New reports show an increase in Arizona election worker turnover

Midterm elections may be a few months away, but a new report finds Arizona counties have had more turnover among election workers than in any other Western state.

In the study, a nonpartisan group called Issue One found all 15 Arizona counties have experienced turnover, including in at least one chief election position.

Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, a reporter for Arizona Mirror, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the new report.

Since 2020, allegations of fraud have led to an increase in political violence, which resulted in the attack on the Capitol and threats against election officials and workers.

“Every single county had one or more top election administrator who either resigned, was fired or replaced within that five year time frame,” MacDonald-Evoy said.

The report found that the main cause for the high turnover rate was due to the spread of election conspiracy theories.

MacDonald-Evoy added, “We had a lot of high temperature created in our politics since 2020 after the loss of President Donald Trump in that election. We had a lot of narratives around fraud being spread and that lead to a lot of threats towards election officials.”

These threats lead the Biden administration to create a task force to investigate threats aimed at election officials. Some of those investigations lead to indictments of people from others states making threats to Arizona officials.

Another key part of the report was the pressure put onto workers to break election laws. Cochise county has been at the forefront the conspiratorial beliefs mentioned in the report. Within the last year, six people have shuffled through the county recorder position because of pressure from the Cochise County Board of Supervisors.

“[County Recorder Lisa Marra] says it was an environment not conducive to doing the job because they were being coerced into adopting policies or adopting ideas like hand-counting ballots in a way that wouldn’t fit within the state statute.” MacDonald-Evoy said.