For the first time in a dozen years, there is an open seat for the Coconino County recorder. The job oversees early voting, which is the preferred method for about 80% of Arizonans. It comes as election workers continue to face allegations of fraud and are frequent targets of misinformation.
At the end of the year, Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen will wrap up a nearly 40-year career in election administration. Over that time, she says, the public perception of election officials has changed.
“Unfortunately, I’d say in the last eight to nine years, there’s been more of a problem with people not trusting us,” says Hansen.
Trust is critical to the work of a recorder, who is responsible for keeping track of property records in the county and also manages voter registration and early voting. Recently though, the Coconino County recorder’s office has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theories and even occasional threats of violence. It has frustrated Hansen and is one reason why she is retiring.
“It’s really been hard, it takes a toll,” she says. “It makes me sad because I think we’re a great country, and I think what makes it great is that we have a system of government that elects our leadership.”
It is a system Hansen wants continued by her successor, and she’s hopeful it will. Democrat Aubrey Sonderegger, who’s running to replace her, views Hansen’s tenure as a success.
“We’ve had extremely low-drama, extremely effective, high-turnout election systems in the county for years and years and years now. I want to continue the system that people trust,” she says.
Sonderegger grew up in the Southwest and first got involved in politics through the county Democratic Party after the 2016 election. She has never held elected office, nor has she worked as an election official. But Sonderegger says she was inspired to run for office, in part, by her daughter.
“What am I going to do to make sure that I can look her in the eye 10 years from now and tell her what I did to make sure that our country continued to function as a democracy?” she asks.
If elected, Sonderegger says she would provide residents with as many options as possible for casting their ballots via drop boxes, mobile voting and other methods. But one of her main goals is to restore confidence in the process.
"These unfounded allegations that things are not right does erode people’s confidence in a system that has been proven to be extremely safe and extremely fair,” she says.
Those unfounded allegations include claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, a conspiracy that’s been universally rejected by courts across the country. But in a letter sent after the election, more than two dozen current and incoming Arizona Republican legislators urged then-Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to nullify the state's electoral votes, alleging irregularities. Among the signers was outgoing GOP Representative Bob Thorpe. He is now challenging Sonderegger in the county recorder race.
“We need to make it easy for people to have confidence that their vote is being recorded appropriately, and that they have confidence in the whole election process,” he says.
Thorpe now says he doesn’t necessarily stand behind signing the letter but is still unsure whether the 2020 election was stolen, as Trump and many of his supporters still claim without evidence.
“I think that we just need a high level of diligence when it comes to voter integrity,” he says.
Thorpe has a background in IT and says as recorder he would focus on maintaining the county’s voter rolls. He says Sonderegger lacks experience and is not qualified for the job. Thorpe himself has not worked in an election office either, but says his legislative experience gives him unique insight.
“To be able to have honest elections here in Coconino County, I need to understand every applicable federal law, state law and local laws and apply those,” he says.
As a lawmaker, Thorpe sponsored numerous election-related bills to purge voter rolls, require the reauthorization of successful ballot initiatives, and bar on-campus addresses from being used to establish residency to vote. That worries Thorpe’s critics like Sonderegger and other Democrats, but he defends his work at the Capitol.
“I don’t believe that anything I did down there would be rolling back voter rights,” says Thorpe.
Both candidates say voting should be easy and fair, and each has vowed to keep partisanship out of the process. And in just over two weeks, one of them will take over a key role in giving Coconino County’s more than 100,000 registered voters their say on Election Day.
