldn’t have returned to do that if they were afraid and if he “was some crazy, gun-slinging guy.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Maricopa County’s new recorder is rejecting an agreement that splits control of the county’s elections between his office and supervisors, and is threatening to sue the supervisors if they don’t give him more power.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Recorder Justin Heap’s protest puts control over elections in the state’s most populous and high-profile swing county up in the air and sets up a messy fight between prominent Republican officials that could affect voters, with local elections approaching in May and the 2026 gubernatorial election looming.

Heap, a former state representative, is seeking more staff for the recorder’s office and more control over early voting. He claimed in a news release this week that the previous board of supervisors took this away from his office in a “backroom, eleventh hour power grab,” referring to a shared-services agreement they approved shortly before he took office.

He said the new supervisors’ refusal to quickly meet to discuss a new agreement is “jeopardizing Maricopa County election readiness.”

Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin rebutted Heap’s claims in his own news release, saying that “conversations have been happening for weeks,” and that supervisors look forward to working with Heap on a new agreement.

Pressure is on to run smooth and accurate elections after false claims and real problems over the last four years damaged voter trust in Maricopa County. But because of the way Arizona law splits duties between the recorder and supervisors, Heap will need to collaborate with the supervisors to make that happen. The hostile start to their relationship points to the challenges.

The officials will need to reach consensus before April, when the county must send out ballots for Glendale’s and Goodyear’s all-mail elections.

Matt Salmon, a Republican former congressman who is now on the leadership team of the Democracy Defense Project, said Heap won’t be able to win the supervisors’ support — or instill confidence in voters — by being combative.

“The most important thing is that our democracy, our republic works,” Salmon said. “The people are sending folks to the county board of supervisors, and they are sending a representative to the recorder’s office, and they expect them to work together.”

Heap calls October agreement a ‘power grab’

Former Recorder Stephen Richer signed the latest agreement with the board in October — after Heap had defeated Richer in the Republican primary but before Heap won the November election.

In rejecting the agreement, Heap is continuing the aggressive tone of his campaign, in which he called the county’s elections a “laughingstock.” As a candidate, he expressed doubt over the fairness of past election results and promised voters that he would upend the election system, even though recorders in Arizona generally don’t control most of the county’s election operations.

Recorders typically oversee voter registration and early voting, while supervisors hire election directors to handle Election Day voting and ballot counting.

The supervisors, too, have said they want to improve the county’s elections. On Wednesday, they voted unanimously to set aside $480,000 for two independent audits to examine the processes and technology used to run elections. Galvin said Heap told him his office will participate.

Maricopa County supervisors have been slowly taking back control of elections from the recorder’s office over the past decade or so.

The past two recorders, Richer and Adrian Fontes — now the secretary of state — argued with supervisors over how best to divide up duties, but almost always behind closed doors. Heap’s public criticism marks a significant turn from that united front.

“There are people who work to get stuff done, and there are people who just like fighting,” Richer said in a statement. “You can get away with the latter personality type when you’re in the state Legislature, city council, or the Congress, and you’re not actually responsible for anything other than your own vote. It’s harder to survive like that when you have to run things.”

The current supervisors and Heap started out cordially. During a public budget session last month, they sat together around a table and tried to work out a key point of disagreement: who should manage the county’s election-related IT staff.

At that meeting, Heap said he hoped to audit and improve the county’s voter registration system, and needed more people and money to do that. Galvin responded that having election IT staff for both the recorder and supervisors would be redundant and more costly.

But shortly after the meeting, state lawmakers who are part of the Freedom Caucus in the Legislature began to publicly criticize Galvin, saying he was “railroading” Heap, a former caucus member, and stripping him of his budget and power.

Heap then sent out his news release on Monday and posted on social media that he was in a “BATTLE OVER MARICOPA COUNTY ELECTIONS” with supervisors.

“I don’t see this as a ‘battle,’” Galvin responded in his release.

Disagreement about what the October agreement says

Heap and the supervisors disagree not only on who should control what election functions, but also on what the October agreement says about that.

All sides agree that the October agreement shifted control of the elections IT staff and a key election database from the recorder to the supervisors. Heap wants that database, and the majority of the staff, shifted back.

