(The Center Square) – Republican Arizona House members are calling on Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate the Pima County Recorder’s Office and election officials for their handling of the 2024 general election.
The concerns brought up in the letter from Representatives Teresa Martinez and Rachel Jones are that the early ballot request portal shut down six days before the legal deadline, allegations of inadequate safeguards for the inmate voter registration program and how undeliverable and returned ballots were handled.
“Election integrity is the foundation of our democracy, and voters deserve to know their elections are being administered fairly, lawfully, and transparently,” Martinez said in a written statement. “The numerous irregularities and lack of accountability from the Pima County Recorder’s Office demand a full investigation.”
Representatives Rachel Jones and Cory McGarr sent two letters to Pima County Recorder Gabriela Cazares-Kelly inquiring about the inmate voter registration program and the handling of undeliverable ballots, but both went unanswered. The first letter was sent on June 5 after the Representatives heard concerns from constituents that ineligible inmates may have been registered to vote.
“Bolstering their allegations is a decision of the Arizona Court of Appeals that was issued just two months ago, State of Arizona v. Clark, which upheld an individual’s conviction and 3.5-year prison sentence for illegal voting in connection with the 2020 election,” reads the letter. “We are extremely troubled by your office’s apparent facilitation of illegal voting through its reckless voter-registration inmate program-which the Legislature has neither authorized nor endorsed. In the Clark case, a Pima County Chief Deputy Recorder testified at trial that your office does not conduct any due diligence whatsoever to confirm that the inmates the office recruits to register to vote have not been convicted of a felony or that they are otherwise eligible to vote under Arizona law.”
The letter ended by “demanding” that Pima County discontinue the inmate voter registration program.
The second letter sent on Oct. 24 discussed concerns about registered voters receiving a notification that their ballots were received and the signature was being verified when in fact those ballots were returned to the county recorder’s office as “undeliverable,” meaning that the voter never received the ballot nor filled it out.
Under Arizona law, the county recorder is required to attempt to contact the voter to update the voter’s address or move the voter to an inactive status if they receive a ballot marked as “undeliverable.”
“This notification understandably causes confusion since an unvoted ballot that has not reached its intended recipient should not bear any signature on the affidavit appearing on the outside envelope,” reads the letter. “To make matters worse, our constituents have received conflicting information when they’ve asked county employees how your office stores or processes ballots returned as undeliverable.”
The Attorney General’s Office did confirm that they received the request for an investigation, but declined to comment on whether or not they will be responding or conducting an investigation. The Pima County Recorder’s Office also did not respond to a request for comment.
