Public safety over politics – why our county partnered with ICE

We’ve heard from a lot of Pinal County residents who are confused by the board’s public claims about our 287(g) agreement with ICE and what the law actually allows. You deserve clarity — not spin. This partnership isn’t politics. It’s public safety. The Pinal County Attorney’s Office is using every lawful tool in the toolbox to protect our residents.

It also aligns with President Trump’s public-safety priorities: Remove repeat and violent offenders, dismantle trafficking networks and restore the rule of law.

Let’s be clear. We target specific offenders based on documented criminal behavior, with warrants, already known by law enforcement. We are not patrolling communities.

Here’s where the narrative is misleading:

Myth #1: “The sheriff already does this.”

Yes — the sheriff has long cooperated with ICE, and that continues. When criminals land in jail after committing new crimes, ICE is notified and can act. That matters. But jail processing is only one tool.

287(g) has three models: Jail Enforcement (in-custody screening), Warrant Service (serving ICE warrants in jail), and Task Force (ICE-supervised operations targeting specific offenders).

The sheriff uses the jail model. PCAO signed the Task Force model — because Pinal County needs more than one tool.

The Task Force model allows all those who participate to receive information about known criminals in our community that should be arrested and held accountable. We shouldn’t wait for new victims to arrest known violent criminals.

Myth #2: “PCAO has no law enforcement.”

Wrong. Arizona law allows county attorneys to employ AZPOST-certified, sworn peace officers as investigators. This is standard across Arizona and has been for decades.

They gather intelligence, support investigations, and help prevent additional crimes — working with the sheriff, task forces and now ICE.

Myth #3: “This was signed in secret.”

False. In July, we asked to address it in an open meeting — not for permission, but to notify the Board of Supervisors of our intent. The purpose was to provide the board and the public with much needed information about the program and give an opportunity to ask questions. We do not need board approval to carry out our constitutional duties.

Myth #4: “Outside counsel said it’s void, so it’s void.”

A legal opinion is not a court ruling. Reasonable lawyers can disagree. But the board declared the issue “settled” and presented only one side to the public. That’s not transparency. That’s narrative control.

The bottom line? This is about lawful authority, proper process and protecting the people of Pinal County. Public safety isn’t just a talking point on this one. It’s our job.

Brad Miller is the Pinal County attorney and a career prosecutor.

Arizona ratepayers aren’t paying for water — they’re paying for global investment capital

Recent coverage of proposed water and sewer rate increases for customers of Picacho water and wastewater utilities in Pinal County has framed them as “long-overdue” and as an inevitable correction after years without rate adjustments.

That narrative oversimplifies the situation and misses the real story.

What residents are being asked to pay for today is not aging pipes or overdue maintenance. It is a new ownership and financing model imposed after the acquisition of the local utilities by JW Water Holdings, backed by the international infrastructure investment firm CVC DIF.

Same system. Very different economics.

The water and sewer systems serving our community did not suddenly change overnight. The same pipes deliver the same water to the same customers. Service levels have not dramatically expanded.

What has changed is the cost structure.

Following the acquisition of Picacho utilities, projected operating expenses are set to increase by approximately $1.4 million, a 57% jump. This increase is not driven by new treatment plants, major system expansions, or emergency infrastructure failures. It reflects new layers of corporate overhead, management costs, and financing requirements associated with private-equity ownership.

At the same time, the proposed financial model extracts nearly $2 million annually in operating profit, resulting in an operating margin of roughly 35%.

Those numbers matter because they tell a very different story than “long-overdue rate adjustment.”

Customers are underwriting investor returns

Water utilities are regulated monopolies. Customers cannot choose a competitor. Revenues are stabilized by regulation, and financial risk is limited. That is precisely why utilities are regulated in the first place.

When such a monopoly is acquired by a global investment fund, the economic priorities change. The utility must now support:

Investor return targets
Corporate and advisory fees
Financing structures designed for international capital markets

None of these costs improve water quality, reliability, or public safety. Yet under the proposed rates, local households are being asked to absorb them.

Simply put, the utility did not become more expensive to operate. The utility simply became more expensive to own.

Calling this increase “long-overdue” implies that residents somehow failed to pay their fair share in the past. In reality, utility rates were largely sufficient for many years under the prior ownership model. Modest, fair and reasonable rate increases to cover increased operating expenses could and should be expected. The “rate shock” appears only after the acquisition and resulting capital structures which may prioritize international investor interests over Arizona consumers.

This is not what regulation is meant to do

Arizona’s regulatory system exists to balance two interests: ensuring utilities can recover reasonable and prudent costs, while protecting customers from monopoly abuse.

The Arizona Corporation Commission has long recognized that ratepayers are not obligated to guarantee private investment strategies or subsidize acquisition-driven cost increases that primarily benefit investors.

Ratepayers should not be financing:

Acquisition premiums
Elevated private-equity margins
Returns flowing to international investment funds

Especially when those costs did not exist before the ownership change and do not correspond to improved service.

A broader question for Arizona

This issue extends beyond one community or one rate case. As private-equity and infrastructure funds acquire more essential utilities, Arizonans should be asking a basic question:

When water systems are owned by global investment firms, who is the utility really serving, the community, or the capital markets?