But Heap also claims that the October agreement took from the recorder’s office crucial early voting processes such as sending out and receiving mail ballots. Galvin disputes that.

Heap said that after consulting with the County Attorney’s Office, he notified supervisors in January that he was rejecting the agreement, citing “a standing principle” of Arizona law that “no elected body or office may bind the powers of a future body or office.”

After that, Heap and the supervisors both hired outside lawyers to advise them on the agreement.

It’s unclear whether supervisors accept that Heap can cancel the agreement, or what happens if they don’t approve a new one. A spokesperson did not directly answer that question. But Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee said in an interview that she believes Heap’s decision doesn’t change anything yet, since the October agreement says any termination would take effect only after the next general election. That would mean it stays in place through the end of 2026.

Heap has said he won’t let that happen.

“With an election less than 90 days away,” Heap said in his release, “the Supervisors’ unwillingness to address these concerns will force me to take legal action against the Board to restore this office’s full authority, and deliver the results voters elected me to achieve.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The official who oversaw Apache County’s November election during widespread technical problems at polling places is no longer in her position, Votebeat has learned.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Rita Vaughan is out as county elections director, JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office confirmed. The county manager did not respond to a request for comment about the reasons for Vaughan’s departure, or the date she left. Vaughan also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Voters and Navajo Nation officials have called for accountability after the Election Day problems across the county, which contains a large section of the Navajo Nation in the northeast corner of the state.

Voters seeking to cast ballots had to wait in lines for hours after the county’s equipment failed. Polling places that had emergency ballots quickly ran out, and for many voters, the only option was to use an accessible voting device until new equipment arrived, according to voters and observers. Polling places typically have only one or two of those accessible devices, which are designed for people with disabilities.

After the Navajo Nation sued on Election Day, an Apache County Superior Court judge ordered select polling places to stay open for two hours past the originally scheduled closing time. Lawyers for the Navajo Nation told the judge that, despite the county’s assertions, the problems persisted throughout the day, and some voters who were in line for hours in the cold chose to leave without voting.

Ethel Branch, the Navajo Nation Attorney General at the time, said later that month that the voters were disenfranchised.

“Despite this ruling, we will not be deterred from holding Apache County accountable for honoring all Navajo votes in future elections,” Branch wrote in a Nov. 22 Navajo Nation Department of Justice news release.

Vaughan told Votebeat on Election Day that the problem was with the county’s ballot-on-demand printers, and the county issued a news release saying the same. But county officials have not provided more details.

The Navajo Nation filed a second lawsuit after the election, asking a judge to provide more time for voters to fix problems with signatures on their ballots, because of delays in notifying voters of the problems. The county recorder, not the elections director, is in charge of that process. The judge dismissed that lawsuit.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

After Kari Lake lost her U.S. Senate race in November, some skeptics cried election fraud. They doubted that so many people who voted for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who carried Arizona, would split their ticket and back Ruben Gallego, Lake’s Democratic opponent.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

In the past, local election analysts could counter such claims by analyzing a dataset known as the cast vote record — an electronic record of each anonymous ballot cast and all the votes recorded on it, including split-ticket votes.

But for this election, they’ve hit a roadblock: They can no longer get that data.

The counties that gave out their cast-vote record in the past now say that it is not a public record, or that they’ll provide only a heavily redacted version, without ruling specifically on whether the public is entitled to see it.

The limited access to the cast-vote record dismays some election analysts, including Benny White of Tucson, who said releasing it is important not only to quiet election fraud claims but also to ensure accuracy of results.

“If we are serious about making sure our elections are accurate, we have to find a way to more completely and comprehensively publicly audit the official results,” White said.

What is the cast vote record?

Arizona law is murky on whether the cast-vote record is the kind of document that can be released to the public. Because Attorney General Kris Mayes has not issued an opinion, counties have little guidance on whether they can or must make it available, and people who want to examine the election results have to fight from county to county for access.

The fight for the cast vote record in Arizona is just one recent example of the attempts across the country to meet voter demands for more election transparency and data, without compromising voters’ privacy. In Pennsylvania, for example, courts just ruled that the cast vote record itself is not a public record, but images of mail ballots are.

