The glitch that keeps on glitching

Snitches get glitches … Winning all the voters … And taking one for the team.

The saga of the “technical glitch” that led to 100,000 voters being improperly marked as having provided proof of citizenship — when in reality nobody knows if they did — is not over.

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office yesterday announced it had discovered another 120,000 voters caught up in the glitch, bringing the grand total to nearly a quarter-million voters.

It has been clear since last week that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was about to drop another shoe in the case.

Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda told talk show host Garret Lewis that the Secretary of State’s Office called to schedule another meeting with the lawyers last week, as the office did before breaking the news of the glitch.

Then the office postponed the scheduled Friday meeting and then went silent.

Swoboda supported Fontes’ initial plan and joined him in urging the courts to allow election officials to send ballots to those voters — the largest chunk of which were Republicans. On Monday, after Fontes announced the new batch of 120,000 voters, she called for his resignation.

And election-denying Republicans like Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh latched on to the news, using it to once again assert election fraud.

Meanwhile, Fontes argued in a press release that the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to let the 100,000 voters vote this year will also apply to the additional 120,000 voters. It’s not totally clear that’s the case.

And as Arizona politicos wait for yet another shoe to drop in Arizona’s “technical glitch” case, there’s one question on everyone’s minds.

“Who leaked the tape?”

The tape in question, of course, is the secret recording of a private, expletive-laden conversation between the state’s top three elected officials as they grappled with how to handle news of the glitch, which the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez got ahold of.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes hopped on the three-way call on September 10 to discuss what to do about the recent discovery that a decades-old computer glitch put at risk roughly 100,000 voters who may not have verified their citizenship as required by state law.

On the call, all three were frantic.

But one of them recorded the call¹ and leaked the recording to the press.

The question is: Which one? And why?

We filed a records request to all three offices asking for a copy of the tape. One of them must have it, and destroying a public record — like a recording of a call between the three top offices in the state — is a felony, as we reminded them.

• Mayes’ office immediately responded saying they didn’t have a recording because they didn’t record the call.

• Hobbs’ office responded shortly afterward, also insisting they didn’t record the call and don’t have a tape.

• Fontes’ office has yet to reply.

Still, there’s a case to be made for any of the three leaking the tape.

So we asked some of the smartest politicos we know to speculate which one it was and why.

Here’s what they said.

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The case for Mayes

Most of the politicos we spoke to believed Mayes leaked the tape.

“Mayes absolutely leaked it. No doubt in my mind,” as one consultant put it, noting the persistent rumor that Mayes intends to challenge Hobbs for the governorship in 2026.

Hobbs, of course, was the only one of the three on the call who wanted to sequester the voters in question and only allow them to vote in federal races.

Others noted that Mayes is not shy about throwing elbows at opponents (or allies) and she’s already investigating Hobbs for an alleged “pay-to-play” scheme.

There are other bits of circumstantial evidence, sources noted, including that the reporter, Sanchez, is well-sourced in the office.²

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The case for Fontes

Fontes is also suspect, considering he has just as much animosity toward Hobbs as Mayes does. He’s also the public face of this glitch, even though it existed long before he was in office.

By leaking the tape, he made all three of them look equally responsible for solving the problem, taking some of the heat off himself, politicos speculated.

He also gets a dig in at Hobbs, an opportunity that the office rarely passes up.

But perhaps most tellingly, leaking the story served as a distraction for the news that their initial number of 100,000 was very much a lowball estimate.

“It was 100% Adrian,” as one Democrat put it. “He's the only one with the modicum of an incentive to do it. And the one with the big brain ego to think he'd look good doing it.”

However, another Democrat noted that the news broke just hours before the Arizona Democratic Party Gala on Saturday, and Fontes looked genuinely perplexed about the news at the event.

If he did leak the recording himself, “he could win an Oscar (for acting surprised),” the source joked.

Did we mention his office is the only one that hasn’t actually denied they leaked it?

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The case for Hobbs

Finally, there’s Hobbs.

It seems unlikely that her office leaked the tape — both because she looked the worst of the three and because her office is not known for leaking.

However, we did hear one theory about why she could have potentially leaked the recording that rang true — Hobbs was the only one on that call advocating for not letting people vote if they haven’t proved they’re citizens.

While the Democratic establishment didn’t love Hobbs’ take on how to handle the situation, one Democrat noted that may not be the worst thing for her.