Water is not a luxury good. It is not a speculative asset. It is a necessity of life and a foundation of Arizona’s future.

Residents deserve honest coverage and thoughtful regulatory scrutiny that distinguish between legitimate infrastructure needs and financial models designed to extract value from captive customers.

Framing these increases as “long-overdue” avoids that distinction. Arizona can and should do better.

Scott McBeth is a Pinal County resident with a career background in technology and business operations. He is currently a registered intervener in an Arizona Corporation Commission rate proceeding and focuses on analyzing utility cost structures, ownership models and regulatory impacts on ratepayers.

All financial figures cited are derived from publicly available filings in the Arizona Corporation Commission rate case. This commentary is offered as public policy discussion and is not intended to supplement the evidentiary record in any pending ACC proceeding.

100-year assured water supply important to Coolidge

If you don’t know what a 100-year Assured Water Supply is, you should be paying more attention. No new subdivisions can be approved in Coolidge without first proving that water can be provided to those homes for 100 years. Since 1995, when rules were adopted to implement the details of this program, more than 1,200 new subdivisions dependent on groundwater were approved and 20 water providers were designated as having an Assured Water Supply in both the Phoenix and Pinal Active Management Areas (AMAs).

AMAs are big groundwater basins located in the Phoenix metropolitan area and in central Pinal County. Five years ago, the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) told us that based on their fancy groundwater models, we will run out of groundwater to meet all the demands in the Pinal AMA within 100-years. Because of that, ADWR told us no new Certificates of Assured Water Supply using groundwater could be approved. The last one of these Certificates were issued in Coolidge at the end of 2010, more than 14 years ago.

Coolidge is located inside the Pinal AMA and 50 of those 1,200 subdivisions call Coolidge home. Those 50 subdivisions include more than 15,000 lots and around 11,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot can serve around four houses a year in Coolidge. We estimate that roughly 3,200 of those lots have been built pretty much since 2019, and Coolidge’s population has been growing at a rate of roughly 6% each year. We expect to double our population between now and 2035.

Eight of those 50 subdivisions have been built-out. Eight are building out right now and the remaining subdivisions have not been built. Some of them may never build given changes since 2010 regarding where developers need to build new subdivisions to meet demands of new homebuyers. It will not be long before our inventory of potential lots with 100-year Certificates of Assured Water Supply will be gone.

This will be bad for Coolidge. We need more housing, and we need flexibility. While I’m not a fan of regulations, I am in support of a change in the 100-year Assured Water Supply rules that will hopefully give the water companies inside our city a chance to get an Assured Water Supply for their service areas. Based on how things have been going, this is our best shot at moving things forward. I think you should support this change too. We all want to see the city of Coolidge prosper, but the current 100-year Assured Water Supply is broken, and we have to fix it. Let’s level the playing field and play by the same rules as the Phoenix AMA.

Here’s what you can do to help. There will be a meeting at the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council on November 22. This is the group responsible for overseeing all the changes to this program and recommending a path forward. The meeting is virtual (meaning you can attend online) so you can attend this meeting and speak in support of the new rules by visiting https://grrc.az.gov. You can also provide written comments, which can be easily be submitted to the Council via email at grrccomments@azdoa.gov. To make sure the GRRC sees your comments, email them no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 21. Please join me in letting them know a 100-Year Assured Water Supply is important to Coolidge and it’s important to you.

Jon Thompson is the mayor of Coolidge.

Arizona election results delayed after a long ballot and a court order slow counting

Arizona is still waiting on election results it expected to have by Wednesday morning, with some ballots cast at polling places on Election Day yet uncounted, along with hundreds of thousands of early ballots from Maricopa County.

In Maricopa County, the county’s two-page ballot – which took longer than anticipated to remove from envelopes and prepare for counting – meant the county fell behind in processing.

Across the rest of the state, Election Day results were still trickling in Wednesday after counting in Pinal County fell behind and a court ordered Apache County polling places to stay open later on Tuesday night. Typically, counties report results from all precincts overnight. Many counties still had precincts to report as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to a tracker on the Secretary of State’s Office website.

In Maricopa County, officials estimated on Tuesday night that they still had about 700,000 early ballots to process. Typically, in the first round of results at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, the county releases the results from all early ballots cast up to the Friday before Election Day. This time, that round included only ballots received up until Oct. 29, a week before Election Day.

It’s taking workers nearly double the usual amount of time to separate the two sheets from the mail-in envelope, lay them flat, and check for damage, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told Votebeat on Tuesday morning outside the tabulation center. It’s the first time in nearly 20 years that the county’s ballots stretched to a second page.

Richer had given mixed signals at a news conference on Monday on whether the county was behind in processing ballots, saying that the two-page ballot had led to some delays, but also that the county was on track compared with prior years.

The county added a third overnight shift of ballot processors last week to try to address the backlog, but that decision was made too late, and there is not enough time to catch up before Thursday.

The county’s first round of results at 8 p.m. Tuesday included about 1.1 million early ballots received by the county by Oct. 29 according to a county news release. County officials had said that, as of Monday morning, they had received about 1.5 million early ballots.

The results from early ballots that they had not yet processed from before Monday, as well as any received after that point, in the mail or dropped off at polling places, will be released Wednesday and in the coming days. The total expected turnout was 2.1 million, and the county said it would release the number of early ballots that were dropped off at the polls on Wednesday.

