The Elections Code of Conduct

Define "undermining public trust" ... They work best on a deadline ... And someone do some psychological testing please.

When Gina Swoboda, the new chair of the Arizona Republican Party, hopped on the phone last week for an interview with conservative talk show host Garrett Lewis, his very first question was how she would make sure there isn’t any “rigging and stealing” in the upcoming election. 

She’s the perfect person for the job, she told him, because she’s an actual certified election official.

“The election attorneys are great, but they're election attorneys. They're not election administrators. I'm a certified election official,” she said. “I've helped administer elections from the (secretary of state) side. So I know what is supposed to be happening. And I know when things are happening that are not supposed to be happening.” 

Swoboda’s credentials as a “certified election officer” are a big part of the reason she got the job of AZGOP chair, a big part of the reason former President Donald Trump called her personally to ask her to take the job in the first place. The certification gives her credibility within the election-denying right and outside of it. She leans on it a lot in interviews, saying her election nerdiness and certifications make her uniquely qualified for the job and will make her a uniquely effective AZGOP chair. 

The Secretary of State’s Office is in charge of certifying election officers. To become a certified election officer in Arizona, you have to complete 40 hours of training and pass a test. 

But last year, the Secretary of State Adrian Fontes added another requirement to become certified: Sign a code of conduct promising, among other things, to “Refrain from activities or statements that undermine public trust and confidence in the electoral process.”

Swoboda signed her code of conduct in December, we confirmed via a records request.

But is it even possible for a Trump-recruited Republican Party chair who runs a nonprofit specializing in “election integrity” and works on the side for Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers’ Senate Elections Committee to not undermine public trust and confidence in elections? As the leader of a party fixated on alleged fraud, championing a presidential candidate who urged his supporters to storm the Capitol to take back the presidency he lost, isn’t undermining public trust and confidence in elections part of the job?

And what happens if she breaks the code of conduct?

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One of Swoboda’s first acts after being elected AZGOP chair this month was to go on Steve Bannon’s podcast, where she nodded along as he repeatedly claimed every election since Trump’s first run was stolen.

“We won in ‘16. We won in ‘20. It was stolen. The governorship was stolen (in ‘22). You’re the expert in how not to steal it. I think that’s the reason you’re the GOP chair, correct?” Bannon says.

“Yes, correct,” she replies.

On Lewis’ show, Swoboda brings up a video that went viral in right-wing circles of election workers installing new memory cards on ballot tabulators.

“They did it to cheat,” Lewis exclaims. 

“Yeah,” Swoboda agrees. 

Swoboda pals around with a lot of people who scream about stolen elections. But she doesn’t appear to be a full-blown denier herself. We couldn’t find any instances of her flat-out saying the election was stolen or any similarly fanciful claims. But she also doesn’t push back when other people say it. 

When the conversation with Lewis turned to Sharpies in the 2022 election, for example, Swoboda didn’t go off on some conspiracy tangent — she said she gets that “in theory,” the bleedthrough on the ballots didn’t matter, but people were confused and election officials didn’t explain the change well or demonstrate their process for dealing with the bleed-through. Even when SharpieGate was first breaking, Swoboda had a more measured take than many, saying she didn’t know of any votes being uncounted, just that voters believed their vote wasn’t counted. 

On the whole, it was a pretty thoughtful take.

Her organization, the Voter Reference Foundation, isn’t always as thoughtful. It publicizes voter registration records and encourages average citizens to scour them for errors. The armchair researchers using the data often make extravagant claims based on misunderstandings of how voting rolls work. The foundation caters to a certain crowd — one recent headline in their news section reads: “Will Illegal Aliens Choose the 2024 Republican Nominee in Arizona?”

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But what qualifies as undermining public trust or confidence in elections? And who decides if a certified election officer has broken their oath? And what happens then?

The Secretary of State’s Office says they instituted the code of conduct last year for obvious reasons, and nobody has ever challenged a certification, according to a spokesman. 

Fontes is authorized to cancel someone’s certification, they confirmed, but simply knowing Swoboda is chair of the AZGOP and that she appears on podcasts like Bannon’s isn’t enough to pull her certification, they said. The office would have to receive a complaint to start an investigation to determine if she broke the code of conduct. 

“It’s not our role to target people,” the spokesman said, adding that we or anyone else could file a complaint.

