Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who sought to eliminate the use of voting machine tabulators in the 2022 election, delay certification, and conduct a hand count of ballots, received a grand jury summons from Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this month. The summons does not indicate what he is being investigated for, but he has tangled with Democratic officials over his concerns about election fraud.
Crosby (pictured above) and fellow Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd voted 2-1 against the lone Democrat on the board in favor of a hand count of last year’s election in October 2022 after receiving a letter from Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor threatening legal action if voting machine tabulators were used. The two also voted to delay certification of last year’s election, prompting Mayes to sue the supervisors.
On December 2, 2022, State Elections Director Kori Lorick, serving under then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, sent the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) a letter asking the office to investigate Crosby and Judd for “knowingly refusing to comply with Arizona’s law that required them to canvass Cochise County’s 2022 General Election by November 28.”
Lorick cited statutes that criminalize the failure to perform official election duties by officials. A.R.S. 16-1009 makes the failure a class 3 misdemeanor, and A.R.S. 16-1010 states that if the failure is done knowingly, it is a class 6 felony. She also referenced A.R.S. 16-452(C), which provides that any violation of the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM) is a class 2 misdemeanor. However, there were thousands of violations of the EPM in the 2020 and 2022 elections, and no one was prosecuted.
Mayes also sent Crosby three letters this past year accusing him of violating the state’s open meeting laws. The first letter claimed he met in November 2022 with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd without public notice, where he discussed filing a lawsuit against then-Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra for refusing to conduct a hand count.
In a September 8 letter that Crosby sent to Mayes’ office, he stated that he did not coordinate the effort with Judd but that they both worked separately with attorney Bryan Blehm.
“Although I can’t say I specifically remember seeing Judd’s signature page that day, I’m willing to presume that that day would be the first time I knew that Ms. Judd had agreed to the same case as I had with Mr. Blehm,” he said. “Persons alleging violation of the OML’s are suggesting that either Ms. Judd and I HAD to have had a secret meeting to come up with the ‘Marra Special Action,’ or that Mr. Blehm facilitated a “chain Meeting. … If one were to examine the voting record of the Cochise BOS’s, there would be very little or nothing in the way of suggestion that any of us collude with another to pre-determine an outcome on issues.”
Crosby added, “As a County Supervisor I am not in the judicial branch, and therefore, no attorney is above me in a ‘chain of command’ or oversight, or supervisory capacity. Therefore, because of my concerns for elected representation and separation of powers, I do not concede that I, as a County Supervisor, am under the authority of the Office of the Attorney General or any attorney in this case.”
Marra eventually resigned, stating that she encountered a hostile working environment after refusing to turn over ballots for a full hand count when the supervisors requested them. She took a position as assistant state elections director under Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Another one of the letters from Mayes accused Crosby of violating open meeting laws by allegedly not making it clear to the public that there were two different versions of an agreement that would make Cochise County Recorder David Stevens, an election integrity champion, in charge of elections. She threatened to remove him from office. Mayes then sued the supervisors over the move, claiming there wasn’t statutory authority for the appointment, but she lost in court. Maricopa County delegated that power to their recorder for years. The county eventually appointed Bob Bartelsmeyer as elections director.
