Voter Fraud Unit in Arizona Will Shift Focus to Voter Rights

Arizona’s new Democratic legal professional normal, Kris Mayes, is redirecting an election integrity unit her Republican predecessor created, focusing its work as a substitute on addressing voter suppression. The shift by Ms. Mayes is considered one of her first acts since she took workplace this month.

The unit’s former chief, Jennifer Wright, in the meantime, has joined a authorized effort to invalidate Ms. Mayes’s slim victory within the November election.

“Below my predecessor’s administration, the election integrity unit searched extensively for voter fraud and located scant proof of it occurring in Arizona,” Ms. Mayes mentioned in an announcement supplied by her workplace on Monday. “That’s as a result of situations of voter fraud are exceedingly uncommon.”

The previous legal professional normal, Mark Brnovich, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate final 12 months, created the workplace to analyze voter fraud complaints in Arizona, a battleground state.

Ms. Mayes mentioned within the assertion that she didn’t share the priorities of Mr. Brnovich, whom she described as being preoccupied with voter fraud regardless of remoted circumstances. The workplace has 5 pending voter fraud investigations, as of late October, and a spokesman for Ms. Mayes mentioned on Monday that there was no plan but for the right way to proceed with them.

Mr. Brnovich didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Republicans in Arizona have amplified conspiracy theories and fraud claims because the 2020 election and the midterms final 12 months, when the legal professional normal’s race ended with a recount that was determined by 280 votes.

Ms. Mayes mentioned that defending voting entry and limiting voter suppression can be on the forefront of her administration.

“I may even use this unit to guard elections officers, election volunteers and ballot staff in opposition to threats of violence and in opposition to interference in our elections,” she mentioned. As well as, the unit will search to defend vote-by-mail guidelines, which she mentioned “90 % of Arizonans take pleasure in and in lots of circumstances depend upon.”

Ms. Wright, a former assistant legal professional normal who had led the election integrity unit for Mr. Brnovich, introduced final week that she had begun a brand new position as a lawyer for Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican who misplaced to Ms. Mayes and is planning to proceed his authorized efforts to attempt to overturn the election.

Ms. Wright referred questions on Monday about her new position to the marketing campaign of Mr. Hamadeh, who was a part of a gaggle of distinguished election deniers searching for statewide workplace in Arizona throughout the midterms.

In December, his authorized efforts to overturn his election loss had been dismissed in court docket and a recount confirmed his defeat. The result dealt one other blow to Arizona Republicans who entered the midterms with heightened expectations for victory, seizing on excessive inflation and President Biden’s flagging job approval numbers. As an alternative, Democrats received a lot of the marquee statewide places of work.

Election deniers pointed to technical glitches on Election Day, which disrupted some poll counting in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to gasoline conspiracy theories and baseless claims. In addition they tried to grab on the undercounting of 500 ballots in Pinal County, exterior Phoenix, which officers attributed to human error and which has been the idea of Mr. Hamadeh’s newest efforts to overturn the election.

“Not solely do I consider Abe is true, however I additionally consider that he shall be profitable in his election contest, and that’s the reason I’ve joined this struggle,” Ms. Wright mentioned in an announcement supplied by Mr. Hamadeh’s marketing campaign. “I sit up for getting Kris Mayes out of the workplace she ought to have by no means occupied within the first place.”

In Arizona, a cauldron of election denialism, Mr. Brnovich represented considerably of an enigma, defending the state’s vote rely after the 2020 presidential election. His stance drew the ire of former President Donald J. Trump, who sharply criticized Mr. Brnovich final June and endorsed Mr. Brnovich’s Republican opponent, Blake Masters, who received the Senate major however misplaced within the normal election.

However Mr. Brnovich has additionally urged that the 2020 election revealed “severe vulnerabilities” within the electoral system and mentioned cryptically on the previous Trump aide Stephen Okay. Bannon’s podcast final spring, “I believe everyone knows what occurred in 2020.”