Fontes says Arizona.Vote is designed to inoculate voters against election misinformation

Adrian Fontes wants to get as many Arizonans as he can inoculated.

But in this case, it isn't against the latest virus. It's against the misinformation he says that seems to blossom every time there's an election.

And the Democratic secretary of state says he figures the more people who get inoculated through the website he is creating, the fewer people who will be infected by what he says are the lies that some people like to tell.

"You never know what's the next little monster that's going to rear its ugly head," he said.

"But the reality is, the effort we are engaged in now are confidence builders against the potential of those little monsters," Fontes said. "And we prepare folks to understand how the systems work so that they, themselves, are better equipped to deal with the potential questions."

That question of confidence is not just a local issue.

President Donald Trump himself has repeatedly questioned the security of the election system, most recently with his ongoing efforts to say mail voting is inherently unreliable — though the president himself voted by mail in Florida elections last month.

There are still people in Arizona who contend that Trump won the 2020 race despite the final official tally showing that Biden outpolled him by 10,457 votes.

That election resulted in Republican state senators hiring an organization known as Cyber Ninjas, which had no experience auditing elections, to review all of the ballots in Maricopa County with the belief it would overturn that 2020 race.

As it turned out, though, a hand count conducted at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix concluded that Biden actually won by a larger margin than what was reported by the tabulators.

But what's at Arizona.Vote isn't aimed specifically at conspiracy theories.

Some of what the website is designed to provide is just basic information, like the deadlines for registration. This year, that is Oct. 5 for those who want to vote in the Nov. 3 general election. There also are instructions for getting an early ballot for those not on the Active Early Voting List and what kind of identification is necessary for those casting their ballots in person.

And there even are procedures where voters can track a ballot to confirm it was received and counted.

But Fontes said the website also is being designed to inoculate against situations "when some knucklehead gets out there and starts saying dumb crap about our elections.''

Consider, he said, the demand for paper ballots.

"Well, in Arizona, all of our votes are cast on paper ballots,'' Fontes said, with those ballots fed into tabulators that do the counting.

That still doesn't satisfy some who insist that the totals are unreliable. But Fontes said that, rumors notwithstanding, the tabulators are not linked to the internet. And they also undergo mandatory "logic and accuracy testing,'' where a batch of sample ballots with known results are fed through tabulators to ensure they are counting accurately.

And Arizona law already requires a random hand count audit after every election where a certain number of races from a certain number of precincts — all chosen by party officials — are tabulated by hand to see if the totals match what the machines have counted.

Still, that hasn't always proven enough for everyone.

Two Cochise County supervisors, both Republicans, were indicted after the 2022 election for attempting to conduct a full hand count. Peggy Judd took a plea deal, while charges are still pending against Tom Crosby.

Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould, also a Republican, went all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court in his unsuccessful bid to get immunity from possible prosecution by Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes for his own efforts to demand a full hand count.

And as recently as Sunday, Republican Abe Hamadeh was still claiming that he won the 2022 race for attorney general despite the final tally showing Mayes beat him by 280 votes. He puts the blame on Democrat Katie Hobbs, who at the time was the secretary of state.

Those claims about election irregularities have political implications.

Stephen Richer, the incumbent Maricopa County recorder, was ousted in the Republican primary in 2024 by Justin Heap who complained of "historically low voter confidence.'' Heap went on to win the general election.

And just this past month, Republican state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, hoping to defeat Fontes in November, raised similar claims.

"There's no doubt that confidence in our elections here in Arizona is at an all-time low,'' he said during a televised debate. "And the responsibility of that sits squarely on the shoulders of Secretary Fontes.''