arizona news
Has been updated: February 28, 2023 at 5:33 PM
FILE – Cochise County Recorder David Stevens poses for a portrait inside his office in Bisbee, Arizona, Tuesday, February 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Alberto Mariani, File)
BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) — A county commission in rural Arizona, which was embroiled in a voting machine conspiracy last year, voted Tuesday to give the county’s elected Republican registrar responsibility for elections through 2024. Did.
Two three-member Republicans on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors supported an agreement to give another Republican, county registrar David Stevens, the mandate for executive elections. Democrat Anne English voted against, saying the legitimacy of the bill should be considered.
“I hope you don’t regret it,” English said.
Judd said he was comfortable moving forward and that the board could drop the deal if it didn’t work out.
“I just don’t want to put it off,” she said.
One of the two Republicans who voted for the measure was Tom Crosby, who is subject to the recall.
“I think we are acting in an inappropriate and unwise way,” English said in light of the warning from the Attorney General’s Office.
Stevens will succeed Lisa Mara, the country’s well-respected election administrator before recently stepping down from her bipartisan position after five years. In one alleged conspiracy against Republicans’ unsuccessful attempt to enforce a full handcount of last year’s midterm ballots.
Arizona Attorney Joshua Bender sent a letter Monday to Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre warning him that he “has serious doubts about the legality of the commission’s intended course of action.” He said there is nothing in state law that would allow a county board to give its registrar full control over the election.
In Arizona, elected record holders like Stevens are already in the election. They register voters, distribute vote-by-mail ballots, and verify signatures on returned ballots, while nonpartisan election officials handle the tally.
Stevens attended former President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the Capitol riots, and was an unsuccessful Republican former president who ran for Arizona’s secretary of state last year. He is friends with Congressman Mark Finchem. election post. Finchem said it did not recognize President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona.
Stevens recently joined a nonprofit founded by Finchem, which he says is focused on electoral integrity.
