Judge denies Arizona AG's election changes

FPI / June 21, 2022

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's proposal for changes to election rules for the 2022 midterms has been denied as he waited too long to submit them, a judge has ruled.

On June 17, Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper denied Brnovich’s request to ask Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to improve the election procedure manual for the 2022 elections.

“At this point in the game, there is no mechanism for the Court to assist the parties in constructing an EMP which complies with [the law] within the timelines of the statute,” Napper wrote in the ruling. “The Complaint was filed far too late for this to occur without disrupting elections that have already begun.”

Brnovich had first filed a complaint against Hobbs in April, alleging that Hobbs refused to make changes in the elections procedures manual and didn’t provide him with a “legally-compliant” election procedures manual by Oct. 1, 2021, as required by Arizona state law.

“This case is about the Secretary’s ongoing violation of her mandatory statutory duty to promulgate an Elections Procedures Manual (“EPM”) for the 2022 election cycle,” reads Brnovich’s court filing dated April 21. “To cure that ongoing violation, Plaintiffs are entitled to special action relief ordering the Secretary to comply with the mandatory requirement of providing a legally-compliant EPM to the AG and Governor for approval.”

Brnovich asked the court to order Hobbs to amend the election procedures manual by adding election integrity measures, including prohibiting unstaffed drop boxes, requiring signature verification for non-mailed early ballots, and preserving the requirement that voters vote in their precinct, according to a June 10 statement on the AG’s website.

Critics noted that Brnovich could have filed the complaint much sooner given that the Maricopa County election audit, which reported massive evidence of election law violations and hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots in the 2020 election, was completed in September 2021.

Former President Donald Trump asked in March: “When is the Attorney General of Arizona going to rule on all of the Election Fraud and large-scale Election Irregularities that wait before him?”

Free Press International