By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
SCOTTSDALE -- The outcome of the race for secretary of state could hinge on who voters believe will better protect their rights.
And at the top of that list is likely to be the ability to vote by mail.
During an hour-long debate Wednesday, Republican Alexander Kolodin cited legislation he sponsored that allows anyone with an early ballot to not just drop it off on Election Day -- something already permitted -- but to actually have it verified at the polling place by presenting photo identification. That is designed to reduce the backlog of these "late early ballots'' which otherwise end up getting put aside to be verified later, a process that can delay results for days.
But Kolodin, a Republican state lawmaker from Scottsdale, also is the author of Proposition 144, a measure that, if approved, would require all voters to provide proof of identification before a ballot could be counted.
That includes those ballots now dropped in the mail, ballots that now can be verified simply by election workers comparing the signature on the ballot envelope with other signatures on file. What would replace that is if Prop. 144 is approved is not spelled out.
Democrat Adrian Fontes said that would kill early voting -- a process used by more than 80% of Arizonans -- "forcing Arizonans to stand in line to vote.'' And he said that anything that reduces the convenience of voting interferes with access to voting.
"If you're living in an assisted living home and you don't have transportation, how are you going to get to that polling place?'' Fontes asked. And he said it would affect "a busy mom and have a couple of jobs to make sure you take care of your family, and you want to take the time to sit at home and use your ballot to vote.''
Kolodin shouted back "liar,'' but never detailed how such an ID requirement would work for mail-in voting.
For his part, the Republican nominee said Fontes, who has been secretary of state for the last four years, has repeatedly tried to put policies into the Elections Procedures Manual, a roadmap of rules into how elections should be run, that would have disenfranchised some voters.
In one case, U.S. District Court Judge Mike Liburdi struck down as "utterly without precedent'' a proposal that would have allowed state officials, including the secretary of state, to refuse to include a county's vote in the statewide totals if the local supervisors failed to certify the results on time.
The judge said if it happened to be Maricopa supervisors who balked, what Fontes wanted would exclude the wishes of all of the county's 2.4 million votes, meaning the statewide results would be determined based on the votes only from the other 14 counties. And what's worse, Liburdi said, is that none of this would be the fault of the disenfranchised voters.
Fontes argued the provision was meant largely to spur county supervisors to comply with the law and likey would never be enforced. Liburdi was not convinced, saying it amounts to "a nuclear-level burden on voting rights.''
The secretary also lost another legal battle to ban offensive or insulting speech at or around polling places, with a federal appeals court concluding that the proposed rules were so broad that they could criminalize unintentional conduct.
Fontes, speaking with reporters afterwards, defended putting those now-voided rules into the Elections Procedures Manual.
It is true, Fontes said, that courts disagreed with what he called the "policy analysis'' he made in crafting the decisions. But he said voters should not give too much credence to Kolodin saying that makes him unqualified.
"If that's what he's got to hang his hat on, you'll never really find out,'' Fontes said, pointing out that Kolodin left the building after the debate.
"He decided to run away and not face you and not face the public and can't hang his hat on facts,'' he said.
Kolodin did not return a message asking why he declined to take post-debate questions.
Much of the hour was filled with what could be described as attacks on each other's credibility.
Fontes pointed out that in 2023 the Arizona Supreme Court placed Kolodin, who is a lawyer, on probation for 18 months for his role in three unsuccessful challenging the results of the 2020 election.
The biggest of these was a case where, on behalf of Trump, he alleged "massive election fraud'' that was done "for the purpose of illegally and fraudulently manipulating the vote count.'' The lawsuit also sought to eliminate the mail ballots from the count or an order that Arizona's electors "be directed to vote for President Trump.''
In an often-scathing ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa said Kolodin was asking her to disenfranchise millions of Arizonans but with a case that was "sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence'' and was "largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.''
Kolodin, however, said it is Fontes who "doesn't know how to follow the law.''
He said that Fontes, as a college student, was indicted on felony charges after leading police on a motorcycle chase through the Arizona State University campus. Fontes ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
"I screwed up,'' Fontes said. But he said what he did as a 19-year-old does not compare with what Kolodin did as an adult -- and a lawyer -- that got him disciplined by the Arizona Supreme Court.
Kolodin then came back by calling Fontes "the attorney for the Sinaloa drug cartel.''
"If you say 'Sinaloa Cartel lawyer' one more time, we're going to have a personal problem,'' Fontes responded.
Fontes did not dispute that more than a decade ago, as a defense lawyer, he had clients who had been charged with crimes in connection with Operation Fast and Furious, a program by federal officials designed to track weapons being funneled from Arizona into Mexico. But he said it was his obligation to ensure that people got proper representation and that their constitutional rights were not violated.
The pair finally got back on the subject of election issues, such as Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap giving County Attorney Rachel Mitchell more than 200 names of people who he suspected were not citizens but had been registered to vote. And Heap claimed that a check through a federal database showed 60 noncitizens had voted illegally.
Mitchell said it turned out just eight had voted illegally, a number she called too small to sway any election. And it turned out that, while not being citizens, they all were in the country legally.
No charges were filed.
"But here's the important thing,'' Fontes said.
"The election-denier people like Mr. Kolodin want to whip up all of this nonsense about untold hundreds of thousands of illegal voters, which is a lie,'' he said."And now we have proof it's a lie, more proof. And he wants to make it harder for you as a citizen to vote.''
Kolodin said the small number of people found to have voted illegally proves nothing, saying that the list of more 200 came from a "limited sample'' of 60,000, "which means, in most likelihood, there's a lot more.'' And he defended efforts to impose new checks on who is casting a ballot.
"Quite frankly, one is too many,'' Kolodin said.
"Every time an unlawful vote is cast it dilutes the lawful votes of Arizonans,'' he said. "That is unacceptable.''
Fontes also defended himself from claims by Heap, a Republican, that the secretary of state was slow in getting his county and all others a list of people who have been convicted of federal crimes. That list is used by recorders to remove people from the voting rolls because their conviction makes them ineligible.
The secretary said any delay was due to the fact that the list he initially got from the U.S. Department of Justice was in a form that was not easily usable, forcing his staffers to take the time to manually create a new list. But all that got resolved earlier this week when Fontes said he finally got a user-friendly list and forwarded what he got from the federal agency to all recorders.
Kolodin also brought up the fact that, Fontes, as Maricopa County recorder in 2020, proposed mailing early ballots to every registered Democrat for the presidential preference primary, regardless of whether the voters had requested them. Fontes called it a precaution to protect public safety because of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it promoted "social distancing.'' The move was blocked by a judge.
Republican voters in Arizona were unaffected because, with Trump already in the White House, the GOP decided not to have a primary that year.
—--
On X, Bluesky, and Threads: @azcapmedia
