Arizona Secretary of State (AZSOS) Adrian Fontes has changed the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM) to prevent election officials from banning observers at early voting sites. Voters complained after Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly refused to allow observers at early voting sites during last fall’s general election. Pima County Republican Party Chair Kathleen Winn hired attorneys to negotiate with the AZSOS to get the EPM revised.
“It’s about observing the election process, to bring transparency to elections in Arizona,” Winn said. “Everywhere else in the state, observers were allowed, except in Pima County. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes says yes. We do, too. We will now have overseers early balloting and election day balloting to watch the process and report any anomalies. It just puts more eyes on the process and I think it gives voters more confidence.”
Winn originally sent a letter on Election Day, November 4, to Cázares-Kelly demanding to know the legal basis for denying observers. She asserted, “Arizona law expressly permits a party representative within the polling place ‘one representative at any one time of each political party represented on the ballot who has been appointed by the county chairman of such political party’ within the seventy-five foot limit.”
The new language in the EPM states, Political party representatives and credentialed Federal Observers are permitted to observe at voting and central counting places for partisan elections as prescribed by law. … Such observation of voting and central counting places (and observation at any other location where observation is permitted) is subject to the procedures described below.”
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