PHOENIX β The Navajo Nation is threatening a new lawsuit against the state over changes demanded by Attorney General Mark Brnovich to a proposed election procedures manual.
Doreen McPaul, attorney general for the tribe, says Secretary of State Katie Hobbs agreed to allow people who forgot to sign their early ballot envelopes an opportunity to βcureβ the defect, coming in to sign the envelopes up to five days after an election. That would ensure that the votes are counted.
McPaul also noted, in a letter sent to the Arizona Attorney Generalβs Office, that the deal ended a 2018 lawsuit filed by the Navajo Nation against the state and several counties.
That suit charged that election practices illegally discriminated against tribal members and kept them from having their votes counted. Hobbs then put the terms of that deal into the latest version of the state elections manual.
But Brnovich is objecting, saying there is no legal authority for her to do that.
His protest is crucial because the revisions can take place only if he agrees. And an aide to Brnovich said he will provide his approval only if the manual removes the language about voters being able to cure their ballots after Election Day.
McPaul, in her letter, warned of legal implications.
βBy excluding this language ... the attorney general will be teeing up additional litigation,β creating a situation in which some counties would allow voters to βcureβ their votes and some would not, she wrote.
And McPaul said that, whatever Brnovich thinks of state law, federal law mandates that voters have an opportunity to cure their ballots.
The 2018 lawsuit said election practices by the state and Coconino, Apache and Navajo counties make it difficult, if not impossible, for reservation residents to cast early ballots.
The governments fail to provide instructions in the native language on how to fill the early ballots out and to explain that the envelopes must be signed and dated, the lawsuit said.
The problem was complicated by the fact that some counties refused to give residents time after the election to fix early ballots where the envelope was not signed or a signature did not match, according to the lawsuit.
Earlier this year, responding to a separate lawsuit, the Legislature approved a measure requiring county recorders to try to contact people if the signatures on their returned early ballots did not match signatures on file.
That law gives people up to five business days to come in and fix the problem.
But Hobbs and the counties, in settling the lawsuit, also agreed to apply the same provision in cases where early ballots turned up with no signature at all. And Hobbs inserted that language into the draft elections manual, which is supposed to be the procedure followed in all 15 counties.
Brnovich contends Hobbs, in essence, was illegally making law, and he said the provision must be stripped. Hobbs is expected to go along.
It is that change that McPaul said will land the state back in court.