Richer said he believes the county will be mostly done processing ballots by this weekend. The cure period for voters to fix problems with their ballots ends Sunday.

Maricopa County released all Election Day results – from about 269,000 voters – by about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. These voters cast ballots directly into tabulation machines at the polls, and the results are reported as soon as election workers can get the memory cards from the machines to the central counting facility in downtown Phoenix.

A new law requiring poll workers to count the number of early ballots dropped off at polling places before leaving their sites appears to have delayed final Election Day results by an hour or two compared with prior elections.

In other counties, ballots are not counted until they reach central counting facilities. That includes Pinal County, where workers weren’t able overnight to handle the volume of ballots coming in from precincts, and were still counting in the morning, according to a county spokesperson.

The county had reported Election Day results from only about half of precincts as of 8:45 a.m. Wednesday.

Other counties still had Election Day results remaining to be reported at that time as well. In Apache County, that may be because of the court order, which instructed the county to keep nine polling places open until 9 p.m., two hours later than planned, after polling places across the county experienced technical issues that led to long lines.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2024/11/06/arizona-delayed-election-results-long-ballot-court-order/

Volk leading in LD17 House race

Both incumbent Republicans in Legislative District 17’s state House race trail a Democrat early after Tuesday’s initial election night results.

Democrat Kevin Volk leads both Reps. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson; and Cory McGarr, R-Tucson, at approximately 8:45 p.m.

Volk has received 38.54% of votes in the race while Jones has received 31.37%. McGarr sits just behind Jones with 30.09%.

The race can’t be concluded until more votes have been counted.

Democrats are heavily targeting LD17 after a surprising 2022 when McGarr beat the third-place runner-up Democrat Dana Allmond by just under 1% of votes. Jones beat Allmond by about 1.5% of votes.

Democrats ran two candidates in the district in 2022 but this year, Volk is running as a single-shot candidate to try and pick up a seat in a Republican district that sits outside the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission’s competitive analysis.

Republicans hold over an 8% advantage in vote spread favoring their candidates in the district, but some big-name Democrats won the district in 2022, including Sen. Mark Kelly, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

“We’ve always believed that it’s a candidate for at least one Democrat winning the House if they single-shot it,” said GOP consultant Chuck Coughlin.

Jones and McGarr winning in the district would help foiling Democrat attempts at taking the state House in 2025. Republicans hold a 31-29 majority in the chamber and the district is key for both parties. Both Republican representatives are Freedom Caucus members and their primary election running mate, Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, lost to former Sen. Vince Leach in the GOP primary.

Maricopa County restores around 2,000 voters after incorrectly demanding proof of citizenship

Maricopa County incorrectly flagged around 2,000 longtime registered voters as needing to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote in Tuesday’s election, county officials confirmed Sunday.

That number is in addition to nearly 900 Pinal County voters who were incorrectly told the same thing, which Votebeat first reported Saturday.

The voters who were incorrectly asked for the information will no longer need to provide proof of citizenship before 7 p.m. Tuesday in order to cast ballots in this election, as some number of them were initially told, according to officials in both counties.

If voters had already attempted to vote an early ballot and had the ballot put on hold or voided, those ballots will now be counted. Voters who had not yet cast their ballots should not have an issue when they go to vote.

That means these voters will have the chance to help determine the result of elections in this divided swing state, where close margins are expected from the presidential race to statewide ballot propositions.

Maricopa County had moved the voters to “not registered status,” which meant that they were no longer on the active voter rolls, according to county Recorder’s Office spokesperson Taylor Kinnerup. If any of those voters cast an early ballot, it appears that the county initially voided their ballots. Officials have since worked to “restore any ballots that were voided … and those votes have since moved forward,” Kinnerup said.

Officials restored the voters’ status on Oct. 21, Kinnerup said. She did not respond to a question about why the office changed course.

After learning of the issue in Pinal County, Votebeat reached out to the state’s largest counties, including Maricopa, to check whether incorrect information had been conveyed to voters there as well.

Besides Maricopa and Pinal counties, it’s unclear whether other counties incorrectly flagged voters’ registrations, and if any voters will have trouble voting Tuesday because of it. Pima, Yavapai, and Coconino, the three other counties that have so far responded to inquiries, all said they did not incorrectly flag voters in their systems.

The problem stems from two recent court decisions related to proof of citizenship requirements in the state.

The voters who were affected had tried to update their voter registration just before the Oct. 7 voter registration deadline. The county had flagged these registrations because of changes the county made to the way it was processing voter registration forms in response to two separate court decisions, both regarding requirements in state law for voter proof of citizenship.

Arizona has a unique law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections. Federal law requires applicants only to attest to their citizenship to vote. If an Arizona applicant doesn’t provide proof of citizenship, they are placed on a “federal only” voter list and are restricted to voting in federal contests like presidential and congressional races.

In the first recent court decision related to the state’s laws on proof of citizenship, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Aug. 22 that county recorders should completely reject voter registration forms from voters if they register using a state form and don’t provide proof of citizenship. Previously, these voters would have been registered as federal-only voters. The ruling is in effect until the courts can fully consider the case.

