How a letter from conservative activists put AZ voting drop boxes back in the spotlight

It wasn’t so long ago that all eyes were on ballot drop boxes in Maricopa County where armed activists were camped out watching voters drop off their ballots. Others were recording voters. It ended up in court with a judge ruling armed monitors must stay at least 250 feet away and they’re barred from filming or following anyone within 75-feet of a drop box.

Now, drop boxes are back in the spotlight as November 2024 ticks closer. Conservative activists say they plan to monitor drop boxes this year but they say it’s in order to encourage, instead of discourage voting.

It all came in a letter from the Conservative Political Action Conference to Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — both Democrats — that has been met with skepticism, to put it mildly. Mary Jo Pitzl has been covering it all for The Arizona Republic and she joined The Show to tell us more.

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Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming on The Show, Mary Jo.

MARY JO PITZL: Good morning.

GILGER: OK So I want to start with this letter. CPAC leaders sent this letter a few weeks ago. Tell us exactly what they're asking for here.

PITZL: They want cooperation with the state's top election officials. In this case, the secretary of state and the attorney general because they enforce election laws. They want them to work together to come up with a plan on how to set up drop box observers and also to check on people who CPAC suspects might be unqualified to vote and therefore voting illegally. They set out a couple of guidelines on maybe how to do this. Some of them, especially on the drop boxes, fit with the court ruling that you cited earlier, you know, keeping a certain distance, etc. But this has not gone over well with the state officials.

GILGER: Right. So let's talk about that. This wasn't welcomed exactly by Mayes and Fontes. You spoke with someone from Fontes’ office about this. What did he have to say?

PITZL: Well, they said, look, you know, we, we don't think this was done in good faith. And by the way, I should mention that the reason that CPAC is doing this, is proposing this, is that they say they believe if you have an orderly process set up with the cooperation of state officials that you can try to regain voter trust in elections. They believe people are very distrustful of elections.

And I think, you know, we've, we've got a certain strain of that in Arizona and across the country, but this would be a way not to harass voters, but to show that things are being monitored carefully and to build confidence. But that argument did not fly at all with Fontes or Mayes. Fontes’ spokesperson said, you know, this, this wasn't done in good faith. You know, they learned about the letter from, from other media, they never got the phone call that the letter suggested where they should get together and talk.

So it looks like for now, it's sort of radio silence from the state officials, and I'm unclear on what CPAC is going to do going forward, but I suspect that I suspect there'll be some drop box monitoring.

GILGER: So Mayes had sent a statement saying that she is actually open to working with CPAC on this, but she did have some big problems with some of their proposed tactics here. Tell us about this idea of using like open source information or data to try to identify voters at the ballot.

PITZL: Well, that is the most curious part of this proposal, like open source data can be, can be manipulated. I can download it and I can change some of the configurations for it. But the question is, how would you determine who's voting illegally? What, I don't know, you're gonna stop somebody as they're walking up to a drop box and ask them their name? That, you know, I don't know how many people would do that, especially if they knew what the purpose was or are they going to be looking through the voter rolls and questioning? You know, people, I don't know how, I've been trying to get answers on that and I don't have them yet.

Mayes’, you know, openness to talking is conditioned on an acknowledgement that elections in Arizona have been conducted fairly and freely and that there isn't the kind of fraud that CPAC alleges has many people skeptical. I don't think she's going to get that kind of concession from CPAC.

GILGER: This all also comes at a crucial moment, Mary Jo, like in the debate over what is allowed and what's not allowed around polling centers and drop boxes heading into November's election. A judge just ruled against Secretary of State Fontes in a case involving the election's procedures manual saying that some of the provisions that were put into that infringe on free speech and they have to do with this kind of thing. Tell us exactly what's at stake there.

PITZL: Well, that's actually a little unclear but it's the interpretation of, I guess how far do you go before something becomes harassment. And Fontes and the county election officials who wrote this manual say they just want to make sure that voters don't feel intimidated when they go to the polls and they don't want poll workers to feel threatened in any way, shape or form.

So they put in, you know, a bunch of provisions that a court found just went too far and, you know, and got into the realm of violating First Amendment rights. So we shall see, you know, I mean, the judge did note that if, excuse me, if poll workers got a notice that a mob was advancing on the polling location, that she would surely hope that the election officials would call the police. I mean, she's saying let's use some common sense here, but we don't want to go so far that, you know, if somebody wants to stand outside and yell at a polling location and they're outside of that 75-ft limit, well, you know, that's America.

GILGER: That's interesting. Yeah. So Democrats have been concerned about that decision but also about a GOP plan nationwide that was announced that would recruit 100,000 poll observers around the country. What are their concerns? Like is it that voter intimidation, like voters will not want to go to the polls?

PITZL: I guess so and I'm, you know, I'm a little perplexed by that because election observers come from both parties. I mean the Democrats recruit them. So, I think the concern is that, you know, will they behave? Well, You know, again, that's why we have some of these procedures in the elections procedures manual. And I think just generally a call to civility.

But yeah, they, there seems to be some level of worry that these observers, Republican recruited, would not behave well and I don't know that we have any evidence that that would happen.