By Arizona Independent
Despite being ordered to refrain from instructing voters to cross out errors on their ballots by the Arizona Supreme Court, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes is doing just that on Twitter. Showing contempt for the Court, Fontes is advising voters to ignore the “lawyers” and continue crossing out errors rather than obtaining a new ballot.
“I was disappointed to see that after being ordered by a court to stop telling voters to intentionally spoil their ballot, county recorder Adrian Fontes has taken to twitter to tell voters to do just that,” said Alexander Kolodin, attorney for the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance. “Never in my career have I seen a recorder with such blatant contempt for the letter and the spirit of the law.”
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The Court enjoined Fontes, who is an attorney, and Maricopa County election officials, “and its vendors from inserting the “New Instruction” in the envelopes with the ballots for the November 3, 2020 general election.” That “new instruction,” to cross out erroneous votes, would have created tremendous delays in processing ballots due to the fact that ballot tabulation machines would kick out the ballots which would then have to be processed by Fontes’ “bipartisan board.”