Appeals court rejects Republican challenge to how Arizona verifies mail-in ballot signatures

An appeals court has dismissed a
challenge from the Arizona Republican Party and its allies that aimed to
change the way the state verifies voter signatures on mail-in ballots. 

The Division Two Arizona Court of
Appeals ruled Wednesday that the Republican Party, the Arizona Free
Enterprise Club, and others who joined in the lawsuit, did not have
legal standing to move forward with the challenge.

The Republican Party argued in 2023
to the Yavapai County Superior Court, and later to the three-judge
appeals court panel, that state law allows only the signatures from
voter registration forms to be used for comparison to verify voter
signatures on vote-by-mail envelopes.

Attorney for the plaintiffs Kory
Langhofer argued before the appeals court on Aug. 20 that Arizona had
been improperly using signatures for comparison from other sources, like
ballot envelopes and poll books, that voters had signed in previous
elections. Election workers used those additional signatures based on
instructions in 2019 and 2023 in Arizona’s elections rulebook — the
Election Procedures Manual — written by the secretary of state. 

But the court of appeals found, in a
decision written by Judge Jeffrey Sklar and joined by Judges Peter
Eckerstrom and Garye Vásquez, that state law gives Secretary of State
Adrian Fontes some discretion to interpret election law, regardless of
whether the Republican Party believes he did so correctly. 

State law requires the secretary of
state to “enact EPM provisions to attain and maintain ‘maximum degree of
correctness, impartiality, uniformity and efficiency’ on voting and
ballot procedures,” Sklar wrote.  “Otherwise, there would be no need for
an EPM; it would simply reiterate” the law as written. 

Sklar found that neither the Arizona
Republican Party nor the Yavapai County voter who joined the party in
the lawsuit had achieved the threshold to prove standing: that they
would suffer “a distinct and palpable injury” from the EPM rules they
challenged, giving them a “personal stake in the controversy’s
outcome.” 

The Free Enterprise Club has claimed
since it first filed the lawsuit in 2023 that using signatures from a
voter’s ballot affidavit or poll books in a previous election would open
up the possibility of increased voter fraud, but didn’t provide
specific examples of that actually happening. 

Multiple former Arizona election officials
signed onto a brief in the case attesting that having more signatures
for comparison was a best practice, and would actually result in better
election integrity than using only one signature. 

Sklar went on to say that the
Republican Party “did not explain at the trial court or in its briefing
how the EPM provision might impair” its interest in uniform application
of election law. 

He wrote that the Republican Party’s
“argument amounts to little more than a hypothetical interest in the
dispute, which we lack the ability to evaluate.”

On Friday, in a post on the social
media site X, formerly Twitter, the Maricopa County Republican Committee
wrote that the appeals court was “anti-election integrity,” based on
the ruling. 

“Co-Conspirator Court Essentially Green Lights Dangerous Democrat Adrian Fontes Circumventing Arizona Election Law,” the MCRC wrote in the post. “We Must Eliminate Mass-Scale No-Excuse Vote-By-Mail.” 

The same court previously ruled to invalidate Fontes’ 2023 EPM because he didn’t give the public enough time to weigh in on changes to it. 

While Eckerstrom and Vasquez were
appointed to the appeals court by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat,
Sklar, who authored the opinion, was appointed by Republican Gov. Doug
Ducey. 

The trial court judge, who tossed out the case last year, Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper, was also appointed by Ducey. 

The Free Enterprise Club, in a written statement, also decried the appeals court’s decision. 

“The Court of Appeals dismissed our
challenge to mail-in ballot signature verification on a manufactured
“standing” issue instead of addressing the merits,” the club said.
“Arizona law requires signatures on mailed ballots to be verified
against voter registration records. Allowing officials to ignore this
undermines election integrity and denies citizens the right to enforce
the law.”

Fontes on Aug. 1 released a new draft version of the EPM for review, which included some changes
in response to Republicans’ successful legal challenges to the 2023
version. Typically, the secretary of state releases a new version of the
manual every two years. 

The post from the Maricopa County
Republican Committee came after President Donald Trump promised to
abolish vote-by-mail entirely, something that far-right Republicans have
demanded for several years — both in Arizona and nationally — backed by
unproven claims of widespread fraud. 

Election expert Rick Hasen, director
of the Safeguarding Democracy Project and professor of political science
at the University of California, Los Angeles, explained in a Aug. 18 blog post that the president doesn’t have the power to do that. 

“The Constitution does not give the President any control over federal elections,” he wrote.