GOP lawmakers call on AZ attorney general to probe Pima recorder over 2024 election

Two Republican state lawmakers have asked Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to open an investigation into Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly’s handling of the 2024 election and related issues.

Rep. Rachel Jones and Rep. Teresa Martinez, Republicans who both represent districts that include parts of Pima and Pinal counties, asked Mayes to look into the Recorder’s Office’s decision to close down an online portal that allowed voters to request early ballots, as well as unfounded allegations on social media that the Recorder’s Office improperly handled early ballots that were undeliverable by the U.S. Post Service because the voters had moved.

The Tucson Sentinel’s reporting revealed that undeliverable ballots are destroyed by USPS, and not returned to elections officials.

The GOP legislators also asked Mayes to investigate whether the Recorder’s Office had improperly registered felons who were ineligible to vote when they had a voter-registration drive in Pima County Jail.

The lawmakers did not file the complaint under the authority of SB 1487, the informal name of a statute which obligates the attorney general to investigate whether an ordinance is in violation of state law, and Martinez said she was skeptical that Mayes, an elected Democrat, would pursue an investigation.

“My faith in Kris Mayes is not that high,” Martinez said.

She added that she and Jones would be filing a public records request this week to further examine communications regarding the issues they raised in their letter.

Recorder’s Office spokesperson Michael Truelsen said Cázares-Kelly did not wish to comment on lawmakers’ call for an investigation.

Chief Deputy Recorder Marion Chubon told the Sentinel in October that she made the decision to shut down the portal on Saturday, Oct. 19. about a week before the Oct. 25 deadline to request a ballot, and cancel about 6,000 requests for early ballots.

She said the portal was closed down because it became overwhelmed with requests for early ballots and the recorder’s staff would not have had time to fulfill them. Many of the requests were from voters who had already requested ballots but had not received them through the mail because of a delay in sending ballots to voters.

All of the affected voters who had not submitted duplicate requests were sent an email notifying them that their request had been canceled and advising them to instead call the office to request a ballot.

Cázares-Kelly said voters had multiple ways to cast early ballots after the online portal closed, including calling her office to request one or visiting one of the early voting sites that were set up around town. They also had the option of voting on Election Day.

“I am confident that most of the voters who requested a ballot using our online form either received their already queued ballots, voted early in person, updated their addresses online or successfully requested a mail ballot,” Cázares-Kelly said in a report before she answered questions regarding the incident at an Nov. 19 Board of Supervisors meeting.

She said that many requests to the office were duplicates or from Pima County residents who were not eligible to vote for various reasons.

Of the 20,465 early ballots requests that were processed by her office before the online portal was closed, 12,645 of them were invalid requests because those requesting ballots had already voted, had made a duplicate request, were not registered to vote or had another problem, such as an outdated address, according to Cázares-Kelly.

Cázares-Kelly told supervisors that the office was preparing a post-election review and planned to improve the portal so that in future elections, it would be easier to cross-reference whether a voter was making a duplicate request.

Supervisors voted against a motion to have Mayes or a county attorney outside of Pima County investigate the closing of the portal, with only Republican Steve Christy supporting it.

Martinez said Cázares-Kelly’s explanation suggested the Democratic recorder was ill-equipped to do the job of handling early ballot requests.

“Essentially, what she is saying is that she cannot do her job because she is overwhelmed, even though she has the ability to hire temporary staff and have them work overtime,” Martinez told the Sentinel.

The email to voters, Martinez added, was akin to saying: “Come back later, when we have our shit together.”

She likened it to a long line at a store.

“You don’t tell those people, ‘I’m sorry, put your stuff back. Come back when we can handle the line.’ That doesn’t happen,” Martinez said. “It sounds like it’s just like Christmas. Christmas comes every year at the exact same time, and retailers know that they have to either bulk up staff, make sure to hire temporary staff, make sure everything is ready to go so that they can handle the onslaught of Christmas shoppers that are going to come into their store, and that’s what the Pima County Recorder should have done. To my knowledge, no other county recorder in the state of Arizona shut down the portal.”

Unfounded Twitter allegations

Jones and Martinez also asked Mayes to look into how Cázares-Kelly handled mailed ballots that were undeliverable because the voter had moved. By law, the U.S. Postal Service cannot forward a ballot to a new address.

Truelsen told the Sentinel that, in Pima County, the USPS destroys undeliverable ballots and informs the Recorder’s Office about it so they can keep track the ballot’s status.

Neither Arizona law nor the state’s Election Procedures Manual address how undeliverable ballots should be handled, according to JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. Because it’s not laid out in state law, counties “have the discretion to establish their own protocols,” Martin said via email.

“The handling of undeliverable early ballots in Arizona varies,” Martin said. “While some county recorders collaborate with the USPS to have undeliverable ballots returned for processing and destruction per records retention schedules, others may allow the USPS to destroy undeliverable ballots and then notify the Recorder’s Office.”

