This office supervises elections in Arizona. It is being vacated by Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, who’s running for governor. The candidates are Mark Finchem (R), a Capitol rioter and election denier (see profile here), and Adrian Fontes (D), a former Maricopa County recorder (see profile here). The debate was held on Thursday, September 23, 2022. See story here and watch video below.
Finchem spent the first third of the debate talking about a ballot-harvesting scheme in Yuma County that resulted in two people pleading guilty to violating Arizona’s “ballot harvesting” law enacted in 2016 (see details here). A local TV station noted “fewer than a dozen ballots” were involved, “not enough to make a difference in all but the tightest local races,” and pointed out there’s no evidence of a more widespread scheme. Trump won Yuma County by 4,324 votes in 2020 (see results here).