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By Ronald J. Hansen | Arizona Republic
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office has suggested an investigation of a Republican state lawmaker over his fundraising after Attorney General Mark Brnovich noted her office had made no election-related referrals to his.
The election director under Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, pointed Brnovich, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, to state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who is running to replace Hobbs.
The letter from Sambo Dul, state elections director for Hobbs, also shot back at Brnovich for noting that Hobbs had dropped Arizona from a multistate database known as Crosscheck. That database was intended to help identify whether anyone had voted in more than one place in the same election.
“Arizona was one of 12 states to leave Crosscheck — primarily because the program created more false matches and voter privacy concerns than it did reliable data — before it was ultimately shuttered just months later in December 2019,” Dul wrote.
“Doubtless, your mention of the Secretary’s decision to leave this program was a good faith misunderstanding on your part and not an attempt to imply malfeasance.”
A spokesman for Brnovich could not immediately be reached for comment.
