The Daily Agenda: Anybody but them

A reasonable concept from unreasonable people ... Do a checkup on your doctor ... And there's less bull💩 on the farm.

Back in March 2021, then-lawmaker Mark Finchem invited a company called Authentix to showcase its proposed “counterfeit-proof” ballot paper to a crew of maskless lawmakers in the poorly ventilated state House of Representatives basement.

Cochise County Recorder David Stevens provided Authentix a blank Cochise County ballot to mock-up with watermarks, QR codes and other counterfeit-prevention tools. Lawmakers who showed up to bask in the glow of watermark-illuminating blacklights¹ loved the idea, as reporter Julia Shumway detailed in the Yellow Sheet Report at the time.

Yesterday, after more than two years of small, incremental steps, Stevens was poised to finally launch the Legislature’s test program for counterfeit-proof ballots, which Finchem has championed as a way to stop his imagined “injection” of fake ballots in Pima County that he erroneously believes swung the 2020 election in Arizona against Donald Trump. 

But the plan was thwarted, at least temporarily, by county supervisors, who noted Stevens hadn’t followed protocol or met conditions of the grant that was seemingly designed just for him and for the company that would create the ballots, as the Washington Post detailed earlier this year. (However, two companies ultimately bid on the project: Authentix, which has no experience in elections, and the California-based Pro Vote Solutions, which does have experience in elections and appears to be cheaper.)

The Republican-controlled board was surprised to learn yesterday that Stevens had already spent some of the funds, considering they didn’t approve the spending and the request for proposal specifically says they must approve all vendors. And they questioned whether the grant funds were even still available, as the project was supposed to be completed more than two months ago, per the special budget provision lawmakers wrote. Stevens assured them that he had spoken with an unnamed person at the Legislature who said the delay — which Stevens pinned on the company’s inability to purchase paper — was no problem. 

But supervisors were not convinced. They postponed the decision of whether to enter into contracts for two weeks, saying Stevens will have to show them the grant is still available.

“I haven’t seen anything in writing that (the deadline) has been extended. Word of mouth doesn’t count,” Supervisor Ann English said.

But the plan that supervisors temporarily foiled has been a long time in the making, and Stevens isn’t likely to give up so easily. 

After the Covid-friendly Authentix blacklight presentation in the House basement, Finchem and friends sponsored legislation attempting to mandate the state switch to the new prototype ballots by Authentix, despite pleas from elections officials who cautioned the whole idea was half-baked. 

Adopting the new “counterfeit-proof” ballot paper would require not only new tabulation machines, but also a way to test as many as 19 anti-counterfeit markings on the ballots, which counties do not have, they warned. Experts debate just how secure the ballots would be, and they are quick to note that counterfeit ballots are not a thing anyway.

The bill to mandate using the far more expensive counterfeit-proof ballots ultimately failed. But Finchem and crew managed to slip a $12 million appropriation into the FY2022 state budget to open the door for Authentix. The “Election Integrity Fund” they set up was originally set to pay for things like the kind of post-election hand recounts that Cochise and others have attempted to do. The next year, lawmakers diverted $1 million of that money to “one or more” county recorders to test new counterfeit-proof ballots. 

Stevens is an affable, low-key inside player for the Stop the Steal movement who has helped push the county further into election skepticism. He and Finchem are old friends and Stevens serves as the director of Finchem’s nebulous election integrity nonprofit. Since Finchem failed to win his race for secretary of state, the Cochise County crew — including Stevens, the county’s Republican supervisors and new election-conspiracy-spreading elections director Bob Bartelsmeyer — represent the Stop the Steal movement’s beachhead into election administration in Arizona. 

This is the same group of great minds who attempted to not certify the 2022 election, then attempted to conduct a full hand recount of the county’s election until a judge shot them down. The county is still appealing.

But the truth is, we don’t see anything wrong with adding additional security measures to ballots — except, of course, that the whole goal of the people pushing for it is to reinforce the erroneous belief that counterfeit ballots are a problem and then fundraise off of it. Other states require watermarks and other money-like anti-counterfeit features, and Arizona could too.