But by forcing election officials to sign a code of conduct, Fontes has set up a quandary. Swoboda may be the most high-profile elections critic who is now inside the elections infrastructure. But she’s probably not the only one. 

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It’s officially the last minute: Republican lawmakers say they’ll introduce a bill to move up the primary election deadline and make other changes to ensure Arizona doesn’t run into the disaster scenario of its votes for president not counting. But Gov. Katie Hobbs says she’ll veto that bill because it would also make unrelated, previously vetoed changes, per the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl. Democratic Rep. Laura Terech says she’ll introduce the governor’s version of a fix today. Whatever plan moves forward will need to get to Hobbs’ desk by Friday, and it will need a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of the Legislature to become law immediately. 

Republicans vote Republican: A bunch of Wall Street Journal Republicans really hope U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will run for reelection so they’ll have a choice between her and Kari Lake, per the Wall Street Journal. None of the Republicans quoted in the piece about Republicans’ potential “unusual savior” — including consultants Jason Rose, Sean Noble, Daniel Scarpinato and Jessica Pacheco — said they’d support Sinema themselves. But they all seemed to think someone might. 

Talk to the ring: Sinema went on Face the Nation this weekend to tell the nation it’s none of their business whether she plans to run for reelection this year and she’s annoyed they keep asking. She’s focused on the immigration bill coming up for a vote, she said. She needs more than 42,000 valid signatures from registered voters before April 8 to qualify for the ballot. 

The vaxx wars continue: Former state lawmaker Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould wants to review his county’s vaccine policies after his great-granddaughter was flown to a Phoenix hospital a few days after receiving her vaccinations, per Today’s News Herald’s Brandon Messick. She’s ok. This morning’s meeting should be interesting, supervisors are discussing school vaccine requirements and whether to continue an agreement with the Arizona Department of Health Services to provide recommended childhood immunizations to kids in the county. 

Our best and brightest here: A bunch of lawmakers sponsored and co-sponsored a bill they didn’t bother to read or understand. We’re specifically talking about Democratic Rep. Lydia Hernandez’s HB2700, which would have required school board members to have a four-year degree, according to the Republic’s Reagan Priest, though Hernandez says she meant for it to require training if school board members didn’t have a degree. Four lawmakers pulled their names off the bill after they realized what it actually did.

How about via email?: Arizona’s campaign finance laws are so lax that statewide officeholders don’t have to tell us how much money they’re raising or spending for their campaigns for three out of four years. Still, all of Arizona’s officeholders voluntarily filed a report except Hobbs, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. Hobbs says she wanted to file one, but she couldn’t because of the way the state’s website is set up. Her campaign declined to give Barchenger the receipts. Speaking of campaign fundraising numbers, Abe Hamadeh’s brother dumped $1 million into a PAC supporting Hamaden for Congress after having loaned the candidate $1 million just two years ago, per the New Times’ TJ L'Heureux.

"There's not even a mechanism to file even if I wanted to," Hobbs told Barchenger, adding: "I did want to."

Today’s culture war: Republican Sen. Janae Shamp wants to require any health insurance plan that covers gender-affirming care to also cover the cost of de-transitioning, which LGBTQ rights activists say is just another way to demonize trans people, the Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez writes. Assuming the bill clears the House and Senate, Hobbs is sure to veto it. 

Tune in to KJZZ’s “The Show” at 9 a.m. to hear Hank slurp down coffee and rant about why so many lawmakers are quitting. 

In the afternoon, we’re watching the Senate Elections Committee, which has a host of interesting bills up for debate sometime after 2 p.m. Here’s a small sample of the committee agenda:

• SB1131 from Republican Sen. John Kavanagh would call a do-over if less than 25% of voters turn out for a local election. (Only about 60% of voters turn out for a presidential general election.)

• SB1359 from Republican Sen. Frank Carroll wouldn’t outlaw political deep fakes on the campaign trail, but it would require candidates or PACs to disclose if they’re using deep fakes to bash each other. 

• And SB2374 from Republican Sen. Shawnna Bolick would require election vendors to attest they’re not receiving foreign donations.

We got a good chuckle out of Republican Sen. David Farnsworth’s attempt to make sure nobody checks politicians’ background or psychological profiles as a qualifier to serving in public office.

This is the entire bill!