The cast vote record comes in different forms, but in many instances is a large spreadsheet with a record of the votes cast on each ballot, and other information indicating how and where the voter cast the ballot. Each row in the spreadsheet represents one voter’s ballot, and each column represents one of the choices on the ballot.

By itself, the cast vote record does not tie a voter’s name or identification number to a particular ballot. But in rare circumstances, pairing this dataset with the record of who voted in the election could show how some voters voted.

This occurred in Texas, where the cast vote record was one data source that activists apparently used to link a specific voter to the ballot he cast in a March 2024 primary election. After that, the state instructed election officials to redact election records far more extensively before releasing them.

While many Arizona counties have decided not to release the cast vote record, Maricopa County is currently preparing a redacted version for White. But White says the initial version he was sent last month was so heavily redacted it couldn’t be used for thorough analysis. Releasing the document in that form could “cause confusion, complaints of malfeasance, and mistrust of the election processes and the election officials,” he said.

In recent years, Republican lawmakers who say they want to improve voter trust have tried to change state law to specify that the cast vote record and corresponding digital images for each ballot are public records. Those proposals have gained some bipartisan support, including from Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, but concerns about privacy from voting rights groups stalled the proposals.

As the legislative session begins Monday, it’s unclear whether a proposal to clear up the law on cast vote records will be reintroduced this year. The main proponent, state Sen. Ken Bennett, a Republican, lost his seat in the July primary. Bennett said he would look for a new sponsor to carry that bill.

Until such a bill passes, individual counties “should not be deciding these issues haphazardly,” said Alex Gulotta, Arizona director of voting rights group All Voting is Local.

“Under current law,” he said, “there is no basis for releasing this information.”

Push for access pits transparency against privacy

Groups that oppose wider access to the cast vote records say their concerns are partly about how it could undermine the right to a secret ballot, which is guaranteed under federal law.

Some states allow the release of cast vote records as well as digital images of individual ballots. In limited circumstances, a person could figure out the identity and the choices of some voters by combining just a few datasets, if they aren’t redacted enough.

A recent study tried to determine just how limited those circumstances are. The study looked at a past Maricopa County election and found that the cast vote record, combined with voter information, could reveal the vote choices of 0.2% of the county’s voters — or fewer than 3,500 voters.

The study also pointed out that much of the data in the cast vote record that can lead to revealing a voter’s choices is already provided publicly in other ways, such as in reports of precinct-level results.

A Votebeat review of the precinct-level reports from small counties in Arizona’s November election found two instances in which combining that document with the record of who voted in each precinct would reveal voter choices. These were in small precincts with low turnout, where all of the voters who cast ballots in the precinct voted for the same candidate.

In one small precinct, for example, only four people voted for president, and they all voted for the same candidate. Looking up the four voters who participated in the election would reveal who they voted for.

Maricopa County releases those precinct reports, but the county’s system automatically redacts result from small precincts, Elections Director Scott Jarrett said.

Texas began ordering stricter redactions to protect voter secrecy last year after an investigation by Votebeat and the Texas Tribune showed that recent laws championed by state Republicans have made it easier to use publicly available election records to, in some instances, find how some people voted.

Last year in Texas, a conservative news site posted what it said was the primary ballot of former state GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi. The ballot had a vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though Rinaldi had publicly endorsed Donald Trump in the primary.

Rinaldi did not respond to requests to confirm whether the ballot was his.

What does Arizona law say?

In Arizona, state law prohibits the release of electronic ballot data, but it doesn’t provide details on what exactly that means. And because Mayes has not issued guidance, Fontes’ office doesn’t have a formal legal opinion. So even though Fontes personally supports releasing the records, his office hasn’t told counties what to do.

Counties that say the record is exempt from disclosure, or not public, cite a few pieces of state law. One states that while counties are obligated to make certain existing records public, they do not need to create new records in response to public records requests. Some counties say that the cast vote record is not automatically sent to them from the voting machine company, so they do not need to provide it. The other rationale often cited is the state law prohibiting officials from releasing electronic ballot data.

