So Cochise County's two GOP Supervisors found out the hard way today that Laws Are Real and Have Consequences no matter what you think of your neighboring county's election policies.
And I would like to point out to any remaining "Stop The Steal" people that if the Dems in Arizona are really trying to steal the election, they really did a $#!+ty job of it by suing Cochise County to canvass (aka "Certify") their election results immediately.
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Anyone who's scratching their head, here's the story:
Two GOP Cochise County Supervisors (there are only three on the County's board of Supervisors, by the way) voted on Monday - the deadline day for certifying their election results - to instead delay certification until they could get "more information about whether ballot tabulation machines were certified by an accredited laboratory" (quoted from
AZCentral.com).
Of course, one of the GOP Supervisors, Peggy Judd, essentially told the NY that "the machine complaints were a "pretext" to mask their real concern, which was Election Day problems in Maricopa County." (ibid)
Judd and the other Supervisor, Tom Crosby, voted to delay certifying results, out-voting their Democrat colleague (and Board Chair) Ann English, 2-1.
After two separate lawsuits - one from the Secretary of State's office (
oh, hai, Katie Hobbs), one from the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans - they tried to talk to a lawyer for an emergency hearing set for today. The lawyer listened to the two GOP supervisors, and informed them
this morning that he wasn't taking the case.
They essentially walked into the courtroom unrepresented. (I think English lawyered up on her own, but I'm not sure.) The judge in the case, Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley, ordered the board to convene a meeting this afternoon and certify the results.
Crosby had already left, and Judd refused to make the motion to certify after she and English likely met for an "emergency meeting."
Oh, but it gets better: Yesterday (Nov. 30), "(Cochise County) was hit with a claim seeking $25,000 in damages for the board's inaction on certification. Paul Sivertsen, a Cochise County resident, said the board's failure to certify dismissed his vote and disenfranchised his rights as a voter." (
ibid) Silversten hinted that this could be part of a class-action lawsuit - guess who the "class" would be (hint: there were 46,618 votes for Governor in the 2020 election from Cochise County).