The second court decision came after the state realized that a problem with the Motor Vehicle Division database had allowed about 218,000 longtime driver’s license holders to become full ballot voters, even though they had not provided proof of citizenship. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Sept. 20 that these voters would not have to provide citizenship proof until after the November election.

Still, starting sometime soon after the state discovered the MVD problem, the state reprogrammed its system to flag those 218,000 voters if they tried to make a change to their voter record, to notify the counties that they hadn’t yet provided proof of citizenship. The Secretary of State’s Office provided guidance in early October to county recorders telling them that, even though the system was flagging these voters, they should continue to allow them to vote a full ballot until after November.

Instead, from the time the state’s system was reprogrammed to the voter registration deadline on Oct. 7, if a voter in Maricopa or Pinal county on this list of 218,000 tried to update their voter record using a state form, the counties flagged their registration until they provided proof of citizenship.

The counties both mailed at least some of these residents a letter to tell them they needed to provide proof of citizenship before they voted.

“After further consideration, the decision was made to fully restore those voters from the not registered status, only if they were previously an existing, registered voter,” Kinnerup said on Sunday. “This means any Maricopa County voter impacted by the previously discovered MVD data oversight has since been restored back to their original status of either full or fed-only ballot for this upcoming election.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Fontes challenges Pinal County’s election violations in state Supreme Court

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to force Pinal County to comply with state election laws – and do so this year.

In new filings, Fontes said that even Pinal County Superior Court Judge Delia Neal, appointed by then-Governor Doug Ducey, ruled that the county was acting illegally in not allowing residents to cast a ballot in any polling place where they show up and have their votes counted. That is a requirement of the Elections Procedures Manual which has the force of law.

But Neal, in a ruling earlier this month, agreed to allow the county to avoid that requirement this year based on its arguments that it was too close to the election to make such changes.

Fontes, however, said that argument doesn’t wash, pointing out the provision was adopted last December.

“The county knew about the requirement, and chose to ignore it,” Fontes told the justices through Assistant Attorney General Kara Karlson who is representing his office.

And what’s worse, he said, is that allowing Pinal County to avoid the law this year means that some of its voters will have their ballots ignored even as voters in similar situations in the state’s other 14 counties will have their votes counted.

“The county’s wrongful actions means that an Apache Junction voter who lives in Maricopa County can cast a ballot that will be counted, regardless of where it is cast, but the same voter who lives in the part of Apache Junction in Pinal County will not be provided with the correct ballot and will be entirely disenfranchised,” Fontes told the justices. “This court should not let the county create an equal protection violation by willfully ignoring the law.”

A quick ruling is anticipated given the election is now less than two weeks away.

At the center of the fight are 2023 changes to the Elections Procedures Manual. They require counties to provide voters who show up at the wrong precinct a chance to cast a ballot for the precinct for which they have been assigned. That means a ballot that has the issues for that specific precinct, like legislators, justices of the peace and school board members.

What makes this possible is technology and the requirement for counties to have an “accessible voting device” at all precincts.

These devices allow those with certain disabilities to cast their own ballots, with options including touch screen, large print and more. Then the device prints out a voted ballot which can then be tabulated.

Fontes points out that, by definition, every precinct has to have such a device which has at least the races for that precinct.

But he said those devices can be programmed with the choices from all precincts. Fontes said these out-of-precinct ballots then can be handled as “provisional ballots” – with people getting their votes counted once it is later verified they are in fact registered to vote in the county.

The problem, he told the high court, is that while Neal agreed what the county was doing was illegal, she refused to order the recorder and the supervisors to comply now.

“Simply put, the defendants have no discretion to ignore the requirements in the Elections Procedures Manual,” Fontes said. In fact, he said, the trial judge actually ruled that the defendants were aware of the requirements but “knowingly and voluntarily elected not to implement it.”

Where Neal went wrong, the secretary said, was not ordering immediate compliance.

The issue, Fontes said, is more than an academic question. He said the county has admitted that there will be some voters who arrive at the wrong voting location to cast their ballot on election day.

“In Pinal County – and only Pinal County – this discrete group of in-person voters who arrive at the incorrect voting location on election day will be disenfranchised even though the county has the ability to provide that voter the correct ballot style,” he said. “Voters should not suffer because the county refuses to do its duty.”

Fontes also sniffed at the arguments by the county that it just can’t be done.

“Public officials should not have to be compelled to follow the law,” he said.

“All people must follow the law, even if they disagree with it,” Fontes continued. “And government bodies are limited to the authority granted to them by the law.”

And what of the extra work?

“To the extend there is any burden on the county that is in excess of the regular burdens of administering an election, they are burdens that the county caused by refusing to comply with the Elections Procedures Manual, and is compounding by refusing to comply with the law despite the superior court finding that the county is an inexcusable violation of the law,” he said.

Anyway, Fontes said, what the law requires – and what he wants the Supreme Court to order to be done – will not require significantly more processing “as the county already trains provisional clerks, and stations a provisional clerk at each polling place.”

And there’s something else.

He said allowing Pinal County to refuse to tally the out-of-precinct votes of its residents means they will be treated different from every other voter in Arizona, violating the Arizona Constitution. Fontes said this unequal treatment actually could form the basis for litigation by those who have lost the election.

