Following the 2022 elections, there were efforts to convince Arizona county boards of supervisors to approve hand counts of ballots, rather than use ballot counting machines.
New text messages obtained by Votebeat detail the campaign by some GOP state lawmakers to convince Republican supervisors to take that step — in some cases, assuring them that the move was legal, despite differing opinions from the secretary of state and attorney general.
Jen Fifield of Votebeat joined The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Jen. Thank you for being here. So let's talk about where specifically these efforts were focused. It wasn't every county it seems to have been focused on just a few counties, right?
JEN FIFIELD: It was in quite a few - I would say several - and they're mostly targeting - the state lawmakers are targeting people in their own communities - supervisors - who they may have established relationships with. They're mostly conservative counties that might be more willing to look at this issue. So, we saw Mojave County, they went to La Paz County, Pinal County, Cochise County. So some of the more rural areas of the state as well.
BRODIE: And what were the arguments that these Republican state lawmakers were using to try to convince county supervisors to do this?
FIFIELD: Well, state senator Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers, both Republicans, really emphasized the idea that they felt that it was legal to get rid of voting machines entirely. Just to back up and clarify a few things, in Arizona, we do hand fill out paper ballots that then are scanned by machines and it's followed up by a audit of paper ballots, for a select number of them. So there's been ideas to expand that audit to a full audit after the machine count. Whereas Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers say no, just get rid of the machines entirely. We believe that they're switching votes. And yet not providing proof of that when they talk about this. And asking them to just just do a full hand count, which research has shown is a lot less accurate than machines. It takes weeks, maybe even months, as we saw in the cyber ninjas audit after 2020, and so, but they're mostly focusing on, we think this is legal.
BRODIE: Well, that as I mentioned in the intro differs from the opinions of the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, right?
FIFIELD: Right now, our Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and our Attorney General Kris Mayes both do not believe law allows you to entirely get rid of machines or to expand this hand count audit to 100%. The initial count is kind of where the law is a little fuzzy, and now we have a Republican in Mojave County who is actually challenging that and suing Kris Mayes and saying, we need to figure this out in court because this is what our constituents want.
BRODIE: So, Attorney General Mayes got a grand jury to indict a pair of Cochise County supervisors. Did that play into any one's decision on other boards to maybe say, I hear what you're saying Republican legislators, but I'm not sure I want to go down that road?
FIFIELD: It absolutely did. So, at the time this was all being considered in full, the text messages that I have show that this pressure campaign was really taking place last summer, because that's when we plan for how we do elections the upcoming year. It was really focused on is this legal? And what would happen to us if we did this? And so, at the time, I had found out eventually that they were investigating the supervisors in Cochise County for trying to expand their hand count audit in 2022. But they hadn't been indicted yet. But Kris Mayes was still saying if you do this, I will, you know, you will be persecuted personally, not just the county, and it is a felony, so be ready for that.
BRODIE: So, in terms of the the actual texts that you looked at, what stood out to you from what the Republican legislators were saying, and what the Republican county supervisors were saying back?
FIFIELD: I really- it really just stood out to me that there were these text messages. So we see publicly, as I said, Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers saying, you know, you need to do this, this isn't legal, but then we see her in Pinal County - specifically, with supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh - text right as the meeting is about to start or at some point during that day, saying, don't let them lie today. So, really texting a personal message to him. In Mojave County we saw- in Cochise County, we saw Senator David Gowan, who lives in Cochise County, texting as the meeting began again, saying, do you know there's no law preventing this? And those kinds of messages. So, really just kind of reaching out to people who they had connections with and trying to get the point across.
BRODIE: At this point, does it seem as though any boards or any individual supervisors might still be willing to try this to at least put it up for a vote and see if they can convince their colleagues to go along with this after the 2024 election?
FIFIELD: So, after the election? Yes, I would say definitely the conversations that I had from supervisors in these counties, they have not turned- they have not cut off the issue. What we might also see is, not for the initial count of ballots in November, but maybe if a certain candidate loses, and they want to try to confirm that with a full audit of the hand count, or at least expand that hand count audit of how many ballots you're counting and what races you're looking at, that might also be something that they're still interested in doing.
BRODIE: Interesting. All right, that is Jen Fifield of Votebeat. Jen, thanks, as always, for your time. Really appreciate it.
FIFIELD: Thank you.