“The officer in charge of elections shall ensure that electronic data from and electronic or digital images of ballots are protected from physical and electronic access, including unauthorized copying or transfer,” the statute says, “and that all security measures are at least as protective as those prescribed for paper ballots.”

But John Brakey of liberal-leaning election transparency group Audit USA says that the state enacted that law in 2017 in response to his organization’s attempts to get digital images of ballots, and that lawmakers never said the cast vote record would be restricted by it. The state senator who proposed it, according to a transcript Audit USA filed in a related court case, said the law was meant to prevent manipulation of digital ballot images.

Request for record gets contentious

Audit USA has routinely requested access to ballot images and cast vote records in Arizona and other states for more than a decade, and has often sued to try to get the records. But recently, the organization became the target of a lawsuit over one of its requests.

After Audit USA requested the cast vote record from Santa Cruz County following the 2022 primary election, the county sued the organization, seeking a ruling from the courts on whether it was obligated to release or shield the records.

The county released the cast vote record from the November 2020 election “due to the belief that these records were similar to any other election report that provides an aggregate of votes cast, votes rejected, undervotes, overvotes, etc,” the county said in its complaint. But it said “research has revealed the CVR and CVR database are electronic records of each individual ballot unlike summary reports.”

The case has now gone back and forth between the trial and appellate courts, and is still pending.

Meanwhile, Audit USA has spent at least $50,000 in legal fees.

Brakey and Audit USA attorney Bill Risner said they aren’t sure why Santa Cruz officials didn’t just ask the state attorney general for an opinion on whether the cast vote record is a public record, as they are entitled to do.

Santa Cruz County officials declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Maricopa and Pima counties change their stance

White, the election analyst in Tucson, said he was able to obtain the cast vote record from both Pima and Maricopa counties in 2020. In 2022, Maricopa provided him with the record. That data helped his team of analysts prove why Trump lost the state in 2020, and why Lake lost her gubernatorial bid in 2022. But this year, both counties are refusing to give it out in its original form.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office has determined the cast vote record “to be electronic data created from the ballot,” according to Elections Director Constance Hargrove. The county therefore refused to provide it to Audit USA after this election, citing the prohibition in state law.

In Maricopa County, the first time the county was asked to produce the cast vote record was after the 2020 election, under a subpoena from state Senate Republicans looking to audit the election results, said Jarrett, the elections director. Then, after the 2022 election, the cast vote record was released under court challenges. Both times, the county decided to also release the record publicly.

But after realizing that the record could potentially be used to tie a ballot to a voter, Jarrett said, officials have decided to redact the record before releasing it, to protect voter privacy.

White said counties should find a way to provide a full record of the votes cast on each ballot, without sacrificing voter privacy.

“There are reasons to control access to the cast vote record,” he said. “However, those restrictions are not part of Arizona law.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

As lawmakers across the country consider requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, Arizona’s voter roll provides clues as to which voters will struggle to provide it.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Voters living on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus are all disproportionately represented among voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, according to a Votebeat analysis of the list of eligible voters who hadn’t provided proof of citizenship for the presidential election. Such voters also were three times less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

The data shows that, while GOP lawmakers pushing for a documentation requirement say they are attempting to prevent noncitizens from voting — a rare occurrence, according to all available evidence — the requirement in Arizona appears to be disenfranchising some Americans.

Arizona is the only state in the country currently limiting voting for those who don’t prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another qualifying document. Such voters can cast ballots in federal elections, but not state and local elections.

The voters who don’t provide such documents are marked as a “federal-only” voter and receive a ballot with just presidential and congressional contests. This applied to less than 1% of the state’s voter roll, or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election.

In all other states, voters simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. They don’t have to provide documents proving it.

Voters living on tribal land, college campuses, and at the state’s largest homeless campus frequently tell advocacy organizations that they aren’t able to provide documents proving their citizenship because they don’t have easy or immediate access to them when registering. And many college students and Native voters first register to vote at third-party registration drives away from home when they hadn’t necessarily planned to do so, and don’t follow up later to provide additional documentation.

Allie Redhorse Young, director and founder of Navajo advocacy group Protect the Sacred, said it’s just another barrier for Native voters who have long faced challenges voting.

