This week, once again all of Arizona’s County Recorders sent a letter to Secretary of State Michele Reagan admonishing her for failing to perform her duties in a timely and adequate manner. The Recorders expressed concerns with the “draft of the Procedures Manual Addendum regarding the LULAC Consent Decree and DOPC Draft Form.”
This is not the first time the bipartisan group of Recorders banded together to challenge Reagan’s work. In January 2017, the Recorders characterized their relationship with Reagan, Arizona’s chief election official, as “dire.”
Since taking office, Reagan failed to perform the most basic duties including issuing a Procedures Manual. Recorders were forced to work with outdated manuals in the 2016 election cycle. In fact, various recorders were forced to work with outdated manuals this year for the CD8 Special Election as well as a number of city council races across the state.
Recorders have been using the manual developed by her predecessor, former Secretary of State and current gubernatorial candidate, Ken Bennett.
It is because of her failed track record, that election watchers had expected Reagan’s office to deliver a manual in a timely manner this time around – especially given that she is facing her own Republican Primary Election challenger.
The Recorders’ current concerns revolve around a settlement agreement Reagan entered into last year with the U.S. Department of Justice. A lawsuit brought by LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) said that requiring documentary proof of citizenship with a voter registration application was needlessly bureaucratic and disenfranchised would-be voters.
Arizona voters can register for federal elections with a federal registration form that does not require proof of citizenship, but state registration – which is needed to vote in state and local elections – requires “documentary proof of citizenship.”
Under the settlement, voters will still need to be citizens to vote in state elections, but will no longer have to provide proof of citizenship with their application.
In an interview on Tucson radio this week, Reagan bragged about the settlement and offered her standard platitude: “We’ve always said that it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
In the latest letter, the Recorders reject Reagan’s addendum, and remind her that they had requested that it be labeled a “sample” only. [VIEW LETTER] The letter reads:
Dear Secretary of State Michele Reagan and Mr. Eric Spencer, State Elections Director,
Thank you for sending the draft of the Procedures Manual Addendum regarding the LULAC Consent Decree and DOPC Draft Form. On our weekly Thursday morning call, the County Recorders asked that the DOPC Draft Form be marked “sample.” Most of the County Recorders have a letter very similar, however, unique to their county and do not want to be restricted to the sample that your provided.
We must also mention that we were given less than 24 hours to review these documents before you submitted them to Governor Ducey, Attorney General Brnovich and the legal counsel that represented the Plaintiffs in the LULAC Consent Decree agreement.
The addendum states; “The procedures outlined in this Appendix supersede any conflicting procedures outlined in the Election Procedures Manual currently in effect.” Please confirm this is referring to the June 2014 Procedures Manual and not the June 2018 Procedures Manual that had been submitted, and then subsequently withdrawn by you as Secretary of State.
Furthermore, upon notification of the withdrawal of the June 2018 Procedures Manual we received an email from you, Secretary Reagan dated May 18, 2018, stating; “As a result, we will be working hard over the next few weeks to (1) finalize the settlement; (2) conduct a full briefing for you; (3) draft the necessary changes to Chapter 1 that reflect the settlement agreement; and (4) forward those proposed changes to you for review and comment before we resubmit to the Governor and Attorney General. While this process is ongoing, by the way, there may be a brief window to also address any other issues in the remaining chapters that you may have discovered or reconsidered since our submission in March. If so, please contact Eric immediately so he can tee those issues up for this next (and hopefully final) submission in a few weeks.”
Concerns and issues were sent directly to Eric Spencer as you requested us to do as of yet there has been no response regarding these matters. Additionally, with the fall 2018 Primary and General Elections there is insufficient time to adequately train on a new procedures manual. Therefore, in its current form Arizona County Recorders will not support the June 2018 version of the Procedures Manual, as submitted to Governor Ducey and Attorney General Brnovich.
Regards,
Arizona County Recorders