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Arizona Grand Jury Indicts Election Officials Who Tried To Delay Election Certification In 2022 [1]
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Date: 2023-12-02
Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd were Elections Supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona; which sits in the extreme southeastern corner of the state and reported a population of a little more than 125,500 in the 2020 census. Bisbee, the county seat, has fewer than 5,000 residents. Despite being in a very small town, in a lightly populated county, they attempted to derail the entire Arizona election process in the 2022 election, by refusing to canvass, or certify, the election results until forced to do so by a court order.
Exactly why these two elected officials decided to delay the election certification is unclear. They are the two Republican members of the three member “Board of Supervisors” (similar to County Commissioners). The board is charged with certification of elections. The certifications are required, by law, to be done between 6 and 20 days after a general election. When Cochise County became the only county in Arizona to fail to certify, the State Attorney General brought a court action to compel the certification.
The refusal to certify followed efforts on the part of Crosby and Judd to transfer responsibility for elections from the board to the County Recorder, Republican David Stevens. The Recorder is also an elected position. The attempt failed when the Attorney General suggested it might be illegal. One can only guess what benefit they thought having a single person responsible for the certification might present, but it could be they thought it would be better than trying to work with their Democrat 3rd board member, Ann English.
In addition to the County Recorder issue, the bungling of the 2022 certification led to a recall effort in 2023, which failed to get the required number of signatures. Crosby wanted to force a hand count of the 2022 ballots, claiming the voting machines were unreliable. It seems that he may have gotten that impression from something his cult leader, Donald Trump, had said.
It is interesting to note that there were only 4 races in Cochise County, that were won by Democrats. The US 7th Congressional District was won by Democrat Raul Grijalva, with 64% of the vote. The 5163 votes he received in Cochise County would have not helped his opponent who lost by over 56.000 votes.
Arizona has a somewhat unusual state legislature in that each state legislative district gets 1 state Senator and 2 state representatives. In the 2022 election, the Democrat running for senator, Rosanna Gabaldon, received over 60% of the vote in Cochise County, and over 64% of the District 21 votes. Even if all 2532 of the votes she got in Cochise County had been for her opponent, she still would have won with over 60%.
The 2 Democrats running for the representative positions both received more votes than either of their Republican counterparts. As in the case of Rosanna Gabaldon, even if all the votes they had received in Cochise County had been given to their Republican opponents, they still would have easily won the election.
This makes one wonder why Crosby was trying so hard to get a hand recount. No matter what any recount might have shown, it could not have affected the outcome anyway; (unless they “found” 11,000 votes that were needed by their candidates).
Given that Republican candidates won all but 4 races in Cochise County, and those 4 races could not have been changed by any kind of recount, it is baffling that Crosby and Judd would have even considered this stunt. One can only assume that too many hours of Fox News had addled their brains.
It remains to be seen how the trial will play out, and they may yet find a way to wiggle out of this, but it does not look like they are going to be getting any help from the leader of the cult. Even if Trump did not have his own election fraud issues, his normal response would be to throw them under the bus anyway.
An interesting side note to all of this is that the Republicans control both the State Senate and the State House, and they are responsible for the gerrymandered District 21 that may have precipitated this foolishness.
The AP is reporting the story here. apnews.com/…
You can also read about it from NPR here. www.npr.org/...
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