On Monday, November 28, 2022, in a 4-0 vote the Mohave County Board of Supervisors canvassed Mohave County’s election results.

Please note that I am referring to Mohave County’s election results. Each of Arizona’s 15 counties canvass the results from their own county. The Mohave County Board of Supervisors did not canvass the results for Maricopa County or any other county. Nor did we canvass the state results, the Governor, Attorney General and the Secretary of State have that job.

Mohave County’s election process was smoothly run by Election Director Allen Tempert. Mr. Tempert has been election director for over 20 years and knows his job well. You will always have hiccups in an election, but my office received only 2 complaints regarding this election.

The Supervisors held off the canvass until the deadline of Nov. 28th to allow any complaints to rise to the surface and make a political statement to the Maricopa County Supervisors regarding their poor handling of their county’s election.

I received many requests to not canvass our election. The ramifications of not canvassing Mohave County’s election are:
1. The votes cast by Mohave County voters would not be added to the statewide totals. This would cause the Republican Party to lose the statewide positions we have won, the still contested Attorney General, the Superintendent of Public Instruction along with the 2 Corporation Commissioners.
2. The election of County positions would be declared null and void. The 6 elected Mohave County Superior Court Judges would be replaced with Judges appointed by the apparent Governor, Katie Hobbs. The other County positions would be filled by the Governor or the Board of Supervisors.

Another fact to keep in mind: The candidates cannot begin the lawsuits to challenge the election results until the completion of the State Canvass. The canvass is not the end of the process, it is a step along the way. A legal problem has surfaced as we have moved through the canvass process. We received a letter from the Secretary of State’s office informing the Supervisors that we would be criminally charged with a class 6 felony if we didn’t vote to canvass. That threat was confirmed by the board’s attorney, that a “NO” vote could bring a criminal charge. Some have attempted to label me a coward for not voting “NO”, but as you can see there was really nothing to gain by my constituents from me voting “NO”. There are other legal paths to follow regarding this issue.

The policy of “vote yes to canvass or go to jail” is clearly not what our founders had in mind when they formed our Republic.

Ron Gould
Chairman, Mohave County Board of Supervisors