Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department Reports Individuals Impersonating Public Servants Are Engaging In Voter Intimidation (Updated)

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In the United States, we have a secret ballot. No one can demand to know how you voted.

The time for verification of voter registration status is before an election, not some seven months after an election has already been certified by state officials. And only by officials from a County Recorder’s Office.

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Third-party partisans with deep ties to the MAGA/QAnon personality cult of Donald Trump have no legal authority to go door-to-door and ask you any questions at all about who you are, who resides in your home, if you are a registered voter, or how you voted.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department reports that individuals (most likely associated with the MAGA/QAnon personality cult of Donald Trump) are pretending to be employees of the Yavapai County Recorder’s Office. This is illegal:

13-2406. Impersonating a public servant; classification; definition

A. A person commits impersonating a public servant if such person pretends to be a public servant and engages in any conduct with the intent to induce another to submit to his pretended official authority or to rely on his pretended official acts.

B. It is no defense to a prosecution under this section that the office the person pretended to hold did not in fact exist or that the pretended office did not in fact possess the authority claimed for it.

C. Impersonating a public servant is a class 1 misdemeanor.

D. For the purposes of this section, “public servant” includes a notary public.

This could very well be occurring in counties other than Yavapai County.

Why Yavapai County when the Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” is only for Maricopa County? Your guess is as good as mine.

UPDATE:

The Arizona Republic adds:

Liz Harris, a Republican who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the state House of Representatives last year, has said she organized a group of canvassers to go door to door for months to check voter registration data.

Harris at first told The Arizona Republic that she was involved in the Senate’s audit, but then said she couldn’t say if she was.

“I pretty much know what’s happening,” she said in a video to social media on Monday addressing the Yavapai County sheriff’s advisory about the canvassing.

“There are canvassers, some within the group I’m heading up and some outside the group,” she added.

But Harris denied that anyone involved impersonated employees of the Yavapai County Recorder’s Office or asked residents which candidates they supported.

Take her in for questioning.

These individuals are trespassing on property, and engaging in illegal voter intimidation. You are well within your rights to call local police to report their activities and to file a complaint. Get their name (they will probably give you a false name) and get the license plate number off their vehicle, if you can. Avoid physical confrontation.

The Arizona Attorney General’s so-called “Election Integrity Unit” accepts electronic complaints submitted online, as well as complaints mailed to the Office. Depending on the nature of the allegations, however, the Office may refer your entire complaint or portions thereof to another state or local agency for investigation and/or enforcement. File An Election Complaint.

You can also report a federal voting rights violation to the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section,  online complaint form, or contact the office Toll-free – (800) 253-3931, Telephone – (202) 307-2767, email: voting.section@usdoj.gov.

If any of our readers have had any contact as described by the Yavapai County sheriffs Department, please let us know.

UPDATE: The Arizona Republic reports, People impersonating election officials are knocking on doors in Yavapai County, sheriff warns:

People are knocking on the doors of Yavapai County residents and asking how they voted in the last election, while falsely claiming to represent the county recorder’s office, sheriff’s office officials said.

The mysterious door-to-door survey, which has alarmed local officials, comes after the U.S. Department of Justice warned the Arizona Senate against plans to canvass voters’ homes as part of an unprecedented review of November’s election. Meanwhile, backers of the Senate’s audit have organized their own such door-to-door efforts.

Reminder: They have no legal authority to do this. It is unlawful voter intimidation. Report it to local law enforcement.

Yavapai County Recorder Leslie Hoffman said she did not know if the people knocking on doors around Prescott are working on behalf of a political organization [Check with Liz Harris], but raised concerns that information residents provide could result in identity theft.

“I don’t want some of our more vulnerable residents giving information and thinking they’re giving it to the recorder’s office,” she said.

Hoffman said local officials had received reports of two incidents last week in which people claiming to be from her office asked voters if they voted in the last election and who they voted for. In one case, a pair of people knocked on the door of a local resident and sought to verify the names of people living in the home. But the duo declined to produce any identification when asked, including anything verifying connection to the recorder’s office, Hoffman said.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office told residents the recorder would never send anyone to a residence asking survey questions or asking voters for personal information, and asked anyone approached in a similar fashion to contact local law enforcement.

Senate auditors planned similar effort

The state Senate previously planned to dispatch canvassers to the doors of Maricopa County voters and ask if those voters cast a ballot in the last election.

The Senate’s contract with Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm it hired to manage its ongoing audit of election results, said a “registration and votes cast team” has already worked with several people “in order to statistically identify voter registrations that did not make sense, and then knock on doors to confirm if valid voters actually lived at the stated address.”

The company’s CEO said canvassers would not ask voters which candidates they supported in the last election, however.

In a letter on May 5, an attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division warned that such canvassing could violate federal law.

“Past experience with similar investigative efforts around the country has raised concerns that they can be directed at minority voters, which potentially can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the Voting Rights Act,” principal deputy assistant attorney general Pamela Karlan wrote. “Such investigative efforts can have a significant intimidating effect on qualified voters that can deter them from seeking to vote in the future.”

Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, replied to the letter by saying the plans to visit some voters had been dropped, at least temporarily.

