Adrian Fontes has proven himself to be good at two things during his tenure as Arizona’s Secretary of State: losing in court and throwing tantrums. It’s really unfortunate. The state’s top election official is not supposed to be taken to court on a regular basis—especially for, you know, his repeated attempts to undermine election integrity. And of course, throwing tantrums should be more characteristic of toddlers, not a government official. But Fontes can’t help himself.
In his latest tirade, Fontes joined Hillary Clinton’s old consigliere Marc Elias on Democracy Docket to whine about President Trump’s recent executive order to preserve and protect the integrity of American elections. Toward the end of the discussion, Elias asked Fontes about the multiple lawsuits against his Elections Procedures Manual (EPM), which he lost to us and Arizona Republican lawmakers. As has become all too common with our Secretary of State, he responded how you would expect someone to respond when he knows he can’t win. He attacked our organization and degraded our 15,000 activists and donors.
Yes. That’s right. The top election official in our state, who is supposed to remain unbiased and simply do his job to protect election integrity, lashed out against us and told people not to donate to us because we won our lawsuit against him and his illegal EPM.
Ummm…news flash, Mr. Fontes. One of the reasons our donors support our cause is to stop government officials like you from circumventing the law. So, when we win, they feel good because their money was put to effective use.
But we shouldn’t expect someone with such low character as Adrian Fontes to understand that. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s tried to use the power of his office to attack and intimidate organizations like ours that participate in the election process…
Congressman Abraham Hamadeh (R-AZ-08) pointed out this week the accuracy of his anticipation that Arizona Democrats would file a lawsuit seeking to block President Trump’s Executive Order 14248, entitled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections. Hamadeh described the Democrats as “the beneficiaries of Arizona’s broken election system,”
Reacting to the announcement from Arizona Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Hamadeh’s office stated that they “and their ilk across the country will go to any lengths to keep our elections processes broken.” His office also noted that the Congressman alongside his co-sponsor Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R+NY-24), who chairs the Congressional Election Integrity Caucus, have introduced legislation to support and codify the President’s election integrity agenda.
President Trump's Preserving & Protecting the Integrity of American Elections Executive Order takes historic steps to keep noncitizens from voting in elections, eliminate voter fraud, & repeal Biden's corrupt EO 14019!@RepAbeHamadeh & I introduced legislation to enshrine this…
Congresswoman Tenney posted on X, “President Trump’s Preserving & Protecting the Integrity of American Elections Executive Order takes historic steps to keep noncitizens from voting in elections, eliminate voter fraud, & repeal Biden’s corrupt EO 14019! @RepAbeHamadeh & I introduced legislation to enshrine this EO into law to ensure our elections remain free, fair, & honest.”
“The American people deserve better. They deserve to know that their legally cast ballot is counted and accounted for. I am disappointed, but obviously not surprised that Mayes and Fontes seek to thwart the implementation of commonsense safeguards of democracy,” concluded Congressman Hamadeh. “As a trusted advisor once said to me, ‘election integrity never disenfranchised a single soul, but a single act of election fraud disenfranchises us all.’”
The proposed bill, H.R. 2499, would codify Trump’s EO 14248 by ordering states to require proof of citizenship in the form of government-issued ID on voter registration forms, ordering the Departments of State and Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to provide federal database access to states for determining voter eligibility, and requiring a single Election Day deadline for vote tabulation. Each measure will carry the threat of withdrawn federal funding in the event of non-compliance. In a press release, Rep. Hamadeh stated, “In Arizona, we have seen what the mismanagement of voter rolls, failed election infrastructure, and corrupt courts can do to destroy voter confidence and faith in our system overall. We are taking swift action to rebuild citizens’ trust in our elections through comprehensive and meaningful election integrity legislation.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced in a social media post on Wednesday that he will not be running to replace the late Democrat Congressman Raúl Grijalva in the 7th Congressional District. Instead Fontes will seek to defend his seat as Arizona’s top election official in the 2026 mid-term election.
In his remarks, posted to X, Fontes referred to a “rising tide of fascism sweeping this nation,” as his primary motivation for the decision. Fontes cited President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Preserving And Protecting The Integrity Of American Elections,” and claimed that through this action the “president is laying the groundwork to cancel elections in 2026.”
Fontes gave no explanation or description of how requiring voter identification, preventing non-citizens from voting, cooperation between the state and federal governments to maintain voter roll integrity, requiring states only count ballots received on or by election day, and improving the security of voting systems could possibly accomplish this end.
Fontes wrote:
“I have considered the pros and cons of running for congress. It is clear to me that our party must fight harder and stand up to the rising tide of fascism sweeping this nation.
“With this week’s executive order from the Trump Administration, I firmly believe the president is laying the groundwork to cancel elections in 2026.
“After careful thought and reflection, I have decided that for family, for country, and for democracy, I will continue to defend America as Arizona’s secretary of state.”
As reported by KJZZ, Fontes claimed that the Executive Order, “is in my view an attempt to erode confidence so much that he [Trump] will be able to declare some kind of emergency or something and potentially just cancel the elections in 2026. I don’t think that is beyond what this administration is capable of.”
In a subsequent interview with Scripps, Fontes proceeded to double-down, telling Elizabeth Landers that were DOGE to come for any of Arizona’s voter rolls or information, as required under the Executive Order, he “would tell them to go to hell.”
He also announced that a formal campaign announcement for Secretary of State will be forthcoming.
Several commenters to Fontes’ post on X disagreed with his characterization of his decision, instead positing that the late-Rep. Grijalva’s daughter Adelita Grijalva is the likely frontrunner.