“No individual county should be allowed to undermine confidence in the entire election process because that county believes its method – which does not comply with the law – is nonetheless a better policy choice,” he said. “The county should not be permitted to ignore the requirement, disenfranchise an identifiable class of in-person election day voters, and sow further confusion about Arizona’s election system.”

Parties target pair of swing districts in bid to flip legislature

In two swing districts of the state with bipartisan representation, Republicans and Democrats are seeking legislative majorities by completely flipping districts they have voter advantage in.

Republicans are heavily focusing on winning all three seats in Legislative District 16, which covers a small part of south Maricopa County, Pinal County, and Pima County. With a 3.6% vote spread favoring Republicans, they are attempting to take the House seat occupied by Rep. Keith Seaman, D-Casa Grande.

Seaman, the only Democrat running for the House in the district as a single-shot candidate, won in 2022 by just over half a percent of votes, finishing ahead of Republican Rob Hudelson by more than 600 votes.

“We give (voters) something new to think about and something to vote for,” Seaman said.

House Majority Whip Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, and Republican Chris Lopez are running against Seaman.

Martinez is a strong incumbent as one of the leaders of the House GOP caucus. She got the most votes in the 2022 House race and finished with more than 4% of votes ahead of Seaman.

Lopez is a small business owner in Casa Grande running on the same ticket as Martinez and Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge.

Lopez lists the border, increasing teacher pay, and defending the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program as some of his top issues on his campaign website. He did not respond to an interview request from The Arizona Capitol Times.

He specifically cites Democrats not supporting a bill that would have increased teacher pay during the 2023 legislative session. The measure, House Bill 2800, proposed to give Arizona teachers a $10,000 raise over a two-year period but Democrats because the bill offered a one-time funding increase and it didn’t include other classroom support staff.

Seaman said increasing pay for school staff was one of his top priorities, but he wanted to ensure the legislature finds an equitable solution.

“We’re seeing teachers leaving and the number one reason they leave the schools, in the middle of the year too, is because they can’t live on those salaries and they have too many kids in the room. They may not have a paraprofessional,” Seaman said.

Republicans are targeting Seaman heavily in an attempt to get some breathing room with their one-seat majority in the House. The Republican State Leadership Committee recently begun running ads in the district as part of its “Left’s Most Wanted” campaign, attacking Seaman for voting against SB1027 in 2023, which would have increased the penalties to fentanyl manufacturers or dealers if the drug they transferred caused injury to a minor.

Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the bill and wrote in her veto measure that she felt it undermined the state’s “Good Samaritan Law.” Other Democrats expressed concerns that the bill would prevent people from contacting emergency services in overdose situations out of fears they would be criminally charged.

“Arizonans deserve to have legislators who will protect their best interests and not obstruct a commonsense agenda,” RSLC spokesperson Stephanie Rivera said in a statement about the committee’s ad campaign.

Republican consultant Tyler Montague said picking up both seats in LD16 would be significant for the GOP because it might offset a loss in another district.

“If they’re going to cling to the legislature, they have to sneak a seat or two,” Montague said.

One such district could be Legislative District 23, where incumbent Rep. Michele Pena, R-Yuma, is running as the Republican single shot candidate in a district that the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has 17% vote spread favoring Democrats and is considered a non-competitive district.

Despite the commission’s analysis, Pena was able to pick up a win for the GOP that gave Republicans a majority in the House when she beat Democrat Jesus Lugo Jr. by more than 4% of votes in 2022.

Even before Pena’s win, parts of the district were represented by former Republican state Rep. Joel John before the state was redistricted.

LD23 is in the southeast region of the state and covers Maricopa County, Pima County, Pinal County and Yuma County. Its House top vote getter in 2022 was Rep. Mariana Sandoval, D-Goodyear, who received about 2.5% more votes than Pena.

Pena’s challenger is Democrat Matias Rosales, a San Luis city councilman who’s served on the council for the last 12 years.

Rosales was unavailable for comment before the Arizona Capitol Times deadline but recently criticized Pena on a Sept. 5 Clean Elections Commission discussion for voting in support of Prop. 138, a ballot referral that would allow employers to pay tipped workers up to 25% less than the minimum hourly wage if the employer can guarantee a worker’s tips are at least $2 more than the minimum wage hourly earnings.

“We need to work to expand economic opportunities here in our state and create good paying jobs,” Rosales said.

Pena didn’t respond to the Arizona Capitol Times interview request. She lists the state’s ESA program as one of her top priorities. In 2023, she also sponsored legislation to extend the expiration date for chicken eggs, which she says on her website have created obstacles for rural communities and farmers.

Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, attempted to help Pena defend her seat on Wednesday by sharing a complaint San Luis Mayor Nieves Riedel had previously filed with Attorney General Kris Mayes accusing Rosales of mishandling public funds for Greater Yuma Port Authority on social media.

Rosales has been a board member of the authority for the last decade and Riedel accused Rosales of conflict of interest and public monies violations by influencing the authority into renting office space from his real estate firm Realty One.

The complaint was submitted to the attorney general’s office on June 2, 2023. Attorney General Communications Director Richie Taylor confirmed to the Arizona Capitol Times that Mayes’ office investigated and found no violations on Feb. 28.