“It’s pretty outrageous for the first people who lived in this country to have these challenges trying to vote,” Young said.

Here’s everything we know about who Arizona’s federal-only voters are, and where they live.

Federal-only voters are unlikely voters in Arizona

The vast majority of federal-only voters are on the list because they didn’t provide documentation of citizenship. But a minimal number are on the list because they haven’t provided proof of residency required under a new state law.

Together, the voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship or residency make up a tiny portion of the state’s voter roll.

These federal-only voters also voted far less often than registered voters in general.

Turnout from active voters who hadn’t provided documents proving citizenship in Arizona was about 19% in the November presidential election, compared to 79% turnout among other active registered voters.

Federal-only voters are spread out pretty evenly across the state with the vast majority of precincts having just a dozen or fewer.

But there are some places where they are more concentrated.

Many federal-only voters live on tribal land

Voters living on tribal land are more likely to find themselves on the federal-only list.

Of all active federal-only voters, 7.3% live in precincts on or close to reservations, whereas voters on tribal land make up only 2.5% of all registered voters, according to a Votebeat analysis. And only 3.6% of the voting-age population in the state is Indigenous, according to U.S. Census voter population estimates. Many of those people do not live on tribal land.

In particular, some precincts on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona saw higher per-capita rates of federal-only voters, compared to precincts in the rest of the state.

There are a few reasons why Indigenous voters may not provide proof of citizenship as often, according to Native voting advocates.

For one, there’s been a big push in recent years to get Indigenous voters registered to vote, so many organizations host voter registration drives at community events or at chapter houses on tribal land. If the voter doesn’t have documentation with them at those events, Young with Protect the Sacred said, it’s a long way back home to get it.

Young’s group hosts voter registration events on the Navajo Nation, including her highly publicized get-out-the-vote horseback rides.

“If they show up without this documentation, it’s likely they aren’t going to drive the 40 minutes and back again,” she said.

Young said the organizations hosting the drive must be clear to residents, before and during the event, that they need to provide this documentation. But she said she knows that some groups conducting voter registration drives on the Navajo reservation turn in incomplete or inaccurate forms.

Young also said many elders living on the reservation may not have documentation proving citizenship at all. Votebeat’s analysis confirmed that the federal-only voters in precincts containing tribal land are generally older than those elsewhere. In fact, 16% of federal-only voters on precincts containing tribal land were 65 and older, compared to 10% in the rest of the state.

Some of these older residents may not have an Arizona driver’s license, which can be used to prove citizenship if issued after 1996, and also may not have a birth certificate. They could potentially have a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, which can also be used to prove citizenship. But, Young said, “it’s one of those documents you don’t have in your wallet.”

Of the federal-only voters who cast ballots in November, at least 8% live on or near tribal land, according to the analysis.

Many federal-only voters are on college campuses

There are just seven precincts, out of roughly 1,700 in the state, where more than 5% of voters cast federal-only ballots in November. They all either include parts of, or are adjacent to, college campuses.

At least 6% of people relegated to the federal-only voter roll live in just three precincts at the center of each of the state’s three public universities’ main campuses. That percentage doubles if expanded to include nearby precincts that include student housing.

Federal-only voters make up 29% of the voters in those three precincts, compared with 0.8% of the overall voter roll.

Student advocates believe they know why college students are landing on the list: Like tribal land, college campuses are targeted by organizations trying to register new voters in the state.

Kyle Nitschke, the organizing director of the Arizona Students’ Association, helps run some of those voter registration drives. Data from his past registration drives found that around 1 in 3 of the students registering have not been able to provide an in-state driver’s license or other form of citizenship proof on the spot at such events.

Nitschke said that’s because many students are originally from out of state, and these drives take place when they first move to Arizona to attend college. So they’re eligible to vote there, but may not have an Arizona-issued driver’s license or have their birth certificate handy.

Changes that went into effect this summer, under a new law requiring proof of residency and requiring state registration forms to be rejected outright if citizenship is not provided, made it even more complicated to get a new student full ballot status, Nitschke said.

Nitsche cautions other states against passing proof of citizenship laws, because he’s seen its impact on the college student population.