UPDATE: Our lawless Attorney General Mark Brnovich is failing to enforce federal election laws. Instead, he is waving the bloody shirt of “states rights” (classic white supremacy from the Jim Crow era) to defend the GQP sham “fraudit,” and to pander to the white nationalist MAGA/QAnon personality cult of Donald Trump for his U.S. Senate GQP primary race.

The Arizona Capitol Times reports, Brnovich tells feds to back off on Senate audit:

State Attorney General Mark Brnovich is warning his federal counterpart to stay out of the way of the current audit of the 2020 election returns.

In a letter Monday to Merrick Garland, Brnovich said he is displaying “an alarming disdain for state sovereignty” by suggesting that there may the need for some federal oversight of what is playing out at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. And Brnovich hinted that any intrusion will result in a lawsuit.

“Arizona will not sit back and let the Biden administration abuse its authority, refuse to uphold laws, or attempt to commandeer our state’s sovereignty,” wrote Brnovich who recently announced his bid to become the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

States Rights!

What’s causing the latest political dust-up between Brnovich and the administration is a speech that Garland made Friday suggesting that ballot reviews like the one in Arizona are “based on disinformation.” More to the point, Garland said his agency is watching — and may take action.

“The Justice Department will do everything in its power to prevent election fraud and to vigorously prosecute it,” he said of the role of his agency.

“But many of the justifications proffered in support of these post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relief on assertions on material vote fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” Garland said.

He also announced that his agency’s Civil Rights Division would double its staff working on voting rights enforcement in the next 30 days and publish more federal guidance on post-election procedures.

Brnovich, in his Monday letter, pointed out that this isn’t the first time Garland’s agency has interceded in the audit.

On May 5, Pamela Karlan, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, demanded some answers from Senate President Karen Fann about how the audit, ordered by Fann, is occurring.

Karlan said her agency is concerned that the nearly 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County are no longer under the control of state and local officials. Instead, they are at the Coliseum, which Karlan describes as an “insecure facility,” putting them at risk of being lost, stolen, altered, compromised or destroyed.

What makes that a federal concern, Karlan said, is federal law creates a duty to safeguard and preserve records of federal elections, including the presidential, Senate and nine House races conducted.

Pander Bear Brnovich responded as a typical right-wing nut who calls into right-wing hate talk radio shows:

“This letter appeared more interested in supporting the hysterical outcries of leftist pundits on cable television, rather than the rule of law,” Brnovich wrote of Karlan’s letter.

And he told Garland to back off.

“My office is not amused by the DOJ’s posturing and will not tolerate any effort to undermine or interfere with our State Senate’s audit to reassure Arizonans of the accuracy of our elections,” Brnovich wrote. “We stand ready to defend federalism and state sovereignty against any partisan attack or federal overreach.”

States Rights!

And, if nothing else, Brnovich contends that federal intervention or oversight is not just unnecessary but also illegal.

WRONG!

“It is important to remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way around,” he told Garland.

“America’s founders intentionally restrained the federal governments constitutional boundaries to ensure each state could flourish in unique ways,” Brnovich continued. “Today, our federal government has largely forgotten the Founders’ intent, but my office has not.”

Oh, so now our lawless Attorney General is also a “Tenther” and a “sovereign citizen” domestic terrorist? Is he also active in QAnon domestic terrorism? US Intel Report Warns of More Violence by QAnon Followers: A new federal intelligence report warns that adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory could target Democrats and other political opponents for more violence as the movement’s false prophecies increasingly don’t come true.

The Department of Justice needs to intervene in this shitshow of a GQP sham “fraudit” and our idiot Attorney General can make a complete ass of himself all he wants. The federal law is clear and unambiguous, and Arizona has clearly violated federal law.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1404460645995749378





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4 thoughts on “Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department Reports Individuals Impersonating Public Servants Are Engaging In Voter Intimidation (Updated)”

  1. Steve Benen points to the obvious, “Why the Arizona AG’s aggressive Justice Dept pushback matters”, https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-arizona-ag-s-aggressive-justice-dept-pushback-matters-n1270904

    [L]et’s also not look past the electoral context: State Attorney General Mark Brnovich launched a U.S. Senate campaign three days before writing this over-the-top letter to Merrick Garland. The biggest hurdle standing in the way of Brnovich’s candidacy? Donald Trump has publicly criticized the Republican for not going far enough to kowtow to the former president’s anti-election nonsense. Trump, in a written statement last month, said Brnovich was “nowhere to be found” in helping spread the former president’s crackpot ideas.

    “The lackluster Attorney General of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, has to get on the ball and catch up with the great Republican patriots in the Arizona State Senate,” Trump added.

    And so the next step was inevitable. Brnovich, needing to please the former president and his followers, has decided to champion his party’s indefensible election scheme, picking a fight with that rascally Biden administration.

    • This is why I advised avoid confrontation. We need a live suspect for questioning to find out who all is involved.

  3. Looks like it might be time for the DOJ to enter into a new Consent Decree with the GQP to enjoin their voter suppression/inimitidation tactics. The courts should have never let those bastards out from under. If the GQP has demonstrated anything these past years it’s that they cannot be trusted to not engage in voter suppression either through intimidation or legal changes. Justice Roberts as also proven himself either a fool or a partisan for thinking the pre-clearance is outdated!

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