The race for Yuma County Recorder will pit a political newcomer against election deniers who claim the Arizona community served as a model for the campaign plan that cost Donald Trump a second term.

Both candidates say they will restore confidence in voting, even as county officials have taken steps to take elections out of the hands of the county recorder’s office.

Republican David Lara believes that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election due to fraud and vote-harvesting schemes.

Lara said he based his belief on decades of fraud and vote harvesting that he witnessed firsthand in his hometown of San Luis, Arizona.

“The people of San Luis weren’t voting based on candidate or party. They were handing their ballots to vote collectors. And at the time, I was wondering how one person could vote 10 , I was intrigued by the idea of ​​being able to manage 15, 20, 30 ballots,” he said. Fee.

Lara said similar tactics were exported to key states in 2020, influencing the outcome of the presidential race between Biden and Trump.

“Can I prove it? No, I can’t,” he says. “There are too many states, it’s too big. But everything that happened, and the way it happened, the midnight vote changes and the system, the way the election was handled, is exactly what’s happening in America. San Luis for 20 years.”

Courts have dismissed dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud in the 2020 election, leading to a ballot-harvesting conviction in Yuma County, but the case against the former San Luis mayor and grandmother says she It was based on four early ballots collected from neighbors for safekeeping. drop box.

The ballot harvesting conviction remains the first and so far the only conviction since the Arizona Legislature made the practice illegal in 2016.

But Lara believes the type of fraud that led to that conviction remains widespread and is part of the reason people don’t trust the election results.

“If people and voters don’t trust the system, if they don’t trust the government, they won’t participate,” he says.

How widespread is that view? It’s hard to say, but Lara said that when he told his local Republican Party chairman he intended to challenge incumbent Rep. Rick Colwell in the primary, they tried to dissuade him from doing so.

“He tried to bring me down,” Lara says. “And you told me that if you win, you’re going to remove elections from the recorder’s office.”

Lara defeated the incumbent Republican in the primary with 43 votes. A recount was needed to confirm the results.

A month later, the Yuma County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to terminate the intergovernmental agreement that combined the county recorder’s office and the elections board. The pilot project, which began in 2019, was touted as an efficient and unique way to streamline voting and registration services.

Lara believes the board changed the system because he won the primary.

“My question to them is: ‘What are they afraid of?'”

The board’s actions included creating an election advisory board under county jurisdiction, separate from the recorder’s office.

Lara’s opponent in the general election is Emilia Cortez, a political newcomer from the Democratic Party. She says she supports the board’s move.

“I love the setup,” she says. “The commission will have an attorney, two members of the Board of Supervisors, the county executive, and the Yuma County Recorder as members of the commission. This will give the community office the home it should have. ”

Cortez is a self-proclaimed “systems” enthusiast. She said she dreamed of becoming a county recorder ever since she was a Girl Scout, and would later lead the organization in Yuma County for more than 15 years.

“Systems are my forte and I’m a big nerd. And that sparked the seed of getting to know the systems of certain positions that I’ve worked in throughout my career. The position is, of course, Yuma County Recorder,” says the first. Candidate period.

For Cortez, the county recorder’s job is about registering voters and encouraging participation.

“I just want people to invest. This is a community office that belongs to every resident of Yuma County,” she says.

Cortez admits he doesn’t know much about Lara’s position, and although Lara has only praised the young candidate, he wonders if she was encouraged to run to prevent her from winning. I’m thinking.