A judge in Arizona has rejected the state attorney general’s request to revamp election rules for the 2022 election cycle, citing timing as the reason for the rejection.
Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper on June 17 denied Republican Attorney General (AG) Mark Brnovich’s request to ask Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, to improve the election procedure manual for the 2022 elections.
“This case is about the Secretary’s ongoing violation of her mandatory statutory duty to promulgate an Elections Procedures Manual (”EPM“) for the 2022 election cycle,” reads Brnovich’s court filing dated April 21. “To cure that ongoing violation, Plaintiffs are entitled to special action relief ordering the Secretary to comply with the mandatory requirement of providing a legally-compliant EPM to the AG and Governor for approval.”
He called the situation especially “problematic” because the election procedure manual has the “force of law.”
“Regardless of individual politics or party, everyone should understand the importance of maintaining public confidence in our elections,” Brnovich said. “I brought suit to support confidence in the integrity of our elections and accuracy of the results.”
The hearing presented evidence of cellphone tracking data showing that more than 200 devices had visited ballot drop boxes in two of the state’s largest counties no less than 5,700 times during the 2020 election.
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True The Vote, said the group’s investigators settled on 10 visits as “outlier behavior” on the side of too many visits to the ballot box. In Arizona, however, they found that each alleged ballot harvester went an average of 21 times each. She called it “extreme outlier behavior.”
Two days after the hearing, the AG concluded the prosecution of Guillermina Fuentes, a former mayor, on voter fraud charges. Fuentes pleaded guilty to using her position in the Democratic Party to illegally harvest ballots in a ballot abuse scheme.
“Based on our research, the ‘Arizona model’ is one that is followed across the country, and it involves national organizations,” Engelbrecht told The Epoch Times earlier this month, referring to alleged widespread ballot harvesting.
“So we, the American people, need to continue the pressure on to continue investigations moving forward to get to the bottom of what’s happening, not just in Yuma County, Arizona, but in many counties across this country.”