Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who sought to eliminate the use of voting machine tabulators in the 2022 election, delay certification, and conduct a hand count of ballots, received a grand jury summons from Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this month. The summons does not indicate what he is being investigated for, but he has tangled with Democratic officials over his concerns about election fraud.
Crosby (pictured above) and fellow Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd voted 2-1 against the lone Democrat on the board in favor of a hand count of last year’s election in October 2022 after receiving a letter from Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor threatening legal action if voting machine tabulators were used. The two also voted to delay certification of last year’s election, prompting Mayes to sue the supervisors.
On December 2, 2022, State Elections Director Kori Lorick, serving under then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, sent the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) a letter asking the office to investigate Crosby and Judd for “knowingly refusing to comply with Arizona’s law that required them to canvass Cochise County’s 2022 General Election by November 28.”
Lorick cited statutes that criminalize the failure to perform official election duties by officials. A.R.S. 16-1009 makes the failure a class 3 misdemeanor, and A.R.S. 16-1010 states that if the failure is done knowingly, it is a class 6 felony. She also referenced A.R.S. 16-452(C), which provides that any violation of the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM) is a class 2 misdemeanor. However, there were thousands of violations of the EPM in the 2020 and 2022 elections, and no one was prosecuted.
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