Election Commissioner Geraldine Rolle’s Tuesday memo to County Mayor Leo Lu began: “Leo: I have no regrets, but I quit.”

At the end, it ended with “Excuse me, Geraldine Rolle”.

These are words we probably all wanted to write at some point in our working lives. But the words that matter to our democracy lie in between. There, she highlighted the problems that have arisen, especially in Republican-controlled counties in the state. There, activists and officials continue to oust election commissioners through harassment and conspiracy theories.

“I watched you stand by and do nothing when I was attacked,” she wrote to Lou. “I cannot work for an individual who does not support me. The environment fostered by your team and supervisory board is toxic.”

“I believe the elections office should not be politicized,” she continued. “There are considerable limits to how we can achieve clean elections when we give in to the Republican faction. is.”

Lu said in a statement that he did not agree with her assessment. And really, it’s hard to see from the outside what exactly triggered Rolle’s reaction. At the June 21st oversight meeting, there was a clash over GPS tracking devices for ballot boxes, but it was not overly hostile. Rolle did not respond to a request for further comment.

Still, it’s important to note that she is the third campaign manager to resign last year following similar allegations of political interference and harassment in a Republican-controlled county in Arizona.

Arizona elects a county registrar whose duties include registering voters, mailing ballots by mail, and verifying signatures on returned ballots. Elections administrators are employed by counties and are responsible for polling and counting votes on Election Day.

Last year, ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, both the county registrar and elections officer in Yavapai County resigned, citing “disgust” from the public.

“A lot of it is a thorny issue that we’ve dealt with,” said the Yavapai County Recorder at the time. Leslie Hoffman told the Associated Press last year:. “I’m a Republican tracker living in a Republican county. In this county, the candidate I wanted to win won 2-1 and I’m still heartbroken. So does my staff.”

County elections official Lynn Constabile also retired after 18 years, for much the same reason.

The situation in Cochise County is even more protracted and worrying. Last October, two Republicans on the three-member audit committee said: Attempted to force a complete manual tally of general electionsresponded to calls from the right that hand counting is the answer to the fear of operated machine counting, even if machine counting is more accurate.

The Cochise County Attorney said such a tally was illegal, and elections official Lisa Mara refused to proceed with the tally. Two Republicans on the board of auditors, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, then filed a public and private lawsuit against Mara. They dropped the lawsuit a few days later.

Mara, a well-respected veteran of the position in her fifth year, resigned in January and filed a legal complaint with the county, accusing supervisors of parroting conspiracy theories and endangering her. woke up She won a $130,000 settlement in May.

in the meantime, Cochise County Hires New Elections OfficerHowever, we lost two other staff members in that department, one retired and one resigned. It is questionable what will happen in next year’s general election, where the same conspiracy theorist director remains in the majority.

Pinal County is arguably more desperately in need of electoral leadership than either of these two counties.a Flawed 2022 primaries caused concern and led to the urgent hiring of an interim director, but then chaotic general election in November. Hundreds of ballots were not counted and the tally was not properly adjusted.

As VoteBeat As of May 5thVirginia Ross, a woman brought in in an emergency, failed and escaped before the problem was discovered.

So there’s reason to keep a close eye on how elections play out in counties north of Tucson. But it is equally necessary for a capable official to dabble inside and make things work.

Leading Republican lawmakers in the county have rebelled against Rolle in recent weeks.of Email of June 21obtained and issued by vote beatPinal County Republican Party Chairman Belinda Rodriguez questioned Mr. Rolle’s competence and warned his supervisors, all five of whom are Republicans, that Mr. Rolle could put their jobs in jeopardy.

“You guys, the oversight board cannot afford another election failure,” she wrote. “There were people who publicly asked for their resignation in the last primary debacle. If we let this happen again, they will ask for their resignation.”

At the June 21 Pinal County Board of Supervisors Conference, Republican activists, including Rodriguez, unilaterally decided to terminate Roll’s contract with the company that provided GPS tracking devices for ballot bins. questioned.

He said the county-leased tracking devices were attached to the “cage” that contained the ballot box, not the ballot box itself, so that after the ballot box was removed from the cage, the actual ballot box in transit was not tracked. explained that it did not track

“We wanted to know where our ballots were, so we looked at other tracking devices, but they would be much more effective and significantly cheaper because we could put them in the ballot box,” plus we own them. can do. ”

More Republican activists rose up to denounce Rolle at the conference for acting unilaterally on the GPS issue. A woman from the town of Maricopa warned the overseers, “You work for us, not for anyone else. It was we who voted for you, We can get rid of you, I don’t mean to get rid of you.” Violent way. ”

So it’s unclear exactly what Mayor Lou failed to protect Rolle from, but it’s clear that all the supervisors were under pressure from the party to tighten her leash.

That is the danger in those counties where Donald Trump’s false claim that he was robbed of re-election reverberates strongly to this day. Some constantly claim that they are being treated unfairly in the electoral process. And these county supervisors must risk their own futures if they do not acknowledge their complaints.

You can’t hold an election if you give in to the whims of extremists.