Cochise County is close to hiring an elections director who has repeatedly shared false claims about widespread election fraud on Facebook, including claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump. Read more»

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing Cochise County for giving its recorder near-full control over the county’s elections, arguing county supervisors weren’t clear enough that they still have the final say over certain decisions. Read more»

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has filed a lawsuit against Cochise County, the members of its board of supervisors and its county recorder over a plan approved last month that gives the recorder full authority over all election matters. Read more»

Elections in Cochise County will now be run almost entirely by Recorder David Stevens, an election skeptic who has said he does not fully trust all of his county’s election procedures and believes the county can and should move to hand-counting ballots. Read more»

Arizona GOP leaders spent two years promoting unfounded claims about compromised vote-counting machines, and they found it in Cochise County recorder David Stevens, who grasped onto the idea, devised a plan, and stoked the sentiment starting to take hold locally. Read more»

Lisa Marra, the Cochise County elections director who refused to cooperate with an illegal hand count plan, describes a threatening work environment, both physically and emotionally, and says she was publicly disparaged in her resignation letter to county. Read more»

Cochise County Republican Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd are suing the county’s elections director, Lisa Marra, asking a judge to order her to give access to midterm election ballots so the county recorder can conduct an expanded hand count audit. Read more»

Cochise County officials are considering hand-counting all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters this election, a radical measure for a county of its size that election experts say is also problematic and unnecessary. Read more»

Two small election-related measures made it into a budget proposal Arizona lawmakers approved early Thursday morning on a bipartisan vote - with that hurdle cleared, the Legislature could approve more election bills in the coming days. Read more»

Most 2020 candidates are already past the deadline for collecting the signatures they need to run in the August primary election, but those who are seeking a handful of nonpartisan municipal offices that won’t be on the ballot until November will now be able to collect their signatures online. Read more»

A confluence of circumstances is making it extremely difficult for many candidates to collect the signatures they need in order to get their names on the ballot amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and those running for county, municipal and other local offices, there’s an additional obstacle in the way – the inability to collect signatures online. Read more»

HB 2662, authored by Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista, would expand a law that defines driving less than 10 mph over the limit as a waste of finite resources. On March 3, it cleared the House on a 40-20 vote, sending it to the Senate. Read more»

The legislation authored by Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista, also would prevent police departments from basing promotions or assignments on the number of traffic tickets an officer writes. Supporters say quotas diminish public trust. Read more»

The Legislature didn’t take Monday off for Presidents Day and worked through Arizona’s post-birthday week as drama continued over the “firing” of two top Board of Education officials. Read more»

A state lawmaker says giving trained schoolteachers and staff access to firearms in storage lockers is a way to secure campuses when it isn't possible to provide resource officers. His bill to allow that has won committee approval and is awaiting action by the full House. Read more» 1