Every year since 2019, Arizona lawmakers have instructed the state’s attorney general to spend a half-million dollars to staff an “election fraud unit,” with no further instructions.
Democrats accused former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, of using the unit for whatever was politically expedient, such as launching an investigation into Maricopa County’s 2020 election without ever making any final conclusions. Brnovich then hid findings that debunked claims of widespread fraud, according to documents first published Wednesday by the Washington Post.
Now, Republicans are making a similar complaint, after new Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, announced she will use the unit to combat voter suppression, to protect election officials from harassment, and even to protect vote-by-mail.
Without a script for what it’s supposed to do, the Election Integrity Unit is at the whim of the politician who runs it. And given that the attorney general already has the power and resources to investigate criminal voter fraud and voter intimidation even without the unit, both sides have questioned whether it should exist at all.