By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
For the first time, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is prosecuting someone under a 2016 law banning third-party collection of early ballots, a practice dubbed “ballot harvesting” by opponents.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced Wednesday that a grand jury had indicted two people, Guillermina Fuentes and Alma Yadira Juarez, both of San Luiz, for collecting four ballots from other people and depositing them in a ballot box in Yuma County on the day of the Aug. 4 primary election. State law prohibits anyone except relatives, household members or caregivers from collecting and delivering another person’s voted ballot.
Ballot abuse is a class six felony, punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $150,000. Fuentes and Juarez were indicted on one count apiece. They could not be reached for comment and it was unclear whether they had attorneys.
Ryan Anderson, a spokesman for Brnovich, said this is the first time the Attorney General’s Office has prosecuted someone under the ballot collection law. And he believes it to be the first time anyone has been charged under the four-year-old law.
