The race for Yuma County Recorder pits a political newcomer against an election denier who says his Arizona community was the model for election schemes that robbed Donald Trump of a second term.
Both candidates claim they’ll restore trust in voting even as county officials took steps to take elections out of the hands of the county recorder's office.
Republican David Lara believes fraud and ballot harvesting schemes are the reason Donald Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election.
Lara bases that belief on decades of fraud and ballot harvesting he says he witnessed first-hand in his home community of San Luis, Arizona.
"People in San Luis were voting not by the candidate or party. They were handing over their ballots to the ballot harvesters. And at that time I found it intriguing how one person could control ten, fifteen, twenty ballots, thirty ballots, " he charges.
Lara says similar tactics were exported to key states in 2020 and it impacted the outcome of the race for President between Biden and Trump.
"Can I prove it? No, I can’t," he says. "Because there’s too many states, it’s too big. But everything that happened, and the way that it happened, the change of the votes in the middle of the night and the system, the way they handled elections is exactly what has been happening in San Luis for twenty years."
Courts have rejected dozens of cases alleging fraud in the 2020 Election and though there was a conviction for ballot harvesting in Yuma County, the case against a former San Luis Mayor and grandmother was based on her collection of four early ballots from her neighbors to deposit in a drop box.
That conviction on ballot harvesting remains the first, and so far, only one since the Arizona Legislature made the practice illegal in 2016.
But Lara is convinced the kind of fraud that led to that conviction is rampant still and is part of the reason people don’t trust election outcomes.
"If the public and the voters do not trust the system, if they do not trust an office they will not participate," he says.
Just how widespread is that that view? Hard to say, but Lara says when he told the chair of the local GOP he was going to challenge incumbent recorder Ric Colwell in the primary, they tried to talk him out of it.
"He tried to discourage me," says Lara, "and he told me if you win their going to take the elections out of the recorder’s office."
Lara eked out a 43-vote win over the incumbent Republican in the Primary. It took a recount to determine the outcome.
A month later the Yuma County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to end an intergovernmental agreement that had combined the County Recorder’s office with Election Services. The pilot project, which began in 2019 was touted as an efficient and unique way to streamline voting and registration services.
Lara is sure the Board changed the system because he won the primary.
"My question to them is 'What are they afraid of?'”
The Board action included creation of an Elections Advisory Committee under the purview of the County, separate from the Recorder’s office.
Lara’s opponent in the General Election is Democrat and political newcomer Emilia Cortez. She says she supports the Board’s move.
"I totally love the set-up," she says. "It will have the attorney, two board of supervisors, the administration of the county and the Yuma County Recorder as part of the committee. That’s bring that home base to the community office that it should be."
Cortez is a self-proclaimed lover of “systems.” She says she has dreamed of being county Recorder since she was a young Girl Scout, an organization she would later lead in Yuma County for over fifteen years.
"Systems is my jam, I’m a huge nerd. And that just ignited a seed of knowing systems in any particular position I have worked in my career and the mecha position for me of course is Yuma County Recorder," says the first-time candidate.
For Cortez the County Recorder position is all about registration of voters and encouraging participation.
"I just want people to be invested. It’s a community office that belongs to all the citizens that live in Yuma County," she says.
Cortez admits she doesn’t know much about Lara’s positions and Lara has nothing but praise for the young candidate, though he does think she was encouraged to run to be a spoiler to keep him from winning.