However, as far as we’re concerned, any project that involves Finchem, Stevens and their hand-picked vendor has zero credibility and deserves detailed financial scrutiny. The board of supervisors made the responsible decision, for once, in questioning and postponing the contract. They should continue their good-judgment streak and pull the plug on this project entirely.

An app for bad doctors: The Republic’s Andrew Ford investigated the slaps on the wrist that the Arizona Medical Board doles out to shady doctors and how the state buries doctors’ misconduct histories. Then, Ford went a step further and built a search tool to comb through obscure records and find out if your doctor has any blemishes on their record. 

Welcome back?: Former Republican lawmaker Kate Brophy McGee is running for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to replace Bill Gates, who announced he wouldn’t seek another term after being subjected to repeated threats and harassment campaigns for not calling the county’s elections rigged. Brophy McGee is a moderate Republican with enough connections, name ID and campaign experience to potentially hold the seat from her party’s election deniers. 

Not again: Mark Finchem may be running for Maricopa County Recorder. The former Tucson lawmaker and statewide Republican candidate who lost by the widest margin in 2022 filed a statement of interest to run for the office, per AZFamily’s Dennis Welch. He filed it right around the time he resigned as a GOP precinct committeeman in Pima County, per the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith. And he may have moved to Surprise, in Maricopa County, in order to qualify for the office, per internet sleuths. Finchem hasn’t answered questions about it online.

Gullible, not racist: Republican Party leaders in Maricopa, Pima and Yavapai counties say they were duped into sponsoring an event by the fringe group College Republicans United that featured guests like white nationalist Nick Fuentes, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and former lawmaker/pervert David Stringer. All three county parties strongly denounced Fuentes Tuesday after he was added to the event lineup, which already contained a lot of questionable characters, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Republic columnists Laurie Roberts and E.J. Montini have thoughts and questions, respectively. And some of the politicians who were at one point or another listed as speakers on fliers (which we used in our laugh section at least once), are now denying they were ever going to the event anyway. 

“This was a set up,” Pima County GOP Chairman Dave Smith told the Mirror, saying a party representative thought she was just speaking at a normal college Republicans event. 

Primarily messed up systems: Longtime political strategist Chuck Choughlin, who has been leading a push for ranked-choice voting system in Arizona, told the Republic’s Roberts that his group is now abandoning ranked-choice voting in favor of a jungle primary system in which all candidates run against each other regardless of party. And Tucson voters won’t get to reconsider their city’s hybrid “ward-only” primary and citywide general election after backers of an initiative to change the system were disqualified for making basic errors on their petition sheets, Jim Nintzel reports for the Tucson Sentinel. 

Super hyper angry partisan to the extreme: The culture at the Capitol these days is “radically different” and far more cantankerous than it used to be, fueled by social media, partisan extremism and Trump-style name-calling, Capitol long-timers told the Mirror’s MacDonald-Evoy. 

“Each session has gotten worse,” Sandy Bahr, the longtime head of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, said. 

Obligatory ‘it’s hot’ story roundup: Phoenix is really hot, even at night, Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda reports. But APS swears it’s ready for the heat, the Republic’s Russ Wiles notes. And although “we do have increasing moisture,” per the National Weather Service, it might be a while before monsoons start in earnest, KTAR’s Kevin Stone writes.

Start simple: Cities, nonprofits and now tribes have submitted more than 100 applications for $200 million of available grant money for water conservation projects through the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA), the Republic’s Clara Migoya reports. About a quarter of the money requested is just to rip out grass.

Hank’s old friend and sparring partner Stephanie Grisham was feeling something resembling nostalgia yesterday, on the seventh anniversary of her first gig for Donald Trump in Arizona. 

Hank also remembers that day: Grisham offered to get him in to meet Trump after the event, to which Hank replied, “Nah, he’ll never be president.” 

1. Ironically, blacklight watermarks were one of the signs of fraudulent ballots, alongside bamboo-based ballots, that the Arizona Senate’s audit of the 2020 election looked for (and did not find).