In October, Jones amplified unfounded claims that election officials were trying to rig the election through the use of early ballots after a former Pima County resident who had recently moved to another state said on Twitter, the social media site that now uses an “X” for a logo, that his wife’s early ballot had been returned to the Recorder’s Office and was awaiting signature verification.

The Recorder’s Office allows voters to track their early ballots via its website and had categorized the ballot as being “in the process of verifying your signature,” followed by a message that advised “please contact our office at 520-724-4309 or 520-724-4330 regarding your signature.”

Cázares-Kelly declined to discuss the matter with the press, but on Twitter, she acknowledged that the office had erred in categorizing the ballots that the USPS had been unable to forward.

Cázares-Kelly tweeted on Oct. 22 that the website’s message was “misleading” and “alarming.”

“We agree,” she wrote. “We made a mistake.”

The language was changed to just show the message: “Please contact our office at 520-724-4330.”

Cázares-Kelly said that instead of crafting better language for the message, she had to spend time “tweeting about this non-story because conspiracy theorists are fishing for outrage. We’re working hard to keep 650K+ voters informed about their most fundamental rights as Americans. We’re following the law & providing info as a courtesy, not a statutory obligation.”

Jones tweeted on Oct. 20 that she believed the episode was evidence of a scheme that involved workers at both the USPS and the Pima County Recorder’s Office using vote-by-mail ballots to rig the election.

“Apparently, they are using absentee ballots that belong to voters who have moved,” Jones wrote. “There is obviously a very well-run plan to have someone at the post office notify someone at the recorder’s office that the change of address has occurred and the ballot is available to immediately be illegally cast.”

Jones, who did not respond to a request for comment from the Tucson Sentinel, has previously made numerous unfounded allegations that Arizona elections are rigged to justify various legislative proposals to restrict voting rights.

While in a pursuit of a second term in heavily Republican Legislative District 17 in last month’s election, Jones trailed Democrat Kevin Volk, who received 2,365 votes more than she did in the race for two seats. Jones’ seatmate, Republican Rep. Cory McGarr, failed in his bid for reelection, losing to Volk by 5,081 votes.

McGarr suggested on a Phoenix-based radio show that his mathematical analysis of the election results suggested it was impossible for him to have lost and called for an investigation into the race – a concern that Jones also supported on Twitter.

“Who thinks it’s possible that a Democrat in a majority R district, during a massive red wave, has the ability to get 100% of the Democrat votes, a fairly good share of the Republican votes, and most of the Independent votes, in an AZ legislative race?” Jones tweeted on Nov. 8.

On Nov. 9, she tweeted a demand for a Department of Justice investigation into Pima County’s election results.

“Donald Trump said people would be going to jail this time,” Jones wrote. “We need the DOJ to investigate Pima County!!!”

Martinez said she did not believe that there was such a scheme afoot to use early ballots to rig the election but she was looking forward to reviewing the Pima County Recorder’s Office’s response to her coming public-records request.

Concerns about jailhouse voter registration drives

In their letter to Mayes, Jones and Martinez also said the Cázares-Kelly had “essentially facilitated illegal voting through a reckless voter-registration inmate program.”

Cázares-Kelly’s office has run voting registration drives at the Pima County Jail.

Martinez said she was OK with allowing people people who are awaiting trial or serving time in Pima County Jail to register to vote, but she didn’t think Cázares-Kelly had sufficient safeguards in place to avoid allowing felons to register.

“Certainly, if you are incarcerated and you’re a felon, you should not be voting,” Martinez said. “If you are incarcerated for a DUI, you are not a felon, you should absolutely vote if you choose to. However, we need to have that on lockdown. We need to make sure that all the I’s are dotted and all our T’s are crossed, so that the people who are voting are eligible to vote and able to vote.”

On a monthly basis, county clerks of the superior courts across Arizona are required by law to deliver lists of those convicted of felonies to the Arizona Secretary of State, who then informs county recorders to remove them from the voting rolls.

Martinez said she was concerned that if a county recorder registers someone to vote while they are in jail awaiting trial, they could possibly cast a ballot in between the time they are convicted of a felony and the time their conviction is reported to the county recorder.

Martinez said that if a felon votes after losing the right to do, the felon is the one breaking the law and who would potentially face criminal charges. But she added that they might think they can vote if they registered while awaiting trial in jail.

“I have found that not everybody has a full understanding of being able to register or not, what you’re able to do and what you’re not able to do, because there are lots of people who try to register to vote who are not eligible to for one reason or another,” Martinez said. “So I think that we need to do a better job on educating the general public as to who can vote and who cannot vote. … People who are incarcerated, I don’t know their level of education on the importance of voting. People who are incarcerated are at a low point in their life. Whether it’s DUI, whether it’s a robbery, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s domestic violence, whether it’s murder, they are not at the high point of their life. So they may not be in the right mind of thinking of whether or not they’re eligible to vote or not.”