Amid what has become a near-constant stream of election-related challenges, local officials want voters in the Old Pueblo to know one thing: The 2026 midterm elections are safe and secure.
Joined by officials from Pima County and the City of Tucson, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover spent nearly an hour on Friday morning outlining to the press the steps election workers have taken to ensure every ballot is counted.
Their message was unified: Officials say they’ve learned from past elections, strengthened their procedures, and worked to prevent the kind of voter intimidation reported elsewhere in Arizona during previous elections.
Conover and other officials emphasized the 2022 incident involving two men wearing tactical gear, face coverings, and carrying long guns near a ballot drop box in Mesa. At the time, officials rushed to court to convince U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi to put a temporary restraining order on the defendants prohibiting them from:
openly carrying firearms or wearing body armor within 250 feet of certain ballot drop boxes
photographing or filming voters
following or confronting voters
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover
Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said her team has been tracking “unusual events” at the polls, but so far there haven’t been any attempts to intimidate voters.
“We have not seen that type of behavior in Pima County. Those were isolated events of intimidating folks at ballot drop boxes in Yavapai County and Maricopa County,” Cázares-Kelly said. “We have policies, protocols, what to do in the event that we see any of that behavior.”
Last Thursday, Liburdi weighed in again on election-related laws, striking down a portion of Arizona’s 2025 Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) tied to “wearing clothing, uniforms or official-looking apparel intended to deter, intimidate, or harass voters.”
The Pima County Republican Party filed the lawsuit, which argued that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes went too far in his efforts to protect voters from intimidation by giving election officials too much power to decide what T-shirt and corresponding actions could be considered intimidating.
Liburdi agreed, noting “the (election) manual supplies no standard for which actions, paired with which attire, reveal an intent to intimidate.”
Conover didn’t directly comment on Liburdi’s ruling, but vowed to protect voters from anyone who tries to intimidate them, even amid fears that federal officials could send ICE agents to polling places during the midterms.
“I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter what uniform you’re wearing or what agency you claim, you cannot violate state law,” Conover said.
The two-term Democrat noted she is also part of a national coalition of local prosecutors known as the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach — or, if you prefer the shorthand, — FAFO.
“We are banded together to make sure that if people claiming to be federal officials, or even if they are federal officials, if they are violating state law, we will absolutely hold them to account,” Conover said.
Over the last six months, Conover and Cázares-Kelly said their offices are getting a lot of calls from voters concerned about election interference, including voters who recently received their ballot but are worried that the U.S. States Postal Service won’t return it.
“What I’ve been hearing … are concerns because there’s messaging at the national level, there are executive orders, there are middle of the night posts, there are directions to lawyers at the national level and actions in courts that ask voters to act,” Conover said.
Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly
Cázares-Kelly urged voters to report intimidation immediately.
“If anyone feels intimidated on the spot at an early voting site while walking in, please report that to the site. If you feel intimidated to the point that you cannot enter that location, please call our offices,” Cázares-Kelly said.
Voters who encounter a clear and present danger should call 911, Tucson Police Department Deputy Chief Mickey Petersen said during the press conference.
Petersen said Tucson police will assign officers specifically to respond to election-related complaints on Election Day and activate both the department’s Emergency Operations Center and Real Time Crime Center.
“We will have all of the experts that we need to deal with any type of scenario that arises, whether it’s a man-made situation, a natural disaster, anything that should pop up so that we can ensure that voting centers stay open,” Petersen said.
Arizona has had a small number of prosecuted and convicted election fraud cases over the last decade, mostly for voting another person’s ballot. But no evidence exists of widespread fraud affecting statewide election outcomes.
That has been the consistent conclusion of Republican and Democratic attorneys general, county prosecutors, audits and court rulings — even after the Cyber Ninjas’ highly partisan “audit” of the 2022 election.
A review of the 2024 election identified 28 ballots for possible voter fraud, out of about 3.6 million cast. And those 28 cases were referred for further investigation — not proof of fraud.
Registered voters who didn’t receive a ballot should reach out directly to the Pima County Recorder’s Office, while those who’ve sent back their mail-in ballot can track it here.
Officials recommend mailing your ballot back no later than tomorrow.
Insider vs outsider: The Pima County supervisors should consider other candidates besides Jake Martin when they pick the next county treasurer tomorrow, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. Martin could be a great pick and he has experience as the deputy treasurer, Steller writes, but other candidates, including Derika Louk, who got a key endorsement from former Treasurer Beth Ford, could be just what the office needs after sexual harassment allegations led to former Treasurer Brian Johnson’s resignation. (If you’re interested in what local politicos had to say about the candidates, we wrote up their comments on Friday.)
Time to push pause: U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva wants ICE to pause deportation proceedings for people affected by a measles outbreak at the Florence detention center, saying they should be given more time to fight their immigration cases while they’re sick or quarantined, Paul Ingram reports for the Tucson Sentinel. ICE says seven detainees have measles and that it has isolated those who were exposed, stopped most visits, and is providing medical care. Grijalva says the outbreak shows how overcrowded detention centers can help diseases spread, while immigrant advocates say it adds to ongoing concerns about medical care in ICE custody.
The view from inside: A teenager who left a controversial religious community in Tumacacori is shedding new light on what happens at the compound, Dan Shearer reports for the Green Valley News. As a boy, he was sent to live at the Global Community Communications Alliance compound with his mother after his father fell ill. At first, the boy says “they treated us like we were kings,” but after a while he was assigned a “bodyguard” who followed him everywhere, and eventually his phone was taken away.
A bit of bad news: For the first time in two decades, a gauge on the San Pedro River showed “zero flow” several times in recent weeks, the Star’s Tony Davis reports. On some days, the area near the often-cited Charleston gauge has ponds and puddles, instead of a bubbling river. Advocates for the river say an especially warm winter, long-term climate change and the drawing down of the nearby aquifer are to blame.
If we reached “zero flow” on paid subscriptions, we’d be in as much trouble as the San Pedro.
A bit of good news: After the Santa Cruz Humane Society announced it was running out of money and might have to close, the local community responded by donating $140,000, Alessandra De Zubeldia reports for the Nogales International. Those donations, which came mostly from Tubac, Sonoita, Patagonia and Green Valley, gave the shelter some breathing room and it will stay open at least until the end of the year.
When we covered Jordan Ochoa’s announcement that she was running for Tucson mayor last week, we didn’t expect to revisit the Republican’s campaign again so quickly.
Her AI-generated ads still leave us with a lot of questions, but did she find an issue that sticks?
“More burritos, less bureaucracy” definitely has a similar vibe to the promise of a taco truck on every corner.
But what we want to know is, how many more burritos?
