WASHINGTON – The Fair Election Fund (FEF), a nonpartisan national election integrity watchdog group, today issued the sixth report in its series reviewing election administration in pivotal swing states during the 2024 election. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was given a “D” grade, with the report pointing to severe election administration failures.

FEF’s investigation uncovered numerous statewide issues and infringements of the Elections Procedure Manual (EPM), which is intended to ensure consistent and efficient election practices across the state. Secretary Fontes was found to be weakening safeguards against noncitizen voting, improperly handling voter rolls, and undermining voter security.

Offenses include:

• Unauthorized unstaffed drop boxes
  • Fontes’ 2023 EPM created a fifth, illegal method for returning early ballots, unstaffed drop boxes not allowed under Arizona law.
• Delayed election results 
  • Chronic slow ballot tabulation in major counties, especially Maricopa, over 290,000 “late early” ballots in 2022 caused weeks-long certification delays.
• Printer failures
  • In 2022, 70 of 223 Maricopa voting sites suffered on-demand printer malfunctions due to paper change, causing ballot rejections and long lines. The Secretary of State’s office failed to ensure proper pre-election testing.
• Inaccurate voter roll data
  • In 2024, around 218,000 voters were found to be missing citizenship documentation and on a private call, Arizona’s leaders, including Fontes, debated the ‘dire’ ballot dilemma.
  • A federal lawsuit claims that AZ’s list of registered voters contains up to 1.27 million voters who have either died or moved out of state, which violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Click here to read the full report.

BACKGROUND:

• In April, FEF launched a new initiative, grading election administration officials in battleground states across the U.S.
  • The first report card graded Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson a “D” for her failures to bring confidence to Michigan voters.
  • The second report evaluated the North Carolina Board of Elections (NCSBE), which received a “C” grade for its election administration.
  • FEF’s third report examined Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who received a “D+” for shifting guidelines that hindered third-party candidate ballot access.
  • The fourth report reviewed the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which received a “D+” grade on its election administration processes.
  • FEF’s fifth report graded Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt a “C-”.
• In March, the Fair Election Fund filed commentary with the FCC on the issue raised against CBS for unlawful news distortion and coordination with the Harris 2024 Presidential Campaign in the network’s 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year.
• In August of 2024, the Fair Election Fund uncovered 60,000 potential cases of donor fraud involving the Biden-Harris campaign and ActBlue and turned over the data to Republican attorneys general across the country.
• Last year, the Fair Election Fund launched an investigation examining the jury summons responses and voter rolls in key swing state counties to identify voter fraud.

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