Arizona’s Republican attorney general issued an interim report Wednesday on his review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County that outlined his concerns with some election procedures but did not provide proof of any major issues despite six months of investigation.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is in a tough GOP primary for U.S. Senate, largely reiterated concerns raised by a widely panned election review conducted last year by supporters of former President Donald Trump on behalf of state Senate Republicans.
Brnovich is courting Trump’s endorsement for his Senate run, which would give him a significant boost in a field with no clear Republican frontrunner to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
Arizona has been ground zero by efforts by Trump and his allies to find proof for their claim that Trump’s narrow loss here was marred by fraud. The former president has vented repeatedly about the pace of Brnovich’s review of the 2020 election and said people are questioning whether the attorney general “is up to doing the right thing.”
In Wednesday’s 12-page letter addressed to Republican state Senate President Karen Fann, Brnovich said some of the forms documenting the transportation of ballots were missing signatures or other information. The issue has been widely discussed among Trump supporters who falsely claim the election was stolen from him, but there has been no evidence produced of tampering, and Brnovich didn’t offer any.
Brnovich also claimed that election officials worked too quickly in verifying voter signatures on mail ballots. He suggested several changes, including requiring voters to provide additional information such as a driver’s license number, adopting uniform statewide standards for accepting or rejecting signatures and allowing partisan observers to watch and challenge the signature verification process.