Republican official in Arizona pleads guilty in election certification case

A Republican county official in Arizona who delayed certification of the 2022 election pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge of failing or refusing to perform her duty as an election officer.

The official, Peggy Judd, had cited concerns about voting machines in delaying the certification of ballots in Cochise County. Her case captured national attention as a high-profile example of the politicization of the election system following former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss.

A more serious felony charge, of conspiracy, was dismissed. Prosecutors are seeking a penalty of 90 days’ probation, a period that would include the certification of this year’s presidential election.

Kris Mayes, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement that the case’s resolution “should serve as a strong reminder that I will not hesitate to use every tool available to uphold the rule of law and protect the integrity of Arizona’s elections.”

In an interview Monday, Judd said she was “fine with what happened today.”

“I needed it to be over,” she said. “I have a life again.” But she maintained that “I shouldn’t have been in that courtroom,” and said she worried about the effect her prosecution would have on other officials tasked with certifying voting results.

“People will say, ‘I’d better certify the election no matter what,’ and that’s a problem,” she said. “We have to vote for things we don’t know or understand or believe.”

Judd and Tom Crosby, both Republican supervisors in Cochise County, were indicted last November over an effort to delay the certification of the 2022 election results in their heavily Republican county. (The county’s third supervisor, a Democrat, opposed the effort and was not charged.) They cited a range of claims raised by right-wing conspiracy theorists and called for a hand count of the ballots cast.

In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Judd acknowledged she did not think the election results in her county were in doubt and described her efforts as a protest against the certification of results in the state’s large urban precincts, which lean Democratic. Judd eventually did vote to certify the election, following a Superior Court judge’s order to do so, but Crosby did not.

The indictments were the nation’s only criminal charges filed over a refusal to certify an election, which Republican officials in several counties across the country have considered or pursued since Trump’s attempts to discredit his 2020 election loss.

Charges are still pending against Crosby, who also pleaded not guilty. He could not be reached for comment.

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