Despite no violations, Kolodin still shared the complaint less than a month away from the Nov. 5 general election in a race that will be pivotal in deciding which party controls the House.

“Though Mr. Rosales’ conduct may constitute a felony … he, like every American, is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” Kolodin wrote in his post on X. “Regardless, however, of whether his actions rise to the level of criminal conduct, voters should carefully weigh whether his conflicts of interests allow him to faithfully serve the best interests of the people.”

Expected Pinal County ruling could affect how many ballots are rejected in Arizona’s November election

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

A Pinal County judge is set to decide a case Friday that could affect the number of ballots rejected in the county during this year’s presidential election.

The judge heard arguments Thursday in a dispute between Pinal officials and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office over a new rule he added to the state’s Election Procedures Manual involving how the county should respond when a voter shows up to vote at the wrong location.

Fontes’ office sued Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis and the county supervisors after learning that the county doesn’t plan to follow the rule.

At an emergency hearing in Pinal County Superior Court, the lawyer representing Fontes’ office, Assistant Attorney General Kara Karlson, told the judge that the rule was meant to protect voters from having their ballots rejected in Pinal County for a reason that couldn’t be cause for rejection elsewhere in the state.

The dispute arises out of the way Pinal County runs its elections.

Most Arizona counties have switched to a vote center model, in which voters can cast their ballots anywhere in their county. Pinal County is one of a few counties that still use a precinct-based model, where voters are assigned a specific voting location near where they live.

In Pinal County, if a voter tries to vote at a polling place in the wrong precinct — where their name is not on the rolls — the poll worker will tell them so, but allow the voter to cast a provisional ballot at that location if the voter believes there’s been a mistake. If a voter ends up having voted in the wrong place, that provisional ballot is rejected.

Hundreds of voters have their ballots rejected in the county for this reason in each election, according to county data — including 274 in November 2020 and 235 in November 2022.

Fontes’ new rule is aimed at providing all voters access to the correct ballot for their precinct. It requires counties like Pinal that use the precinct system to set up their accessible voting devices — large computers that are mostly used by voters with disabilities or language barriers — to contain every ballot style, for every precinct. If a voter shows up to the wrong location, the poll workers must permit the voter to use that device to cast the correct ballot style for their precinct, rather than a provisional ballot.

The Pinal County Recorder’s Office argues that by requiring accessible machines to be set up this way, Fontes’ office is effectively forcing counties to adopt a vote center model, whereas state law allows counties to choose between the vote center and precinct models.

Pinal County has been reluctant to adopt a vote center model for a number of reasons, including concerns about connecting voter rolls to the internet.

It appears other counties besides Pinal are going along with the new rule. That’s why Karlson is arguing that if the court doesn’t force Pinal County to comply, its voters will be treated differently than those in the rest of the state.

“If we are in an election contest and there are votes that were counted in all 14 other counties, but they weren’t counted in Pinal County, even though they could have been or should have been, that is going to cause major, major problems in Arizona elections,” Karlson said. “And how can we avoid that? The voter is the one that is going to pay the penalty here.”

The judge said she would rule sometime Friday, but maybe not until late.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org .

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Disruptions as Arizona counties certify primary election may signal what’s to come in November

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The banging sound from Chairman Mike Goodman’s gavel filled the boardroom at a Pinal County supervisors meeting Monday, but Kevin Cavanaugh ignored it.

Cavanaugh, a Republican supervisor who lost his bid for sheriff, wanted the public to hear his unproven claims of cheating in the county’s primary election, which was up for certification at the meeting.

No matter how many times Goodman tried to stop him, Cavanaugh kept talking: “Five other candidates have expressed that very strange levels of —.” BANG! BANG! “Candidates came to me and —.”

Finally, Goodman asked a staff member: “Can you turn off his mic?”

Voting in Arizona’s July 30 primary went smoothly around the state, with no major technical or logistical issues, according to observers from both major political parties, elected officials, and candidates. But there were disruptions Monday in two of the state’s largest counties, as their boards of supervisors moved to certify the results.

In Pinal, Cavanaugh voted “aye under duress” to certify the results, later explaining that he felt forced to do so even though he doesn’t believe the results were accurate, including in the sheriff’s race, which he lost by a 2-to-1 margin. And in Maricopa, the epicenter of election conspiracy theories since 2020, residents yelled at the supervisors from the podium during the public comment period, with one saying she had more faith in Russia’s elections because “Maricopa is a joke.”

The Republican-led boards in both counties ultimately voted unanimously to certify the results, but the disruptions may be a sign of what is to come in November.

GOP supervisors and candidates across the state have sought to challenge the results of the last two statewide general elections, and if Donald Trump and Kari Lake — two candidates who still refuse to acknowledge their past election losses — lose their 2024 races for president and U.S. Senate, respectively, there’s a good chance it will happen again. The question is how far their supporters will be willing, or able, to go to protest the results, and whether new strategies, such as a vote “under duress” will come into play.

After watching the conflict at Pinal County’s meeting, Republican County Attorney Kent Volkmer said Cavanaugh’s “under duress” vote concerned him. He said that if that vote had been the deciding vote on whether to certify the results, he probably would have recommended another vote on the matter.

“Duress means it’s not a vote of your own accord,” Volkmer said.

