What to expect if Cochise County Board of Supervisors refuse to certify 2026 election results

Let’s turn the clock back now to 2022. Election denialism was everywhere and the Cochise County Board of Supervisors made national headlines for refusing to certify the results of the election there. They had to be ordered by a judge to do it — and some of them face criminal prosecution as a result of their delay.

Well now, they’re raising the same election concerns they raised then — and asking the federal government to investigate.

The board sent a letter to director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asking her to investigate the laboratories that test voting machines — and find out if they were properly accredited before recent elections. They also sent an identical letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi a few months earlier.

Elections

Arizona county leaders are asking Tulsi Gabbard to investigate debunked voting machine concerns

Camryn Sanchez

Cochise County leaders are asking National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard to investigate debunked concerns about the certification of voting machines in Arizona.

It’s all raising questions about the upcoming 2026 elections — and if we can expect them to refuse to certify the results again.

Sasha Hupka is covering it for Votebeat and she spoke more about it with The Show.

Full conversation

SASHA HUPKA: Back in 2022, two of the three Cochise County supervisors at the time tried to delay certification of that county’s general election results past the legal deadline. And ultimately, they were ordered by a judge that they had to certify that vote.

But back then, they listed a few reasons why they were hesitant to proceed with that certification. And part of their reasoning was this disputed claim that laboratories charged with testing these voting machines nationally weren’t properly accredited. And now this is coming back, and it seems like they still have their doubts.

LAUREN GILGER: Hmm, OK. So yes, a few years later, they definitely still have their doubts. And now they’re asking Tulsi Gabbard and basically the federal government to investigate claims to try to verify that. What are they after here?

HUPKA: Well, so first, I think it’s just worth noting, like, this is the second request on this that they’ve made to the feds in basically less than six months.

GILGER: Yeah.

HUPKA: And it’s really not even just that. They’ve also repeatedly suggested over the last year that they’re going to continue to challenge election laws and election processes. For instance, when they were appointing a new county recorder last year, one supervisor said they wanted someone who’d be willing to fight with (Arizona Attorney General) Kris Mayes.

GILGER: Wow.

HUPKA: And so I don’t know that supervisors are planning an exact redo of 2022. After I published this story, I actually got a chance to talk with Frank Antenori, who is the board chair, and he told me that the board is committed to following the law in 2026. But he also made clear they want to get election laws and processes into the courts, because they feel that these have all been tweaked in a partisan way in recent years.

And I think, to me, what all of this suggests, the big takeaway here is that they’re going to continue to question the legal basis of state and even federal election laws in 2026.

GILGER: Tell us about these claims they’re making, which have been disputed about voting machine testing and, like, the accreditation of the places that do the testing. Is there any proof in the pudding there that there are issues there?

HUPKA: So these labs, they’re accredited by the EAC, the Election Assistance Commission, to do this type of testing, and they do them on the vote counting machines, the tabulators. All of these voting systems have to go through this testing before any counties are able to purchase them and use them in an actual election.

And the EAC has said, look, these claims, they’re baseless. They stem from during COVID . The voting systems were supposed to be reaccredited every two years. During COVID they said, look, we’re not going to continue doing that if it already was accredited. It’s grandfathered in and can continue to just be accredited.

So that’s the basis on which Cochise County is challenging this. But the EAC has repeatedly said that this is not the case. The vote counting machines are properly accredited, and by extension, Cochise County’s machines are accredited.

GILGER: OK. So as you mentioned, this is the second time that they have asked the feds to investigate these claims that are, you know, being denied by the body that does this. But they sent an identical letter basically to the Attorney General Pam Bondi. Did they get any response?

HUPKA: No, they never got a response. And it’s unclear if they will this time either. Tulsi Gabbard’s office, they, they didn’t respond to my question on that, but Tom Crosby said that they, at this vote —he’s a supervisor there — that they still wanted to send this letter to Tulsi Gabbard because of her presence at the FBI’s raid in Fulton County, Georgia, and because her responses to questions about why she was even at that raid in the first place made clear that she believes that she has authority over any investigations involving election security. So that was their thinking and sending this letter to her.

GILGER: Right. So it sounds like these supervisors inciting what just happened with this federal raid in Fulton county for basically the records of what happened a few elections ago there. Did they see this as a national issue? They see the the laws in place — not just here but around the country — as potentially problematic heading into the 2026 midterms.

HUPKA: I think so. I think that that might be fair to say. I think that, like I said, when I talked with Antenori, he was very clear that they don’t want to break the law necessarily, But they do seemingly want to change them in some way. They feel that the law has been tweaked and that they want to get it sort of back to baseline, I think, is the way he put it to me.

GILGER: So at the same time, you mentioned Supervisor Tom Crosby there, who’s still fighting his prosecution from doing this four years ago. Where does his case stand?

HUPKA: He is still fighting, and his prosecution right now actually looks really uncertain. His trial has been pushed back a few times, and for a while it was just at the request of his attorneys for a variety of different medical issues. But most recently, it was actually scheduled for early April that he was going to go to trial.

And then it got pushed back again because the Attorney General’s Office found that one of the lead investigators on that case had falsified time cards and a few other records. There was an internal investigation into this person. It does not look like any of those records were related to Crosby’s case, but obviously his defense is doing their job.

They are worried about this, and they want to look into it. And so they’re now proposing to postpone his trial to early 2027, partly because they want time to look into this investigator, but also because a lot of the key witnesses in this case are election officials. And so a lot of them will not be available once the election season really gets into full swing here until the end of the year and into early next year.

(Supervisor) Peggy Judd is also out of the country right now. I believe she’s on a mission. And so she’s not due to be back until early next year.

GILGER: So that also pushes it past the 2026 midterms, when we have the current Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes up for reelection. The main opponent there in that race told you he would not pursue this prosecution as well.

HUPKA: He did. He did tell me that. And I think that all of this raises the question, right, of whether Crosby will stand trial for this at all. And that question really matters because this case has seemingly really chilled any efforts by other counties to try anything similar to what Cochise did in 2022.

You know, obviously, part of that last cycle was that Donald Trump won the presidency. So on the Republican side, there wasn’t really a lot of reason to push this type of stuff, but even in the lead up to that election, I remember I was talking with county supervisors across the state and a lot of them were telling me that they were taking what happened to Crosby as a cautionary tale.

I think it’s worth noting some of them said that ruefully, but others were relieved. This has served as sort of a shield for them. So if Crosby were to not stand trial, I think it would be interesting to see who jumps at the opportunity to try something like this and who is able to sort of stand up to the pressure that’s going to come down from people who have claimed that elections are stolen or that voting machines are compromised somehow.