Republican lawmakers in Arizona are calling for Pima County recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly to be investigated for her handling of the 2024 General Election, accusing her of closing an early ballot request portal before the legal deadline for early ballot requests, among two other claims of potential misconduct.
Arizona State Representatives Teresa Martinez and Rachel Jones penned a letter to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes last week requesting a probe following reports of “significant and highly concerning issues” involving Cazares-Kelly’s actions leading up to and during the election, the lawmakers said in a joint statement Monday. Cazares-Kelly, a progressive Democrat, has been in office since 2021.
Martinez and Jones claim the Pima County Recorder’s Office disabled its online ballot request system six days before the legal deadline, impacting nearly 4,000 voters. They say the decision has raised concerns about compliance with Arizona election laws and potential voter disenfranchisement in the county, located in southern Arizona. The county has a population of just over 1 million people, per the 2020 census, making it Arizona’s second-most populous county, behind Maricopa County.
The pair have also raised concerns that inadequate safeguards in the recorder’s voter registration program for prison inmates may have allowed ineligible individuals to vote. They say previous inquiries into this matter, including a letter sent by Jones and State Representative Cory McGarr on June 5, went unanswered.
Thirdly, Martinez and Rachel Jones say that the method of how undeliverable ballots were processed, stored and tracked under Cazares-Kelly’s leadership, has also been raised.
A follow-up letter sent by Jones and McGarr on Oct. 24 to clarify compliance with Arizona law likewise received no response, according to the letter.
“Election integrity is the foundation of our democracy, and voters deserve to know their elections are being administered fairly, lawfully, and transparently,” Martinez said in a statement. “The numerous irregularities and lack of accountability from the Pima County Recorder’s Office demand a full investigation.”
Jones added that: “When nearly 4,000 voters face barriers to requesting a ballot, and when questions about unlawful voting and ballot processing are met with silence, it’s clear that immediate action is needed to restore public trust.”
Cazares-Kelly’s office provided Fox News Digital with a Nov. 19 press release which she addressed concerns regarding the early ballot request portal.
It reads that Pima County discovered a district boundary error weeks before election which led to an “unavoidable delay” in the vendor’s printing and assembly of ballots resulting in many voters flood the online form to request ballots. Some voters did so despite already being on the Active Early Voting List (AEVL), which duplicated their ballot requests.
“The processing of online ballot requests is still a very manual process in our office, requiring us to look up each voter record and review many pieces of information,” Cazares-Kelly said, per the release.
“Follow-up communication is often necessary. After monitoring the progress of the ballot requests during the week leading up to the October 25 deadline, it became clear that our office could not manually process all the online requests in a timely manner. Only 39% of the more than 20,000 ballot requests manually processed before October 19 were valid.”
She said that her data team filtered out about 4,000 duplicate requests and emailed the remaining 3,900 voters with unique online early ballot requests, urging them to call the office so it could process the requests more quickly with one phone call versus back-and-forth correspondence.
“I am confident that most of the voters who requested a ballot using our online form either received their already queued ballots, voted early in person, updated their addresses online or successfully requested a mail ballot,” Cazares-Kelly said.
A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office says it has received the letter but is declining to comment further, telling Fox News Digital that the attorney general’s office does not comment on potential investigations.
Cazares-Kelly is the first Native American woman elected to a seat in Pima County, according to her campaign website. She is the President of the Progressive Democrats of Southern Arizona and Vice President of the Arizona Democratic Party’s Native American Caucus.
In Martinez’s and Jones’ letter, the pair made reference to Mayes’ comments last month that her office was investigating whether President-elect Trump’s remarks about former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s law.
On the campaign trail, Trump called Cheney a war hawk and postulated how she might feel standing in a war zone with “nine barrels shooting at her.”
“Arizonans deserve free, fair, and transparent elections,” the letter reads. “In light of your recent decision to immediately investigate President-elect Donald Trump over his speech (although you later determined his remarks were protected by the First Amendment), we hope you will agree that Recorder Cazares-Kelly’s alarming conduct administering the 2024 General Election warrants a thorough investigation.”
