Arizona Alliance Threatens Legal Action Over Cochise County Certification Delay
WASHINGTON D.C. — On Tuesday, Nov. 22, the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans (“the Alliance”) and an Arizona voter sent a letter to the Cochise County Board of Supervisors regarding the board’s decision to “postpone canvassing the election results to November 28, 2022.” On Nov. 18, the board of supervisors in Cochise County — a red, rural county in Arizona — voted to delay canvassing (meaning tabulating, double checking and transmitting results to the state) the county’s midterm election results based on conspiratorial beliefs about voting machines. The letter rejects the voting machine conspiracies, pointing out that the “Secretary of State’s office has already provided written proof of the accreditation of the laboratories that tested and certified the voting equipment used in Cochise County. ” The attorneys representing the Alliance and the voter warn that if the Cochise County board “refuses to perform its mandatory statutory duty to accept and canvass the election results by November 28, 2022,” they will take “swift legal action.”
The letter details Cochise County’s long and tenuous history of “baseless effort[s] to call into question the results of the 2022” midterm elections. The letter reminds the board that certifying the results of the election is “mandatory, not discretionary: the Board ‘must canvass’ the election results.” This letter follows one sent on Monday, Nov. 21 by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) threatening legal action if the county refuses to certify its results by the Nov. 28 deadline.