Arizona Election Official Stymied In Attempt To Blast Out Ballots Amid Poll Closures
( He tried to do the right thing. )
By Kate Riga
March 16, 2020 6:00 p.m.
Arizona’s top election officials have been enmeshed in a legal fracas surrounding mail-in voting after the state’s most populous county announced 78 poll closures just days before its primary. The state lacked sufficient cleaning supplies to keep all the locations open amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The remaining 151 polling places will all be considered vote centers, meaning that voters can cast a ballot at any of the sites no matter their precinct.
But that wasn’t enough for Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, who announced Friday that he’d try to mitigate the damage of so severely cutting the number of polling locations by mailing out ballots to all registered Democrats.
However, as both Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs would soon point out, Fontes only had the power under the law to send out ballots to those on the early voting list or those who requested a ballot — sending Fontes’ attempt to its death at the hands of a judge.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arizona-ballot-primary-2020-elections