Democrat Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who represented members of the Sinaloa Cartel, wants to remain in office. He is running against Arizona State Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Republican election lawyer. Fontes previously served as the lawyer for Manuel Celis-Acosta, who was accused of organizing a straw-purchase ring that transported guns to Mexico. He was also the lawyer for Emilia Palomino-Robles, who was convicted of trying to obtain military weapons, including a Stinger surface-to-air missile and other anti-tank weapons.
Fontes’ record on election integrity is dismal. When he was the Maricopa County Recorder, he told voters they could fix an overvote on a mail-in ballot by crossing out a choice and filling in another oval. This is contrary to state law and the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM), which require voters to request a new ballot. If this change had been allowed to happen, it would have made it easy for nefarious actors to change people’s ballots.
Kolodin sued him and won. The Arizona Supreme Court said in its ruling, “But when public officials, in the middle of an election, change the law based on their own perceptions of what they think it should be, they undermine public confidence in our democratic system and destroy the integrity of the electoral process.”
Fontes weakened the requirements to show documentary proof of citizenship. His draft EPM told officials to check the motor-vehicle database or hold a federal-form voter registration application until Election Day rather than following state law, which requires them to reject the application immediately when proof is missing.
Fontes’ 2023 version of the EPM criminalized criticism of election officials, restricted voter challenges, cut Republican oversight of central count and signature boards, and ignored a Yavapai County signature-verification ruling. The courts struck down many of these changes. Maricopa Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled Fontes exceeded his authority, including by issuing a ruling that would have let the secretary certify statewide results without a county that missed the canvass deadline (due to concerns about election wrongdoing).
Fontes refused to let the Trump DOJ inspect Arizona’s voter rolls because they include partially redacted Social Security numbers. The DOJ sued him, and he stated that he would go to jail before turning them over. Kolodin said the federal government already has Social Security numbers, so it’s a bogus argument. Kolodin previously successfully sued Fontes to require him to turn over list-maintenance records.
Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, an election integrity champion, accused Fontes of withholding federal felony-conviction reports needed to clean voter rolls and of falsely blaming the DOJ. Fontes finally turned over parts of the missing years but is still stalling on turning them all over.
Under the pretense of helping disabled voters, Fontes sued Pinal County for not providing ballots on demand. County officials protested, stating that allowing voters to cast ballots at any location turns them into vote centers. Blaney struck the rule down for every precinct county, not just Pinal. He ruled that Fontes had usurped the supervisors’ authority.
During Fontes’ tenure, the Secretary of State’s website was hacked. Two days after U.S. airstrikes on Iran, someone replaced candidate profile photos on election-results pages for 2016 through 2024 with an image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Fontes swept it under the rug. He didn’t reveal the hacking until a week later, and when he did, failed to mention that it was successful. He merely claimed that he “detected and successfully responded to a malicious adversary.”
During the Kyrsten Sinema–Martha McSally Senate race in 2018, Fontes, as Maricopa County Recorder, mixed disputed and valid ballots and opened weekend emergency voting centers. He said he was not very concerned with whether each voter had a genuine emergency and that he wanted as many people as possible to vote. He extended the curing period for signature checks on drop-off ballots. Previously, officials stopped reaching out to voters to cure their ballots by Election Day. Fontes extended that until well after Election Day. Republicans sued, but lost, and county recorders were ordered to cure ballots for a full eight days after the election.
Fontes lost reelection as recorder over botching the 2018 election. A county audit found 62 polling places were not ready at 6 AM, mostly because voter check-in machines had not been set up. The line at ASU’s Tempe campus wrapped around the building for much of the day. Wait times reached about two and a half hours, and the last person in line before the 7 PM cutoff voted just after 9 PM.
As a result, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors coerced Fontes into turning over half of his control over elections to them. The supervisors now control Election Day operations, including all ballot tabulation, leaving only early voting to the recorder. Heap is now being punished for Fontes’ mistakes.
Fontes refers to his opponents as “election deniers,” and told DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “suck on a salt lick.” When he was in college, the police chased him as he illegally rode down a walkway at ASU on his motorcycle, and he was charged with a felony. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of resisting arrest.
In contrast, Kolodin has a solid record on election integrity. He bravely represented multiple plaintiffs in lawsuits over alleged election wrongdoing. He has an impressive 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union. Voters fear that with Fontes in charge of elections, and few safeguards in place due to Governor Katie Hobbs vetoing election integrity bills, there will be election wrongdoing. When Fontes ran for office against Arizona legislator Mark Finchem in 2022, polls from Rasmussen Reports, Data Orbital, KAConsulting, and HighGround all showed Finchem ahead, so voters were surprised Fontes won. Turning Point Action and the Republican Party are engaged in a massive get-out-the-vote effort, so there is real hope that Republicans’ seven percent voter registration advantage over Democrats in the state will prevail.