Associated Press
Cochise County District 1 Superintendent Tom Crosby responds to criticism of the proposed transfer of electoral functions and duties to the county registrar at the Cochise County Supervisory Board meeting in Bisbee, Arizona on February 14, 2023.
Organizers of an effort to remove an Arizona county superintendent who was skeptical of last year’s election results said they failed to meet legal requirements to advance the recall effort to give voters the option to remove him. .
A campaign to recall Tom Crosby in rural Cochise County said Wednesday night it was short of gathering the 4,865 signatures needed to put the recall on the ballot later this year.
Crosby is one of two Republican overseers on the three-member board of directors who have refused to approve the 2022 county election.
They pushed for manual voting rather than relying on more accurate voting machines, and gave oversight of the election to county-elected Republican Recorders rather than nonpartisan staff. The Recorders then hired a new election administrator who shared a meme echoing Donald Trump’s false claims in the 2020 presidential election.
“This is not the end,” recall organizer Eric Schodolski said in a statement. “We just continue in a different way and it takes a little longer.”
Crosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He had previously scoffed at the seriousness of the recall.
Conservative Cochise County has become the epicenter of election conspiracy theories. The Republican Party lost a major election last year in part because Republican candidates embraced the conspiracy theory.
Crosby and another Republican, Peggy Judd, demanded a hand count over county elections administrator Lisa Mara, but were stopped by a judge. They then refused to certify the results of the election, but were stopped again by the judge.
Mara resigned earlier this year and sued the county, claiming she was subjected to intimidation and harassment because of her supervisor’s decision. gave the director of Democratic Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays sued to block the move, but a judge allowed it to go ahead.
Last month, Crosby and Judd held an election in a small Arizona county and voted to hire Bob Bartelsmeyer, who shared a meme that repeatedly disproves allegations of voter fraud, as the county’s new election administrator.