“It’s not about citizenship, like they say it is,” he said. “It’s an attack on student voters, and voters from out of state. It just doesn’t solve a problem.”

In the November election, around 7% of federal-only voters who cast ballots live in the three precincts at the center of the main college campuses.

Federal-only voters are often young and unaffiliated

In a potentially related finding, the data show that federal-only voters are generally younger than the voting-age population in the state.

People 18 to 24 years old are roughly 3.6 times as likely to be federal-only voters than people 25 and older.

The federal-only voters who voted in November also followed this pattern.

They’re also more likely to not belong to a political party, compared to all registered voters. That makes sense because these voters are younger, which means they are newer voters, and newer voters are generally less often affiliated with a major party.

But unaffiliated voters, generally, vote at lower rates, and the same was true for those on the federal-only list. Therefore, the political makeup of federal-only voters who actually cast ballots in November looked more like the political makeup of the general voting population.

Arizona doesn’t collect race or ethnicity information from voters when they register, so Votebeat was unable to analyze either.

But in testimony given during a trial on Arizona’s citizenship laws in 2023, Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, told the judge that his analysis found that federal-only voters live in communities that are more diverse, compared to full-ballot voters. The average community for a registered voter in Arizona is 62.9 percent non-Hispanic white, he said, but the average community of a federal-only voter is 47.3 percent non-Hispanic white.

A hot spot on a homeless campus

The other hotspot precinct in the state containing a larger number of federal-only voters includes the state’s main homeless campus, Keys to Change, in downtown Phoenix. The campus has mailboxes that people can use as a mailing address.

There are 510 voters registered at the address, and around half of them, or 269, are federal-only voters, according to Maricopa County data.

Those 269 voters make up 40% of the 669 federal-only voters in the precinct.

Rick Mitchell, executive director of the Phoenix-based Homeless ID Project, said there are several reasons why someone experiencing homelessness might not have a state ID or birth certificate. His organization helps people get new documents, and store them.

Mitchell said people who have recently been evicted, who are aging out of foster care, or who are fleeing domestic violence are among those he helps obtain new identification. He also sees some people who have lost their documents as they move around or live on the street.

In 2023, his organization helped around 20 individuals a day get a birth certificate, and around 40 a day get a new state identification card.

When people come looking for help, they are often trying to get a new job, get housing, or get into school. While getting an ID, they will be asked through the Motor Vehicle Division if they want to register to vote.

Those people might then land on the federal-only list.

But only 19 people of the 669 on the list voted in the November election from the precinct where the homeless campus is located. It has one of the lowest federal-only voting rates in the state, despite having the fourth highest share of federal-only voters.

The people who Mitchell helps have other priorities, he said.

“If I have nothing, and I’m trying to get reestablished, voting isn’t one of them.”

Kae Petrin is a data reporter for Votebeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

WILLCOX, Ariz. — Peggy Judd knew exactly what she needed to do.

Judd, a Republican on the board of supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, had to vote yes Wednesday on whether to certify the county’s presidential election results. If she didn’t, she would be not only breaking the law, but also violating the terms of her plea agreement.

That’s because, two years ago, after the 2022 midterms, she made a different choice. She and another Republican supervisor voted to delay the certification of that election past the legal deadline.

That decision made her one of a handful of local Republican officials around the country who unsuccessfully tried to halt or delay certification of an election. It also upended Judd’s life.

As she prepares to leave public office at the end of the year, she’s still reckoning with the consequences. And the county, a rural region in the southeastern corner of the state along the Mexican border, is still working through the distrust, turmoil, and national attention that came with Judd’s vote.

After the vote to delay, State Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation into Judd and fellow Supervisor Tom Crosby. A grand jury later charged them with two felonies — conspiracy and interference with an election officer.

Judd initially fought the charges, and amassed $70,000 in legal bills, she told Votebeat in an interview Tuesday. She collected contributions to help pay the tab, including, she acknowledged for the first time, $5,000 wired from the Legal Offense Fund of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has promoted false theories about elections.

But despite promises from GOP activists and leaders to help anyone who bucked the system, most of the burden fell on her.

