‘We will prosecute death threats’: Arizona’s new attorney general fights to protect election workers

In less than two months on the job, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, reassigned a unit tasked with investigating election fraud to instead focus on protecting voting rights. She then publicly took former attorney general Mark Brnovich, a Republican, to task for hiding documents that showed the 2020 election was free from widespread fraud.

“Obviously, there are clear differences between me and my predecessor on these issues,” Mayes said.

In Arizona, where a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature are unlikely to agree on any major alterations to election law, the biggest changes for democracy could instead come from the attorney general’s office. As the state’s top prosecutor, Mayes has the power to investigate voting crimes and bring charges against those who break election laws.

Before winning the attorney general’s office, Mayes was a reporter and an attorney and a member of former Democratic governor Janet Napolitano’s administration. A Republican until 2019, Mayes said she switched parties because the GOP’s embrace of Trumpism left her and other moderate Republicans behind.

Her perspective on elections differs greatly from her predecessor. In his last two years in office, Brnovich tried to play both sides of election issues, seeking to appease the far-right flank of his party in pursuit of a US Senate seat while not filing charges for widespread fraud. At first, he defended Joe Biden’s victory in the state, but over time, cast doubt on Maricopa county’s elections.

Mayes also contrasted strongly with her Republican challenger in the 2022 race, Abe Hamadeh, who she narrowly beat. Hamadeh embraced the falsehood that Trump won the 2020 election and was one of several election deniers who lost their statewide races in the increasingly purple state.

The attorney general’s race was among the closest in the state’s history. It went to an automatic recount, where her lead of 511 votes fell to 280 votes because of human errors in one Arizona county. Hamadeh has sued over the election, and his case is still ongoing.

Since taking office in January, Mayes has dramatically shifted the office’s priorities. She announced that an election integrity unit created by the state legislature at Brnovich’s behest to investigate voter fraud will instead focus on voting rights and protecting elections officials.

She also released documents that Brnovich concealed from the public that showed his office’s investigation into the 2020 election in the state’s largest county did not find widespread fraud. Mayes said she released the documents because Arizonans had a right to know the results and because her office has a “solemn duty to be honest and transparent”.

Several major election cases hang in the balance, including prosecutions for ballot collection in a border community, potential charges against county supervisors who initially refused to certify the 2022 election and inquiries into people who publicly posted voter signatures. Mayes wouldn’t comment on these ongoing issues.

Mayes spoke with the Guardian about her office’s plans for election protection and prosecution. The interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

You plan to change the focus of your office’s election integrity unit. At a basic level, do you think that the unit needs to exist?

The short answer is yes, repurposed in the way that we anticipate. There is a real need in the state of Arizona to protect voting rights and to protect elections officials against threats to their lives and and against the harassment and intimidation that they’ve been facing. And of course, every election cycle there’s a handful of actual voter fraud cases that come through this office. Those will continue to be investigated in the normal course of our work and under the law. But I think this unit needs to be repurposed toward protecting voters and especially elections officials. We’re seeing a sad exodus of elections officials from their jobs in the face of all of this harassment and these death threats. We obviously just saw the Cochise county elections director resign from her post because of all of the harassment she found herself facing, and that can’t go on. I want to be very clear that we will prosecute anyone who engages in death threats or attempts to interfere in the conduct of our elections going forward.

Do you plan for your office to take proactive stances on voting rights issues?

Some of it depends on what actually passes out of this legislature and gets signed. But yeah, I do anticipate using the bully pulpit here in the AG’s office to push back against legislation that would undermine voting rights. And obviously, if there are any instances of attempts to suppress the vote or voting rights, we will take action against that through this new unit.

When it comes to protecting elections officials, is that something that you think mostly will come from people referring things to your office or is there any kind of proactive work that your office could take on that?

I would like to head out to our 15 counties and have a conversation with county attorneys, sheriffs and the elections officials themselves about this. I’ve already had a conversation with [Maricopa county sheriff Paul] Penzone about working together to protect elections officials in the 2024 cycle. I had a conversation with the Yavapai county sheriff about it. So I anticipate having one-on-one conversations with local law enforcement about this and hopefully standing up a concerted effort together to work on this in advance of 2024. I’ve even thought about working towards the creation of a taskforce on this issue.

Have you gotten any pushback to changing the focus of the unit?

Not really, interestingly enough, no. I’m sure there are folks amongst Republican legislators who are not huge fans, but I haven’t heard that specifically yet.

Arizona, in some cases, inspired other states to create these kinds of units. Does it make sense to have these kinds of units? Is Arizona’s experiment with it something that should be replicated?

I wouldn’t offer any advice to other states. Each state has its own circumstances to address. We wouldn’t have created this unit in this way today, obviously, it’s not the kind of unit that I would create. We’re reorganized in a very, very different way. I certainly wouldn’t advise other states to create an election integrity unit the way it was created under my predecessor.

Looking ahead to 2024, what sorts of things do you think need to be in place to improve elections before then or ensure that 2024 is a safe and secure election both for people running it and for voters?

I’m gonna leave that primarily up to the secretary of state and county elections officials. I know they’re working on the election procedures manual, the EPM. This office will play a role in helping to review that. We want to get back to the more normal situation in which the various elections officials, including this office, are working together on the EPM. That hasn’t happened in the past. I think this office refused to approve the EPM in the last few years under the previous administration, so that needs to happen.

I think that there needs to be this really concerted focus on protecting elections officials and making sure that folks know we will prosecute any attempts to intimidate or engage in violence against our elections officials, period, full stop. I’m going to be making that clear. I want to get that message out there, so that we can provide some deterrence to this behavior going forward. Our democracy depends on the ability of good people to step forward and serve as elections officials.

A slate of people in Arizona signed on to documents claiming Trump won the state, calling themselves the state’s electors. Is that something you’re investigating?

We are going to investigate the fake electors. I can confirm that.

Because there is a justice department investigation into that issue, is that something that separately you undertake or do you work with them on it?

We are planning to reach out to federal officials on that matter. Beyond that, I’m not going to comment on it.

How do you think your predecessor did on election issues?

Obviously there are a lot of differences between how I intend to address elections matters and in the way my predecessor did. I would never have handled the 2020 election investigation the way he did, and certainly would not have handled the release of these documents the way he did. Beyond that, I’m going to let him speak for himself. But, obviously, there are clear differences between me and my predecessor on these issues.

There’s still this ongoing lawsuit from your Republican challenger in 2022, Abe Hamadeh, as well. Is that something that is in any way distracting from your work? How are you managing that?

It’s not really been a distraction at all. We’ve sort of compartmentalized that and it’s something that my outside attorneys and legal team is handling. We’ll just await the decision of the Mohave county judge who’s handling that, but we’re really busy here carrying on the work of the people of Arizona.