Secretary of state race: Fontes pitches a new voter database, Kolodin promises election-night results

The winner of Arizona's race for secretary of state this fall will run the state's elections office through the 2028 presidential contest, and the two candidates offer sharply different plans for it, according to a profile of the race by the nonprofit newsroom Votebeat, republished Tuesday by the Arizona Mirror.

Democrat Adrian Fontes, a lawyer and former Maricopa County recorder, is seeking a second term. Republican Alex Kolodin, an attorney and member of the Arizona House, won his party's primary over former state GOP chair Gina Swoboda by 60% to 40%.

The campaign has been bitter, with each man accusing the other of lying.

What the office does

County officials run most day-to-day elections and voter registration. The secretary of state writes the Elections Procedures Manual, which has the force of law, issues guidance to counties and oversees the statewide voter registration system, known as AVID.

Fontes' plans

Fontes said he would seek money for a new statewide voter registration database, calling the current system unwieldy and at the end of its contract. He also plans to push again for the Voters First Act, a Democratic package that would, among other things, require vote centers in every county and create an election IT and cybersecurity fund.

He has refused to give the U.S. Department of Justice the state's voter roll and opposed a Trump executive order on mail ballots. "A lot of these proposed rules and executive orders and things like this, we still have to fight against," he said.

Kolodin's plans

Kolodin led the effort to put Prop. 144 on the November ballot. He says it would speed up results by requiring counties to let voters have ballots counted at polling sites.

"We're going to have election results on election night," he said at a debate. Fontes calls that promise unrealistic given the state's close margins, and he and others worry the measure's broad wording could give lawmakers wide power over election law. Democrats and some Republicans also say it would hurt mail voting, which Kolodin denies.

In the Legislature, Kolodin has backed bills to return to assigned precinct polling places and to require voters to confirm their address each cycle to vote by mail. He has criticized Fontes' changes to the procedures manual, several of which courts struck down; Fontes said other courts simply disagreed with his analysis.

Earlier this year Kolodin called the federal request for Arizona's unredacted voter rolls "common sense." At the September debate, he said he would not hand voter data to federal officials and would instead license the federal SAVE citizenship-check tool so the information stays in Arizona.

The 2020 question

Kolodin brought lawsuits after the 2020 election claiming widespread fraud, and Votebeat reported that the State Bar of Arizona admonished him for making those claims without evidence. He rejects the "election denier" label and says his campaign is about "protecting every vote, regardless of party." Fontes calls him a danger to voting rights.

Kolodin says Fontes "doesn't know how to follow the law" and has pledged to run "the most transparent secretary of state's office in the history of Arizona."

Kolodin did not agree to an interview for the Votebeat story; his positions come from debates, interviews and public statements.

Sources

azmirror.com

votebeat.org