It’s that time of year again — the days are becoming jam-packed for the election denier crowd, which is working overtime to rage against the machine and create mayhem.
And yet again, their efforts are falling decidedly flat.
That’s mainly because their accusations are as nonsensical as they’ve ever been.
This frenzied rush of last-minute attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the midterm elections is all happening against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s approval rating being in the toilet.
And the president himself is providing a perfect example of the mixed-up messaging.
While Trump continues saying vote by mail is rife with fraudulent voting activity, he’s also encouraged his own supporters to use it to cast their ballot. On Monday, he did it in the same breath.
Trump also gave Maricopa County a shoutout during the same press gaggle after learning from Gateway Pundit reporter and conspiracy spreader Jordan Conradson that a vendor for the recorder’s office erroneously sent 3,100 ballots to voters a whole three days earlier than it was supposed to.
“Maricopa sent out thousands of ballots illegally — and they got caught. And now they’re saying it was an error. Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county,” Trump said.
MAGA firebrand and two-time statewide loser Kari Lake also chimed in on the same line of attack, saying in outrage that Arizonans are entitled to “honest elections.”
It’s unclear if the two are aware that the office is being run by one of their own loyalists: Recorder Justin Heap, the MAGA Republican who ousted the former moderate GOP recorder Stephen Richer when Richer refused to acquiesce to the extremists in his own party.
Heap is basically being thrown under the bus for a nonissue.
Ultimately, the recorder’s office decided that the ballots were still valid and voters who received them can fill them out.
Even Richer, who’s been a frequent critic of Heap since leaving office, said the early ballot accident “isn’t a big deal” and “doesn’t mean fraud.”
Meanwhile, Heap has already said that early ballots will be late in arriving to voters and blamed the U.S. Postal Service.
His explanation? That Phoenix’s processing center is shut down and mail has to go through San Diego.
The USPS fully denied that claim, saying the Phoenix center is operational.
“The Postal Service has not closed any Phoenix-area processing facilities and has more than enough capacity to successfully process local Election Mail volume,” USPS spokesperson Sherry Patterson said in a statement to 12News.
Count it as another swing-and-a-miss for Heap. You would have thought the people crying “wolf” would have gotten better at making elections appear rigged — but it seems like they’re actually getting worse.
And it just so happens that there have been a number of other developments in the election denialism world.
Thanks to a federal judge unsealing documents, it was revealed that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office contracted a firm called AZ Truthfinder — which is run by a former leader of the Cyber Ninjas team that led the disastrous, conspiracy-driven audit of the 2020 election — to internally investigate the sheriff’s office.
It’s hardly the most reliable choice for an outside investigator.
And former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who tried to subvert democracy in the 2020 election as a fake elector, is filing an anti-SLAPP motion that — in the name of free speech protections — aims to preempt Attorney General Kris Mayes from another attempt at prosecuting the 11 Republicans who tried to swipe Arizona for Trump.
Her first attempt at prosecution stalled out in state courts, and Mayes has suggested that she’s likely to try again.
The preemptive defense could work. Lamon has to prove that the prosecution was motivated by a desire to chill his free speech, and a Maricopa County Superior Court judge threw the first case out in part because of Mayes’ campaign trail talking points in 2022, which were deemed as evidence of bias.
But one of the most perplexing pieces of voting news comes from a recent poll concerning the ballot referrals whose fate voters will decide in November.
Proposition 144 would require IDs to vote by mail, which would lead to an overhaul of the entire vote-by-mail system.
And apparently, voters who vote by mail seem unfazed by the fact that it puts their preferred method in limbo.
It’s unclear if voters understand that the referral, as Democrats have said, consists of “vague language” that “draws into question how vote by mail will continue in this state.”
If it passes — as it looks like it will — it could inject future elections with a dose of chaos.
That makes playing the long game a possibility for folks trying to upend Arizona’s elections.
But for now, the attempts to cast doubt on the midterm elections are looking pretty far-fetched.
A taste of what you missed: Gov. Katie Hobbs bailed on a debate with Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, but the two managed to take shots at each other during the opening of a trade office with Taiwan in Phoenix, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. At one point, Biggs credited the Trump administration for bringing in the massive TSMC facility, but Hobbs pointed out that the deal was done under the Biden administration and noted Biggs voted against the CHIPS Act that played a big role in making the deal happen. After the event at the trade office, Biggs sent out a statement saying the real credit should go to him and to former Govs. Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey for creating an “attractive business environment.” Hobbs shot back that Arizona’s relationship with Taiwan “is not about one company.” All of which makes us think an actual on-stage debate would’ve been really entertaining.
It shouldn’t be this difficult to figure out: An investigation of Peoria Council woman Jennifer Crawford didn’t really answer any of the questions voters were asking, the Republic’s Elena Santa Cruz reports. The main question is whether Crawford still lives in the district she represents on the city council as she runs for reelection. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office determined she lives in the city, but not whether she lives in her district. Now it’s up to city officials, including the city attorney, to figure out where Crawford resides.
Who’s left holding the bag?: An outside analysis of APS financial records found ratepayers forked up $587 million to cover costs associated with data centers in recent years, which undercuts the utility’s motto that “growth pays for growth,” per a very thorough report from Joe Dana at 12News. APS executives dispute that number, of course, and say data analyst Abhay Padgaonkar didn’t measure costs the right way.
“If ratepayers have been shouldering costs for large load energy customers, this should result in a refund to APS customers,” Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan, an environmental attorney who reviewed the results of the analysis, said. “I would expect APS to open their books to demonstrate whether or not that is the case.”
A golden-haired albatross: Democrat Jonathan Nez is betting on “buyer’s remorse” as he tries again to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane in Congressional District 2, Caitlin Sievers reports for the Arizona Mirror. Nez is targeting independent voters who picked Crane the last time around by focusing on President Donald Trump’s cratering approval ratings, cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP, the war in Iran, rising gas prices, the cost of Trump’s tariffs and the growth of the national debt, to name a few.
Getting their wires crossed: Amid the staggering sober-living fraud that bilked taxpayers of $2.8 billion, Attorney General Kris Mayes gave $6 million in grants to support Tribal programs that were defrauded. This week, attorneys representing victims of the fraud said one man who got a $500,000 grant from Mayes’ office, Dwayne McIntosh, is a crook. But McIntosh says they’ve got their facts mixed up, including that the woman the attorneys claim works at AHCCCS and helps his supposed criminal enterprise actually lives in Seattle, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez reports.
“I’m not in cahoots with anyone,” McIntosh said.
The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission is the state’s only official, nonpartisan voter education resource — created by Arizona voters for voters.
We publish the voter education guide, host the debates, and break down what’s on your ballot. Not who you should vote for — what you need to know before you do.
Get the facts at AZCleanElections.gov.
Everyone remembers “that guy” from high school.
But for a few lucky Arizonans, “that guy” is Republican lawmaker and secretary of state nominee Alexander Kolodin.
Of course, we have no way of knowing if this Reddit poster is just making stuff up. But at least bullshit from Redditors is confined to a corner of the internet rather than the state Capitol, the courts and the debate stage.
And it sure does feel truthy.