New Report: Arizona Republicans Tried to Overturn Two Elections They Lost and Are Still Trying to Rewrite the Rules

Today, Try And Stop Us released a new report laying out Arizona Republicans’ six-year campaign to overturn elections they lost and rewrite the rules for the next ones. On Tuesday, Arizonans vote on Proposition 144, a GOP constitutional amendment that would require government-issued ID from every voter in every election, including the roughly 80 percent of Arizonans who vote by mail. The measure never says how a mail voter would show ID, and its author refused to explain how it would work.

This all started in 2020. Arizona Republicans filed seven lawsuits to undo the results and lost every one, including a suit claiming voting machines switched votes, while the state party chair texted Maricopa County’s board chairman to “stop the counting.” Eleven Republicans signed a document falsely declaring themselves Trump’s electors, and two of them still chair state Senate committees. Senate Republicans then handed 2.1 million ballots to a firm with no election experience that took $5.7 million from Trump allies, and its hand count found Biden won Maricopa County by 360 more votes than certified.

In 2022, the GOP nominees for governor, secretary of state and attorney general all sued to overturn their losses and all lost, and the state Supreme Court sanctioned Kari Lake’s lawyers for false statements. Armed men in tactical gear stood over a Mesa drop box after a Republican state senator cheered on drop-box vigilantes. Two Cochise County supervisors refused to certify until a judge ordered them to, and a state grand jury later indicted both.

They haven’t stopped. Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed GOP bills that would have ended Election Day drop-off of early ballots and shielded officials who refuse to certify from prosecution. Maricopa County’s Republican recorder tried to strip 218,000 longtime voters of full ballots seven weeks before the 2024 election, and in March the GOP Senate president turned the 2020 audit’s ballot images over to the FBI.

The Republicans behind all of it are on the ballot. Gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs voted to throw out Arizona’s electors on January 6. Secretary of State nominee Alexander Kolodin, who wrote Prop 144, was disciplined by the State Bar over his election lawsuits. Attorney General nominee Warren Petersen, the Senate president who signed the audit subpoenas and gave the ballots to the FBI, says he would drop the case against the Cochise supervisor who refused to certify.

Arizona Republicans lost in court, lost their audit, and lost at the ballot box. Now they’re trying to rewrite the rules so they never have to win a fair fight again.

A full copy of the report can be found here.