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Protestors in support of former President Donald Trump gather outside Veterans Memorial Coliseum where ballots from the 2020 general election wait to be counted on May 1, 2021. The Maricopa County ballot recount comes after two election audits found no evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona.

In response investigation findings, election experts and advocates say Arizona should consider new rules and guidelines for double-checking election results, and also recommend increasing state support for county officials tasked with running elections. Read more»

Election workers tabulate Pinal County ballots on Election Day during the November 2022 midterms. Election officials documented glaring discrepancies in the ballot totals, but recommended certifying the election anyway.

Virginia Ross had proof of inaccuracies that she didn’t flag before county supervisors certified the November election results, even as she told them she stood by the numbers — and then collected a $25,000 bonus before quickly moving to an East Texas town. Read more»

Engel on election night.

Kirsten Engel, the Democrat who lost a close race last year to represent Southern Arizona in Congress, said Wednesday she'll be back in the hunt again in 2024, looking to challenge freshman Republican Juan Ciscomani. Read more»

Arizona Department of Transportation crews work to replace damaged portions of Interstate 10 in 2016.

After the Federal Highway Administration passed over Arizona’s bid for a $360 million grant to widen I-10 between Chandler and Casa Grande, Republican lawmakers are proposing not waiting for federal funds and instead pay for the project solely with state tax dollars. Read more»

Hamadeh’s challenge to the outcome of the midterm elections is not the only one courts are still hearing from nearly two months after the election ended as Kari Lake continues to seek an appeal for her own failed bid for the governor’s office.

Abe Hamadeh’s third attempt to challenge the election he lost should be thrown out of court for ignoring state law and failing — yet again — to provide any proof of his claims, attorneys for his Democratic opponent, Kris Mayes, said. Read more»

Pinal County workers process ballots at election headquarters during the November 2022 midterm election.

Pinal County’s outgoing elections director collected a $25,000 bonus for running a smooth election despite reporting final results with significant inaccuracies, including around 500 uncounted votes in the neck-and-neck attorney general race. Read more»

Abe Hamadeh at a 2022 Republican rally in Prescott on Nov. 7, 2022.

Late Tuesday, Hamadeh filed a motion for a new trial in Mohave County Superior Court, arguing that the recount discrepancy in Pinal County is sufficient grounds for a renewed investigation into the midterm election in all 15 Arizona counties. Read more»

Republican candidate Abe Hamadeh, who lost the election to Arizona Attorney General-Elect Kris Mayes and then challenged the results in court.

The final recount results released Thursday in the Arizona attorney general’s race — which shrank to a razor-thin margin of 280 votes and confirmed Democrat Kris Mayes’ victory — show that ballot-counting errors in Pinal County were largely responsible for the shift. Read more»

Juan Ciscomani cheers after winning the August primary to become the Republican candidate for Arizona’s Congressional District 6.

Republican candidate Juan Ciscomani will win Arizona's CD 6 congressional seat, the Tucson Sentinel projects, beating Democratic candidate Kirsten Engel by about 3,500 votes with only as many as 10,000 votes remaining to tally in parts of three counties. Read more»

Counties are legally required to do a hand count of some races in 1-3% of voting precincts in every election, to ensure the accuracy of machine tabulation, and past hand audits in Pinal County have always matched up with machine tallies.

The Pinal County Board of Supervisors voted down a proposal to expand the post-election audit after lengthy, and at times contentious, public comments — the majority of which were against an expanded hand count. Read more»

A $10 million federal grant awarded to the Tohono O’odham Nation will help connect more businesses, schools and farms to high-speed Internet, Charlene Fernandez, the USDA rural development director for Arizona, announced Thursday. Read more»

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels was a speaker at a 2019 CSPOA event and openly supports the nullification of certain laws or mandates.

AZCIR used criteria established by the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify Arizona “constitutional sheriffs” - a movement built around a radical ideology that the sheriff’s power within his or her county is superseded by no state or federal government entity. Read more»

Arizona Rep. Neal Carter speaks beside state Sen. Kelly Townsend at an Aug. 3 news conference about Pinal County’s election problems. Townsend, who lost her primary race, is suing the county.

Across the country, elections are underfunded, understaffed, and under intense scrutiny - leading to turnover of experienced workers - and Pinal County's election debacle shows what voters across the country may face if the public doesn’t invest in elections. Read more»

Eloy was once dubbed as cotton city, and Frontier Street used to be the busiest street in town. Since the introduction of Interstate-10 that runs parallel, the traffic slowed and the town’s main hub of attraction wilted.

Home to just under 16,000 residents and mostly known for world-class skydiving and copious amounts of dust, Eloy sits along Interstate 10 midway between Phoenix and Tucson - but a rich history can be found deeper in the city off Exit 208. Read more»

Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer holds both a misprinted ballot and a supplementary ballot containing the municipal races missing from the original. After the county realized the error that affected 60,000 ballots, it produced the second ballot and instructed voters to use both. Volkmer and other county officials explained the ballot error at a press conference in Florence on July 18.

In Arizona and around the country, it's a time of upheaval in elections as prominent officials stepped down after disputes over the 2020 election, and staffing problems in Pinal County - coupled with printing issues - could be a sign of what’s to come. Read more»

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