Documents detail Republican push to force hand counts in Arizona election

Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd were calling for hand counts in 2022 as election denialism swept Cochise county, a records request shows

Republican elected officials in a small Arizona county talked with state lawmakers and activists about hand-counting ballots there in 2022 and urged their counterparts in other counties to push for hand counts as well, newly released public records show.

The records from Cochise county, a Republican stronghold along the US-Mexico border, only came to light after a lawsuit from a watchdog group, American Oversight, and took well over a year to be released. The original records request from American Oversight was filed in November 2022.