PHOENIX — The Arizona Republican Party leader is telling the party's executive committee it may not be legally or logistically possible to meet in time to consider canceling the state-run presidential primary election.
And because there is a 5 p.m. deadline Friday, Sept. 1, to opt out of the primary, the Maricopa County Republican Committee's hopes to instead have the party run its own vote may be quashed.
An email from party Chair Jeff DeWit also contains a series of questions purportedly sent by some of the executive committee members on the proposal made by leaders of the Maricopa County GOP.
In the lengthy memo, DeWit said he was attempting to call a meeting of the executive committee to hear a presentation from county GOP Chair Craig Berland and Vice Chair Shelby Busch on how the party could run the election.
But the issues in the memo appear to give him cover to dodge the demand from the Maricopa County Republicans that he opt out of the state-run election.
The questions from committee members specifically ask how to pay for a party-run Presidential Preference Election and why the proposal was presented at the last minute without a full plan.
The problems that were identified go deeper, and have legal implications.
These include disenfranchising Arizona Republicans serving in the military out of the country, people who normally would be able to cast ballots by mail, something the Maricopa plan would not allow. Federal law may require them to have that option.
There also are the federal requirements for accessible voting devices and polling places that meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Those issues may not apply if the party runs its own election, according to Alexander Kolodin, a Republican lawmaker who also is an election law attorney. He said he does not believe the law expressly requires political parties that run caucuses or their own elections to provide avenues for military or the disabled to participate.
"Political parties are actually private organizations,'' he said. "They're this weird creature in that they have some political status. But they're fundamentally private.''
That said, Kolodin said the party should allow those people to vote.
"I think from a moral point of view we want to provide a way for people who are disabled or in the military and serving overseas to vote, regardless of whether the law requires it or not,'' he said.
All this comes as the state party faces the Friday deadline to inform Secretary of State Adrian Fontes if it intends to pull out of the state-run election set for March 19, 2024.
But the email sent by DeWit late Wednesday said he was awaiting a legal opinion from the party’s lawyers on "the unprecedented move'' proposed by the county party.
Even if the lawyers give DeWit a thumbs-up, he said there's a bigger problem.
"As of now we cannot guarantee anywhere close to quorum before the deadline,'' DeWit wrote. State party bylaws say at least a third of the 83 executive committee members must be present in-person or by proxy, and 8 of 15 county parties represented for business to be conducted.
The executive committee includes DeWit and the other elected state party officials, three members each from the nine congressional districts and three leaders of each county party plus some other party activists. Getting them to Phoenix on short notice is a problem.
DeWit wrote that some of those members may be afraid to attend the meeting.
"Disturbingly, several of our members have been doxed and are receiving threats, and some now feel afraid to show up to the meeting and vote on the resolution,'' he wrote.
Doxing is the practice of publicly posting someone’s personal identifying information, such as their home address and phone numbers, on the internet.
Berland said he "couldn't help but chuckle over the doxing claim.''
"I've received emails calling me a freaking moron and that I should be dead,'' he said. "And you know, you just delete it. Move on.''
The county party proposal seeks to remedy what some Republicans say are major election security issues, although those questions have always been aimed at the general election and not primaries.
The resolution passed by the county party contains a grab-bag of disproven allegations about election security issues in early voting and machine tallying, all rejected repeatedly by courts in legal challenges by failed GOP governor’s candidate Kari Lake following the 2022 election.
Berland said he doesn't think DeWit’s letter "brings the discussion any further forward.''
"But I'm not going to comment on the disparaging stuff,'' he said. "That makes no sense to me.''
He also said he does not know how a legal review could help DeWit.
"Whether to have a meeting or not is in the bylaws, you certainly don't need counsel to read the bylaws,'' Berland said. "Whether or not he has legal right to do it, one of the things that we did before we even discussed or put the words to the resolution was contact what we believe were the preeminent election lawyers in Arizona, and we got an enthusiastic thumbs up from them.''
As to the question of waiting until the last minute, Berland said earlier this week that county party officials were preoccupied with reviewing and writing responses to the draft Elections Procedures Manual — the rules under which elections are run — through most of August and addressed the presidential primary issue as soon as they were able.
"It wasn't that we dragged our feet,'' he said.
It was not until last Saturday, though, that the county committee voted during an emergency meeting to demand that the state party pull out of the state-run election to choose the party’s nominee for president and instead run its own, with voting "on paper ballots, in a one-day, one-vote election, hand-counted at the precinct level.''
The county party proposal would bar all early voting, including mail voting used by 90% of the state’s voters. It would also be costly — exactly how much isn't clear — but the Legislature gave the secretary of state $5.9 million to help pay county costs to run next year’s election.
DeWit has estimated it will cost at least $10 million, with the higher cost due to the fact that the Maricopa plan seeks to require precinct-level voting, versus the vote centers used by many counites.
The state party has less than $200,000 in the bank right now, and DeWit noted that Maricopa County didn’t offer up cash with its proposal.
Arizona Democrats face the same Friday deadline and have not said if they plan to participate in the presidential preference election.
They could opt to cancel the election and have their delegates to the national party’s convention commit to President Joe Biden; Republicans did the same in 2020 when President Donald Trump was seeking reelection.
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