Pinal supervisor calls certification meeting a ‘clown show’

Cavanaugh’s objections at the supervisors meeting came after he told Votebeat that he filed a complaint asking the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to investigate the county’s election results, including his loss to Ross Teeple in the Republican primary for sheriff.

Cavanaugh said he has identified what he believes to be a suspicious pattern in the results that signal cheating. But data analysts who reviewed the results say that by itself, the pattern he identified doesn’t indicate a problem with the results. County officials and observers from both major political parties say they believe the results are accurate.

Before the vote, Volkmer reminded the supervisors of their duty under state law to certify the results by the deadline, which was Monday.

In Arizona, supervisors can postpone the certification only if some results are missing. That was not the case in this election. Any challenges to the results, under state law, have to be filed in court shortly after the secretary of state certifies the statewide results.

The vote to certify is “not the board saying we support, we believe this is correct,” Volkmer said. “You may feel that way, but that’s not what the canvass is for.”

When Cavanaugh then tried to bring up his concerns about the results, Goodman repeatedly attempted to shut him down. When Cavanaugh voted “aye under duress,” Goodman said, “It’s still an aye.”

It’s not the first time a supervisor in Arizona has voted to certify an election “under duress.” In November 2022, in Mohave County, two Republican supervisors did the same.

Like Cavanaugh, the supervisors there said they did so after being warned that they could be prosecuted for not voting yes. Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation after two Republican supervisors in Cochise County delayed the certification of the county’s midterm election results. The trial date for that case will be set in October.

In Pinal County, Republican Supervisor Stephen Miller said on the dais after the vote that the discussion had been a “shameful situation.”

“It’s a clown show,” he said. “We have one duty to canvass these votes, and we can’t hardly get it done. Accusations that were false, that are horrible —.”

Cavanaugh cut him off there. Miller said they probably should adjourn “before it gets really out of hand.”

Goodman declined to let Cavanaugh explain his vote and adjourned the meeting.

After the meeting, Kirk Fiehler, first vice chair of the Pinal County Republican Committee, said he was confident in the election results after observing ballot counting the day after the election.

Lisa Sanor, chair of the Pinal County Democrats, said the same. She was planning to speak at the meeting to thank officials for a fair election. But public comment was not allowed.

“You, Mr. Cavanaugh, are doing your constituents a dangerous disservice if you keep perpetuating this false narrative,” she wrote in her undelivered comments, which she shared with Votebeat. “It undermines the trust in our electoral process and can lead to voter apathy, which is a threat to our democracy.”

Crowd noise disrupts Maricopa County meeting

In Maricopa County earlier Monday, election directors Scott Jarrett and Rey Valenzuela spent an hour explaining to the supervisors and audience all of the bipartisan checks and balances that were in place as they conducted the primary election.

Jarrett said there were no significant technological issues at the polls, and there was a mostly even split of Republican and Democratic poll workers.

It appeared they tried to get ahead of some questions as they explained certain procedures, such as a post-election hand-count audit of certain ballots that showed the machines worked accurately.

Still, some in the crowd sneered and laughed as the officials spoke.

The supervisors had to routinely pause and ask the audience members to stop talking among themselves. At one point, a county attorney, Tom Liddy, yelled back at a resident who appeared to be intentionally talking loudly on her cellphone behind him.

Interruptions like this have become common at the supervisors’ meetings in the last year, and the supervisors have added security walls and guards. It’s become even more tense than it was when supervisors voted to certify their general elections in 2020 and 2022, when protesters filled the auditoriums.

The supervisors have continuously defended the county’s election system, and did so again on Monday as public comment began. About 10 people told the supervisors not to certify the election.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you say how good of an election it was,” said one speaker, who didn’t present any evidence of mistakes or wrongdoing. “It wasn’t a good election.”

Barbara Hiatt, wife of Don Hiatt, who lost his bid in the Republican primary for county recorder, said she believed other countries, including Russia, had gotten rid of machines to count ballots, and said that Maricopa County should too, “because of the fraud that takes place.” Russia had online voting in its last presidential election, according to the Moscow Times.

Supervisor Thomas Galvin asked Barbara Hiatt if she trusted Russian’s elections more than those in the U.S. “At this point, I do,” she replied.

Just before voting to approve the results, Galvin said the 740,000 ballots cast in the election and the hundreds of candidates who ran for offices reflect “their faith in our system.”

As the supervisors voted unanimously yes, a woman walked up to the podium and tried to argue with them.

With the vote finished, and just as the woman began to yell, Chairman Jack Sellers called out: “This meeting is adjourned.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Pinal County supervisor asks attorney general to investigate primary election results

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

A Pinal County supervisor who lost his bid for sheriff is asking the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to investigate the county’s primary election results, claiming that he has identified a suspicious pattern that signals they are inaccurate.

The candidate, Republican Kevin Cavanaugh, provided Votebeat with his analysis and said he believes the data shows “strong evidence that cheating has occurred.”

But two independent analysts who reviewed it said it is not necessarily proof of malfeasance or error. And officials in the county, located just southeast of Maricopa County, say they are confident the election went smoothly.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that it received a complaint from Cavanaugh, but said the office could not confirm whether they will investigate.