Former Arizona State Representative Daniel Hernandez Jr. has already announced his candidacy for the seat as well with at least seven statements of interest filed for the race so far.
The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled against the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) produced by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Judge Lacey Gard reversed and remanded a lower court decision dismissing the case, Republican National Committee, et al. vs. Adrian Fontes, et al., last summer. Gard ruled the EPM fell under the Arizona Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a “plain reading” of the statute contrary to what the lower court ruled. Gard also dismissed Fontes’ arguments for his right to not comply with the APA because the APA and EPM statutes conflict.
“[The APA] unambiguously states that all agencies are subject to the APA’s rulemaking procedures unless ‘expressly exempted,’” stated Gard. “The APA and EPM statutes impose duties on the Secretary that may require him to begin promulgating the EPM earlier, but they are not inconsistent, do not directly conflict, and do not create impossible barriers to complying with both.”
Gard further ruled Fontes violated the APA by not allowing public comment on the proposed EPM for the full 30 days, instead only opening up review for 15 days.
Gard noted at the end of her ruling that she wouldn’t address other claims by the Republican National Committee challenging eight specific provisions of the EPM, since she arrived at the conclusion that Fontes’ promulgation of the 2023 EPM failed to “substantially comply” with requirements set forth by the APA for the rulemaking process.
The Republican Party of Arizona (AZGOP) sued Fontes over the EPM last February, along with the Arizona legislature leadership at the time (Senate President Warren Petersen and then-House Speaker Ben Toma) and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. In a statement on Thursday’s ruling, the AZGOP claimed the appeals court found the EPM to be unconstitutional.
AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda said the ruling confirmed the extent of the unlawfulness of Fontes’ EPM in the Thursday statement. Swoboda characterized Fontes and his EPM as an attempt “from the radical left to illegally assume control” of Arizona elections.
“This opinion from the court shows just how much Secretary Fontes and his allies in the Governor’s and Attorney General’s offices overreached in their partisan efforts to hijack our elections through this blatantly political manual,” said Swoboda. “As we have highlighted to the court, the most-recent elections manual contained many provisions that ran utterly contrary to Arizona law, giving the Democrat machine a clear advantage at the ballot box for years to come.”
Beyond the lack of compliance with APA, GOP leaders’ objections to the Fontes EPM concerned conflicts with state election law: accepting voters who declared themselves noncitizens on juror questionnaires; allowing voters who failed to submit or couldn’t achieve verification of their Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC); allowing first-time, federal-only voters to provide only an ID and not DPOC for mail-in voting; not requiring county recorders to check federal databases for citizenship reviews; restricting public review of voter signatures on mail ballots; allowing Active Early Voting List voters to receive ballots outside the state for certain elections; requiring denial of early ballot challenges received prior to the return of an early ballot; and allowing out-of-precinct voters to cast provisional ballots.
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Arizona’s former secretary of state, state senator, and 2020 election auditor, Ken Bennett, will serve as chair of AUDIT USA.
AUDIT USA — Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections — is a nonprofit dedicated to public oversight of elections that best deters election fraud. Bennett, a Republican, will lead AUDIT USA, though it maintains a bipartisan cohort and its co-founder is a self-described “progressive Democrat.”
AUDIT USA’s current efforts focus on establishing Auditable Ballot Examination (ABE), an audit system independent of the Election Management System enabling officials and voters to verify election outcomes through access to anonymized digital ballot images. ABE reportedly boasts the capability of sorting by race, precinct, overvotes, undervotes, and write-in candidates promptly.
AUDIT USA offers a version of ABE that operates as a beta to showcase its capabilities.
AUDIT USA worked on ABE-prompted bipartisan legislation in 2023 that gained the support of Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
“In an era where democracy faces unprecedented challenges, every vote must be verifiable, and every citizen must have access to clear, trustworthy election data,” stated Bennett in a press release.
Fontes, in a statement, said he welcomed the proof of clean elections that the proposed audit system would afford.
“[This tool would] get rid of the election fraud nonsense,” said Fontes. “Get rid of the lies and the conspiracy theories once and for all.”
Other goals of AUDIT USA include email-enabled excel spreadsheets hyperlinked to securely stored, cloud-based ballot images; optimizing platforms to become more user friendly; and improving verification systems to increase the accuracy and speed of cross-check examinations of election results.
Bennett served as the Arizona Senate’s liaison during the audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results conducted by private data firm Cyber Ninjas. Around that stint in elections oversight, Bennett served in the State Senate from 1999 to 2007 and then 2023 to 2025.
Bennett capitalized on that latter return to the Arizona legislature to advocate for election integrity improvements. He was the lawmaker who led on the ABE-inspired legislation in 2023, and in 2024 he attempted to realize the proposal again through a $2 million designation from the budget to pay for the creation of the analytical tool.
In that 2023 proposal, SB1324, Bennett’s pitch to lawmakers cited the close loss endured by now-Congressman Abe Hamadeh in the attorney general’s race. Bennett argued that voters would have more confidence if they could see for themselves that the 280-vote lead by Mayes was truly owing to thousands of voters declining to vote in that race.
Governor Katie Hobbs ultimately vetoed the bill after it was substituted for HB2560 with its similar provisions. Hobbs claimed the bill would create problems with anonymity and both misinformation and disinformation.
AUDIT USA co-founder John Brakey served under Bennett as deputy liaison for the 2021 election audit. Brakey currently serves as the organization director. Other members: secretary and treasurer Arlene Leaf, and board members Bill Risner, Bennie Smith, Lynn Bernstein, and Susan Pynchon.
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