Judd, 62, signed a plea agreement last month admitting that she failed to certify the election as required by law. She was sentenced to 90 days of unsupervised probation.

That means that if she didn’t certify this election on time, she could be jailed.

Crosby, for his part, has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for January.

Feeling betrayed: ‘I don’t want to be a Republican anymore’

Judd, a former state representative, is preparing to sell her house to her daughter, mostly because she needs money to pay her legal bills. Judd moved in with her mother this summer.

She said the local Republican Party she had helped nurture since the Tea Party movement began in 2008 has turned against her. She doesn’t feel welcome at the local GOP meetings now, she said, and has faced criticism for not going all the way on the effort to hand-count ballots and block certification. She said she plans to unregister as a Republican “soon.”

“When I was behaving, they were very kind to me,” she said. “But the minute I was saying ‘No, wait, whoa,’ then they hated me, like immediately. And that’s why I don’t want to be a Republican anymore.”

Even so, sitting at her sister’s pizza restaurant in Willcox the afternoon before the vote, she said she felt tortured by the thought of voting yes on certification the following morning, because Cochise did experience problems counting ballots.

“So much is going wrong,” she said.

A local reporter had just called her to tell her that the elections director had made a mistake when preparing the hand-count audit of results. And the county had mechanical problems with its tabulator while tallying votes during the initial count.

Judd knew the mistakes did not affect the final vote count. And because Donald Trump won the presidency, Judd said, the community wasn’t claiming fraud this time, or pushing her not to certify.

Still, she said she wanted to be deliberate about her vote. Certifying an election is a ministerial duty in Arizona, not a discretionary one, but she said she didn’t want to vote to certify just because she was obligated to. She wanted to be able to tell her community affirmatively that, despite the mistakes, the election should be certified.

She had been all day waiting for the elections director to send her a post-election report that might help her understand exactly what challenges election officials dealt with during the election, and how they resolved them.

She checked her email inbox one more time. But there was nothing there.

The day before the vote in 2022

Even before her vote not to certify the 2022 midterm election results, Judd was tangled up in lawsuits and drama over how Cochise County would handle them. For months, she and some other elected officials pushed for a full hand count of ballots. A judge blocked the plan, finding it would be illegal under state law.

Around the same time, Crosby and Judd conferred with a private lawyer — separately, they say — outside of a public meeting. They asked him to sue the county’s elections director personally for refusing to hand over the ballots for an expanded audit.

Mayes determined later that the two supervisors’ meetings with the outside lawyer had violated the state’s Open Meetings Act.

Activists also asserted that the voting lab that certified the county’s ballot tabulators had not been properly accredited, a claim that the Arizona Supreme Court had already rejected.

Crosby and Judd said they wanted more information on those claims and voted on Nov. 18 to delay the certification vote until the last day allowed in state law, Nov. 28.

Shortly afterward, the state elections director sent supervisors a letter from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission confirming that the machines were properly certified.

Nonetheless, Judd said that on the day before the Nov. 28 vote, she met with two activists making the claim. She said she was helping them prepare to present at the supervisors’ meeting the next morning.

When those activists weren’t allowed to speak at that meeting, Crosby and Judd again voted to delay certification — this time, until past the county’s deadline to certify under state law.

Then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sued, and a court forced Cochise supervisors to certify later that week, allowing the secretary of state to still meet the deadline for statewide certification.

Judd this week said that no one on her staff had advised her of the county’s statutory deadline to certify, or that her vote to delay meant the county would miss it. But fellow Supervisor Ann English, the board’s only Democrat, says the supervisors were warned of the deadline.

Judd also said she had always intended to certify the election. While she had doubts about the fairness of elections elsewhere, she said she always knew Cochise County’s elections were fair.

What were Judd’s intentions?

A grand jury connected Crosby and Judd’s votes to delay certification with their earlier push for hand-counting all of the county’s ballots, and accused them of an illegal conspiracy to delay the election results.

Judd was putting out Christmas decorations with her family when she got a phone call telling her she had been indicted. She said she was surprised and especially wanted to push back on the idea that she conspired with Crosby. Judd said she never spoke to Crosby outside of public meetings, even about the lawsuit against the county’s elections director.