Cavanaugh said he will raise concerns about the results when the supervisors meet Monday to certify the election results.

Voting differed from the usual pattern, supervisor says

The pattern Cavanaugh says he identified concerns the similarities between the results from early ballots and election day ballots, in at least a handful of local races. Typically, there’s a difference between the way these two groups of voters vote: In recent elections, for example, Arizona Republicans have been more likely than Democrats to vote in person on the day of the election. Cavanaugh said that in the local races he looked at, the results were nearly identical between the two groups, which he claims is a sign that something went wrong.

But two Arizona election data analysts who reviewed Cavanaugh’s analysis at Votebeat’s request — Benny White, a Republican, and Sam Almy, a Democrat — say that the voting patterns he appears to have identified do not necessarily signal fraud or mistakes. Many factors contribute to how and why voters vote, they said, and voter behavior has been increasingly unpredictable in recent elections.

“It’s a curious matter, sure, and it’s historically very interesting” that this pattern defies other recent voting patterns, White said. “But to me, that’s all it is — it’s just a curiosity.”

County Attorney Kent Volkmer, also a Republican, said he agrees with Cavanaugh that the pattern is strange. But Volkmer also said that after checking with election officials about how they conducted the election and the checks and balances that were in place, he is confident in the results.

“They were able to explain, certainly to my satisfaction, that there was nothing untoward, there is nothing hanky, there is nothing suspicious about this election,” Volkmer said.

Recorder Dana Lewis, a Republican who runs the county’s elections, said she, too, is confident the results are accurate for many reasons, including that the testing done before and after the election, as well as a hand-count audit her office completed, show the machines were programmed to work accurately. She also cited confirmation from observers from all major political parties that everything went well.

She said she and her team “will not be distracted by efforts of those who trade in the well-worn and ridiculous narrative that election staff are somehow influencing the outcome of a race in a facility built for transparency and staff dedicated to the accuracy of the outcomes.”

County attorney sees benefit of expanded hand count

Lewis said this election in the county went much better than the county’s midterm elections, further buoying her confidence in the results.

In November 2022, the county failed to initially count hundreds of votes after workers made several mistakes while tabulating ballots. A statewide recount caught the problems, and the final results were updated. The county has since moved into a new building, developed new processes to stay more organized, and hired new people.

Cavanaugh has long been a critic of the county’s elections department, and Lewis. He filed a notice in court earlier this year, for example, saying he was preparing to sue Lewis for defamation and claiming the county hadn’t properly looked into whistleblower claims. The county attorney later said he found the whistleblower’s claims meritless.

The Cavanaugh team’s analysis of the latest results show that in the races for county sheriff, attorney, assessor, and two supervisor districts, the election day and early votes for those candidates lined up within 1 percentage point of each other. In his race, for example, he got 31.0% of early votes and 30.1% of election day votes.

He called this “strange” considering that when he looked at past primary election results in these races, there was often a larger difference between a candidate’s share of the early vote and election day vote.

Volkmer said that he noticed this pattern as the results in his race were coming in, and they surprised him, too. He lost his primary election to an ally of Cavanaugh’s, Brad Miller.

“It never changed from initial drop, earlies, to late earlies,” Volkmer said. “I was surprised personally that I didn’t make up ground.”

Still, Volkmer said he and his campaign team accepted the results, and thought the pattern might have to do with the low turnout in the election.

Cavanaugh said he is interested in asking a court to order an expanded hand count of these specific races — but not before the supervisors certify the results on Monday.

Arizona law requires a hand-count audit of a select number of ballots after each election. But that law prescribes the counting of only certain races and only a certain number or percentage of ballots. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in October that counties cannot expand their hand-count audit in a way that isn’t outlined in state law.

Volkmer said he believes that an expanded hand count could improve voter confidence in the results.

Democratic Chair Lisa Sanor, who observed the machine testing and vote counting on the night of the election, said she was confident in the results and saw nothing suspicious that night.

But after talking to Cavanaugh, she said she agrees that a hand count of the races he identified would put the issue to rest.

“For transparency reasons, right?” she said. “To squish it.”

Checks and balances include testing and live cameras

Lewis said she was disappointed and frustrated by Cavanaugh’s claims. She said both the county’s and the secretary of state’s logic and accuracy tests on the machines showed they were working 100% accurately.

The county tabulates ballots with machines that are not connected to the internet, under 24-hour security cameras that are live streamed on the county’s website. There are strict rules on who can go in and out of the tabulation room, and political party observers are present at all times.

Almy and White cautioned against drawing conclusions based on one pattern in one set of data. Other data, such as the cast-vote record, White said, could help explain the unusual pattern. But Arizona counties do not currently provide access to that database.

Plus, Almy said, the difference in votes that sometimes emerges between early voting and election day voting is more common in high-profile and statewide races. In local races with low turnout, he said, voter behavior can be explained more by looking at the particular candidates and campaigns.

“A lot of this has to do with where they are (located) on the ballot,” Almy said.

And while these kinds of trends might once have been more predictable, since 2020, misinformation about the insecurity of voting by mail along with COVID-19 threw off voting patterns in major statewide elections, White and Almy both noted.

“It’s easy to look at one set of figures, and jump to conclusions,” White said. “But that’s not necessarily the whole story.”