Arizona county certifies election results following order from judge

An Arizona county certified its midterm election results Thursday after a judge ruled that Republican supervisors had broken the law when they refused to sign off on the vote count by this week’s deadline.

Two Republicans on Cochise County’s three-member board of supervisors had said they weren’t satisfied that the machines used to tabulate ballots were properly certified for use in elections. 

Federal and state election officials have said that they were. 

On Monday, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs filed suit — a local voter and a group of retirees did as well — asking the judge to make the supervisors certify the election.

GOV-ELECT AND SECRETARY OF STATE KATIE HOBBS SUES ARIZONA COUNTY FOR NOT CERTIFYING ELECTION RESULTS

Hobbs said she is required to hold the statewide certification Dec. 5 and, by law, can delay it only until Dec. 8.

Judge Casey McGinley ordered the supervisors on Thursday to convene within 90 minutes and to approve the election canvass by the end of the day.

One Republican supervisor reportedly skipped the meeting. 

The vote allows the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled Monday.

The board members represented themselves in court because the elected county attorney refused to handle the cases, saying that they had acted illegally.

AZ COUNTY BOARD MEMBERS REFUSE TO CERTIFY ELECTION RESULTS

Supervisor Ann English, the board’s only Democrat, later urged McGinley to order the board to immediately certify the election and not wait another day, accusing Crosby of trying to stage a “smackdown between the secretary of state and the election deniers” in a Friday meeting.

Days before the Nov. 8 election, the supervisors abandoned plans to hand count all ballots, which the court said would be illegal, but demanded last week that Hobbs prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results. 

On Monday, they said they wanted to hear again about those concerns before voting on certification, and the Friday meeting is scheduled for that purpose.

 

Hobbs, a Democrat elected governor in November, had warned that she may have to certify statewide results without numbers from Cochise County if they weren’t received on time.

Fox News’ Aubrie Spady, Thomas Phippen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.