Judd’s sister, Cindy Chaffey, drove her to Phoenix for her arraignment in December 2023 and described Judd as “really struggling” with the charges against her at that point.

She said Judd is best known in the community not for the election drama, but as a longstanding public servant — one who goes out of her way to help others. Judd, she said, wanted to prove to the community that the county’s election was fair and believed her actions would allow that to happen.

“Because everything she does is with a good heart and with good intentions,” she said.

Not everyone saw Judd’s actions that way.

Sitting at R&R Pizza, Judd puts her phone on the table and replays a voicemail that arrived the day after her Nov. 28 vote to delay the results. The man’s voice on the recording tells her she is “election-denying, crazy, psychopathic anti-American to your very core, for denying people their rightful need to vote.”

“Hopefully you both get hit by semi-trucks,” the voice says, referring to Judd and Crosby. “Get cancer, suffer immensely, and die before the end of the year.”

Judd said she cried when she got that message, and regrets that her staff received messages like that, too. Criticism came from other members of the community as well, especially after Crosby and Judd’s actions prompted the resignation of the county’s well-regarded elections director, Lisa Marra.

English, the Democratic supervisor, said she is disappointed that Judd could get off with “a slap on the wrist.” English said she believes Judd and Crosby should also be held accountable for violating public meeting law.

Judd denies that she did so.

Surprise turned to doubt in 2020

This summer, prosecutors with Mayes’ office questioned Judd about her choices in what Judd called a “free talk” that preceded the plea agreement. She said she was honest when they asked her who had influenced her actions: It wasn’t Lindell, or anyone like that, she said. Mostly, it was her husband, Kit Judd.

Judd grew up in Willcox, and she and her husband raised their family there. She helped organize the Tea Party movement in Cochise, and later served as a state representative.

She and her husband were always Republican, but she said she thought of herself as independent-minded and at one point, voted for Democrat Barack Obama. That’s not something she told her husband about, she said.

But she remembers waking up the day after the 2020 election, surprised that Trump had lost. That surprise quickly turned into doubt about the fairness of the election.

And on Jan. 6, 2021, she was at the rally in Washington, D.C., when rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol, though she said she was with her kids and grandkids and nowhere near the building. She has not been charged in relation to what happened that day. She said she condemns the violence.

During the period after the 2022 election, she was caring full-time for her husband, who had become ill. She attended meetings online and voted from home, with him there, and said his opinions influenced her votes.

Kit Judd died in early 2024.

When trying to decide whether to take a plea agreement, she said she consulted privately with a regional leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which she is a lifelong member. He asked her if what she would be admitting to — delaying the results — was the truth. She said it was.

Upon signing her plea agreement, Judd said she felt Mayes launched her investigation for political reasons.

But a week after Judd signed the plea agreement, she said, Mayes came to Cochise County for the opening of the Oletski Border Operations Center. Judd said she approached her for a conversation and found her to be kind. Judd said the talk prompted her to think of Mayes as “more of an ally than an enemy.” Mayes’ spokesperson confirmed the two women spoke, but couldn’t confirm what was said.

Judd said her lawyer will ask the judge who heard her case to end her probation early. She wants a break from holding office for four years, she said, but isn’t ruling out running for supervisor again after that.

She wants to go on a Mexican cruise in January. She plans to try to get approved for a church mission trip later in the year.

First, though, she needed to vote on certifying the 2024 election.

On Wednesday morning, Judd showed up to a nearly empty meeting room. No one from the public spoke before the vote, despite the mistakes that occurred while counting ballots. The elections director had, by then, posted a full report of what occurred, and recommendations for improvements in future elections.

The team was new this year, since Marra’s departure has made it hard for the county to attract and keep elections directors. Joe Casey, associate county administrator overseeing elections, said in an interview that they were learning as they went.

When it came time for her vote, Judd thanked the elections team for “hanging in there” and “putting up with all my questions.”

“You allayed my fears,” she told them.

English and Crosby also thanked the staff. And then, they voted unanimously to certify the results.

“Yay,” Judd said immediately after. “Does it feel like we should have confetti or something?”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.