“Does it really make Hobbs look bad in a red state?” the source wondered.

Voters wanted: To win Maricopa County, the presidential candidates need to garner votes from the Mormon, Hispanic and independent communities, the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen and Caitlin McGlade note. Meanwhile, anti-Trump Republicans are spending about $2.4 million on airtime and billboards in Arizona to try to convince their brethren to jump ship on the party’s nominee, the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small reports. Finally, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego needs Trump voters to support him to win his senate race against Kari Lake, the Associated Press argues. Lucky for him, it’s not hard to find Republicans who are splitting their tickets.

“I don’t like Kari Lake and I’m not going to vote for her,” Winfield Morris, a 62-year-old Republican farmer and rancher who plans to vote for Trump for president but can't get behind Lake, told the AP. “I don’t think she has what it takes.”

Arizona donors wanted: More than 75% of the contributions to congressional and U.S. Senate campaigns in Arizona came from out of state, per the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program. U.S. Rep. Eli Crane topped the list with 90% of his $5.4 million coming from out-of-state donors, the White Mountain Independent’s Peter Aleshire reports.

Unlike Arizona’s politicians, the Arizona Agenda is supported by actual Arizonans. Help us keep it that way by subscribing today.

Power ex-couple: Gallego is fighting in court to keep under wraps records of his divorce with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, who was pregnant when he filed for divorce in 2016, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Right-wing news website Washington Free Beacon is trying to get the records in the case, and Gallego originally got the entire file sealed — including the fact that there was even a file. A judge has since declared that level of secrecy was improper and now they’re fighting about whether to release documents that explain why he sought the divorce.

Two out of five ain’t bad: Two of the “Five Court Cases to Watch Ahead of Election Day” come from Arizona, per the New York Times, which cited a lawsuit from the conservative Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal which are suing the state to clean up its voter rolls, and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club which are fighting new rules that prohibit harassing people as they drop off their early ballots.

Pants aflame: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne told some whoppers when he spoke to a legislative audit committee earlier this month, the Republic’s Nick Sullivan reports, mostly about a federal deadline and the timeline for schools to spend federal money for low-income schools.

“After the committee meeting, (Department of Education spokesman Doug) Nick said the Democrats confused the timeline, demonstrating ‘they had no comprehension of what was going on.’ In a follow-up email, he acknowledged Horne misstated the timeline,” Sullivan writes.

99 appeals: The Navajo Nation kicked 192 tribal candidates off the ballot after they failed to file campaign finance reports and statements, the Navajo Times’ Donovan Quintero reported. Ninety-nine candidates are appealing the decision to disqualify them over the new harsher rules, but the ballot printing deadline is coming up before the appeals deadline, complicating matters, to say the least.

“Right now, because of these hearings, we’re unable to even give the go-ahead to the printer to start printing the ballots,” interim elections director Veronica Curley said.

Newspapers > HOAs: Quail Creek resident Mike Conley’s political yard sign reading “Vote to make America Decent, Honorable and Kind Again" will be allowed to fly again after his HOA ordered him to take it down because it is not actually a “political sign” as defined by the HOA. The Robson Community overlords were not pleased that he told the Green Valley News about the whole episode.

”Had Mr. Conley followed what normal people do in our community, which is to ask for an appeal, we would’ve handled this in-house. But rather than doing that, you went right to the newspaper and that’s why there’s an article in the newspaper. That’s why we have now gotten bad press in the newspaper,” Jack Sarsam, Robson’s Senior Vice President of Operations, scolded at a community meeting.

Scottsdale City Councilman Tom Durham really doesn’t want former Republican lawmaker Adam Kwasman to get elected to the Scottsdale City Council.

Durham is so committed to the cause that he’s sabotaging his own campaign, as the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon explains.

At a forum recently, he told Scottsdalians³ not to vote for him, since Kwasman will probably beat him.

Instead, he’s urging his supporters to pass their votes to Mary McAllen and Councilwoman Tammy Caputi in the four-way race for two council seats as an attempt to block both Kwasman and, ultimately, himself.

1. Yes, the comparisons to Kari Lake’s secret recordings are unavoidable.

2. Though to be fair, we don’t think there’s an office in Arizona where Sanchez doesn’t have sources.

3. Scottsdalites? It somehow seems more fitting.