Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Emails obtained by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting from four school districts show the depth of the relationships construction company executives have cultivated with school district administrators.

After spending $494,000 in 2015 and 2016 to create a new campaign finance reporting website that never saw the light of day, the Arizona Secretary of State is now asking the Citizens’ Clean Election Commission to pay $200,000 of an estimated $462,000 cost to develop a new campaign finance website.

A top staffer at the Arizona Secretary of State staff denied accusations made by county recorders earlier this week that the office ordered voter registrations to be cancelled without proper documentation.

Arizona’s 15 county recorders this week delivered a letter to Secretary of State Michele Reagan in which they said communication between their offices and hers are “in a dire state” because state Election Director Eric Spencer has been “ineffective and disrespectful.”

According to a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party directed campaign expenditures toward her friend and husband, and when the party’s top staffer objected to the payments, she was fired.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan has begun circulating a memo detailing a proposed overhaul of the laws governing virtually every aspect of how elections are conducted in Arizona, from data protocols and recount procedures, to "sore loser" candidates and voter fraud investigations.

The fall of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio didn’t result from a surge of Latino voters, despite the opposition he drew from the Hispanic community over his immigration enforcement tactics.

Democrats who have become increasingly worried about possible voter intimidation at the polls say local Republicans could find themselves on the wrong side of the law, after a poll watching training led by the Maricopa County GOP.