Arizona’s Election Debacle Shows That Local Officials Matter

Earlier this month, Arizona’s primary elections made headlines for the wrong reasons – including how long it took to count the ballots and the seemingly disorganized fashion in which the ballot counting occurred. Many Republicans blamed Democratic Secretary of State Kate Hobbs. After all, the secretary of state oversees the counting of ballots, so the buck should stop with her, right?

But as easy as it is to assign blame to one government official, many officials play a role in vote-counting, particularly at the county level. Maricopa County has 4,496,588 people, compared with the 7,276,316 in Arizona overall. Key to winning any statewide election is to win Maricopa County, or at least to make a strong showing there. Democrats had steadily improved their performance in Maricopa over the last decade, changing Arizona into a purple state.

In Maricopa, two main political offices assist in voting, and they deserve scrutiny. A look at the county’s vote counting serves as a reminder that county officials matter in conducting elections.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the right-wing audit known as the “Arizona Audit” focused on Maricopa County. The audit brought rising star Stephen Richer, the newly elected county recorder, under scrutiny. Richer got into many disputes with right-wing figures; he felt that supporters of the audit spread misinformation.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors works in tandem with the county recorder to run elections. The county recorder handles the registration and verification of voters, while the board of supervisors counts the ballots. The board of supervisors also came under fire from some on the right during the audit.

Minutes after polls closed in Arizona, Maricopa County and the state reported a large number of ballots counted, primarily early-voting ballots. This particularly affected the Republican gubernatorial primary, as it gave establishment choice Karrin Taylor Robinson an early lead over base favorite Kari Lake. Robinson’s lead continued late into the night, but Lake took the lead toward morning. No one would call the race because Arizona still had to count 20 percent of the total votes, with much of that coming from Maricopa County. Additional votes trickled in, and Lake’s lead slowly grew.

As Maricopa County sporadically announced more votes, observers grumbled online that this was no way to instill faith in elections. 

Since Richer was so outspoken about the audit, many on the right criticized him. Richer responded that his office handled only the verification of votes, and that the board of county supervisors handles actual tabulation. Richer went on to argue that he had limited ability to verify votes in a timely manner because of the extensive requirements for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.

Some identified holes in his argument. The day after the election, it apparently took a whole day to verify 5,000 votes. Additionally, even if Richer is not to blame, the board of supervisors still took a long time to count votes. And Georgia had counted its votes seamlessly, though it has similar policies to the ones that Richer attributed the delays to. So whether it’s the board of supervisors’ office or the recorder’s office that is responsible, neither acted according to the standards of other counties in comparable positions. Of course, as secretary of state, Hobbs should have closely monitored all counties, especially a crucial one like Maricopa.

Some might consider the situation in Maricopa unique, but other counties throughout the U.S. can see such problems as well – such as Washington’s King County, Illinois’s Cook County, Texas’s Harris County, and Michigan’s Traverse County. Each of these counties have had post-election problems, at least in part due to the local officials that run them. Officials in these problem counties have proposed various solutions such as increasing transparency requirements, or empowering the secretary of state to take over the process. Whatever the best solution may be, it starts with better knowledge and monitoring of individual county officials.

Todd Carney is a lawyer and frequent contributor to RealClearPolitics. He earned his juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. The views in this piece are his alone and do not reflect the views of his employer.