Fontes calls on Trump administration to provide 'verifiable findings' of past election problems

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is calling on the Trump administration to provide proof backing up its claims that federal election monitors are needed to prevent a recurrence of “some problems” seen in recent elections.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted a video earlier this month announcing the Department of Justice planned to send monitors to Arizona and five other states to increase voter confidence, prevent election issues and ensure that polling places are operating correctly.

“We’re sending the monitors into cities and counties where there may have been some problems in the recent elections so this is something that DOJ does routinely,” Dhillon, who works in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said.

But Fontes said the DOJ hasn’t actually told his office what those problems are.

“As a result, we do not know what the Department believes those problems to be, in which jurisdictions they are alleged to have occurred, or what evidence supports them,” he wrote in a letter to Dhillon.

Fontes said his office is filing a Freedom of Information Request with the Civil Rights Division requesting more information about the allegations.

“We take seriously any credible indication that election administration in this state has fallen short, and we are prepared to act on specific, verifiable findings,” he wrote. “But we cannot evaluate, respond to, or remedy problems that have not been described to us. Public statements referencing unspecified ‘problems’ do not provide a basis for corrective action.”

The most high-profile issue in Arizona elections in recent years occurred in 2022, when ballot printer issues caused thousands of ballots to be rejected at polling places. Voters were still able to place the affected ballots in secure drop boxes, so they could be counted later on more sophisticated scanners at the county’s central election facility.

But those problems weren’t associated with the type of widespread voter fraud or intentional malfeasance that Trump repeatedly alleges afflict the country’s elections, despite no evidence to support those claims.

Instead, the problems in 2022 were the result of changes in the thickness of ballot paper, not fraud or malicious actions, an investigation led by former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor concluded.

At an event hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures on Tuesday, Fontes accused the Trump administration and the president’s allies of politicizing election administration and voting rather than take steps he says would improve elections, such as adequately funding local and state officials who run the country’s elections.

“This is not a political issue, and anybody who says it is a political issue is trying to use something that is an American fundamental right issue so that they can juxtapose some other agenda,” Fontes said.

Fontes said local election administrators do take a number of steps to ensure elections are secure and only eligible voters are casting ballots, including regularly “purging” voter rolls to remove anyone who is not eligible. For instance, he said his office referred 28 cases to the Attorney General’s Office this year in which people are accused of voting illegally in Arizona.

But Fontes said the federal government is not providing adequate funding to help those officials do those jobs.

“So my call is this: if you really care about maintenance on the voter rolls, if you really care about election integrity, then fund the activity at an appropriate level,” Fontes said.

Fontes and other election officials have accused the Trump administration of not providing the same level of support they’ve received in previous elections from the federal government, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, a federal agency created during President Donald Trump’s first term to help states deal with election security threats.

Trump also removed all remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which was created in 2002 to help state and local election administrators.