By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — An attorney for Gov. Katie Hobbs is taking a swat at the head of the Arizona Republican Party, accusing her of a last-minute attempt to use the courts to undermine voter confidence and access.

In filings at the Arizona Supreme Court, Andy Gaona is telling the justices there is no basis for the new lawsuit by Gina Swoboda seeking to void executive orders issued by the governor last year to ease registration and voting. She is claiming the orders “severely harm and diminish the public and voter’s confidence in election integrity.”

“These allegations make no sense,” Gaona said in his response on behalf of the governor. He said even if the orders somehow diminished the confidence of Swoboda and her allies — something he is not conceding — their beliefs would be “objectively unreasonable.”

One executive order allows state agencies to make their facilities available for voting locations or where people can drop off ballots. The other directs some state agencies to make voter registration forms available to the public.

On the first, Gaona noted each county that decides where to set up polling places and locate drop boxes, not the governor.

“Counties designating state facilities as voting locations has nothing more to do with ‘election integrity’ than any other designation that counties make,” he said. “And state agencies making voter registration forms available has nothing more to do with ‘election integrity’ than anyone else (including the Arizona Republican Party) doing the same.”

Gaona suggested there’s something political in the timing of the litigation — 2.5 months before the general election — given Hobbs signed the orders last November.

“Petitioners should have filed in superior court months ago, but waited until the day before the ballot printing deadline for the general election in their craven attempt to cast doubt on Arizona’s elections process and limit Arizonans’ access to the democratic process,” he told the Supreme Court, where Swoboda chose to file her complaint. He called the claims “the very definition of frivolous, relying on nonsensical reading of the orders and relevant statutes.”

Gaona contends the whole filing so lacks merit that Swoboda and the other two people who filed suit with her should pay the governor’s legal fees “to dissuade parties from using this court to bring frivolous claims that do little more than continue false narratives about elections in our state.”

The first of the executive orders allows state buildings to be used as voting sites or ballot drop-off locations this year and into the future. Attorney Andrew Gould said it is flawed, saying it does not address things like where to store completed ballots until they can be sent to the appropriate election officials.

And Gould said it isn’t within the governor’s power to designate state agencies as voting and ballot drop-off locations.

Gould also wants the Supreme Court to void another Hobbs executive order that directs agencies to include on their public websites a link that directs users to either the Secretary of State’s voter registration website or an online voter portal for registration operated by the Motor Vehicle Division.

It also says the agencies should make paper registration forms available in “conspicuous public locations.”

He contends that “substantively and fundamentally exceeds her constitutional and statutory authority.”

Both arguments, Gaona told the justices, are flawed.

It starts, he said, with that claim Hobbs was wresting power from county election officials. Gaona said the order does no such thing.

“Instead, it orders the Arizona Department of Administration to ‘coordinate with state agencies and counties’ to determine whether there are state facilities that counties could choose to use as polling places,” Gaona said. “It doesn’t order ADOA to unilaterally designate voting locations, nor does it force any county to use any state facility as a voting location.”

As to the other order, he pointed out there is nothing in state law that prohibits agencies from providing Arizonans with voter registration forms.

“In fact, the county recorder must also ‘distribute state mail-in registration forms at locations throughout the county such as government offices, fire stations, public libraries and other locations open to the general public,”

Gaona said, quote state law. “Even more to the point, ‘the county recorder may provide voter registration forms in quantity to groups and individuals that request forms for conducting voter registration drives.’”

All that, he said, makes the lawsuit even more questionable.

“That petitioners — including the chair of one of Arizona’s major political parties — objects to state agencies making voter registration forms (which they receive from elections officials) available to the public speaks volumes,” Gaona said.

If nothing else, he said, Swoboda and the two other plaintiffs lack standing to seek to have both orders enjoined.

Under Arizona law, one of the factors a judge has to consider is whether failure to issue an injunction will result in “irreparable harm” to the person seeking the order.

“Petitioners seeking injunction relief must show that they themselves will suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction,” Gaona said. “No petitioner even tries to explain how the executive orders could personally and irreparably harm them.”

As he sees it, the lawsuit turns the issue of harm on its head.

“It’s difficult to understand how the equities or public policy would ever favor removing voter registration information from state offices or precluding state agencies from allowing counties to use their facilities as polling places of ballot drop-off locations,” Gaona said.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to even consider Swoboda’s lawsuit.