David Stephens Was Cochise County Recorder In 2024. [Cochise County, Recorder, accessed 3/25/24]
David W. Stevens Was Elected Cochise County Recorder As A Republican In 2020. [Cochise County, 2020 Election Results, 11/17/20]
STEVENS VOLUNTEERED TO OVERSEE 2022 HAND COUNT
David Stevens Offered To Oversee A Hand Count Audit Of The 2022 Election. “Alexander Kolodin and other attorneys with Phoenix-based Davillier Law Group, LLC represented Cochise County Recorder David Stevens in litigation for nearly one year starting in November 2022 stemming from an effort by two members of the county's board of supervisors to expand the 2022 General Election hand count audit process. Those Cochise County supervisors – Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd – were indicted last month on two unrelated felonies involving their delay in canvassing the county's election results. McIntyre had advised Crosby and Judd in private and public comments that pursuing an expanded hand count audit was illegal. They ignored his advice, which led to a lawsuit assigned to Judge Casey McGinley of the Pima County Superior Court. McGinley's Nov. 7, 2022, ruling barred Crosby and Judd from moving forward with an expanded audit, thus vindicating McIntyre's legal position. But the supervisors appealed McGinley's ruling with the support of Stevens, who had offered to oversee the hand count audit. Kolodin's name is listed on the opening appellate brief as one of the attorneys for Stevens, who was sued in his ' official capacity.The Court of Appeals issued an opinion in October finding the expanded audit proposed by Stevens and the supervisors was not permitted under state law. The Arizona Supreme Court was never asked by any of the Cochise County defendants to review the case.” [Cochise County Herald-Review, 12/19/23]
David Stevens, Who Had Never Supervised A Ballot Count, Helped Push Cochise County Toward Hand Counting All Midterm Election Ballots. “David Stevens had never supervised a ballot count. He didn’t know how he would count nearly 50,000 ballots by hand, who would help, or where he would find enough space to do it. But that didn’t dissuade him. Less than a month before the November election, Stevens, the Cochise County recorder, told the county supervisors he would be happy to try. Arizona GOP leaders had spent two years promoting unfounded claims about compromised vote-counting machines, and were scouring the state for a county that would willingly hand-count ballots. They found it in Cochise County, where Stevens grasped onto the idea, devised a plan, and stoked the sentiment starting to take hold locally. The Republican recorder propelled the proposal to illegally hand count all midterm election ballots, thrusting a rural Arizona county known for historic mining towns and natural beauty into months of chaos, court hearings, and national headlines. Cochise’s two Republican supervisors bore the brunt of the backlash — threatened with jail time and, even now, facing a citizen-led recall effort. But the initial effort would have hit an abrupt stop without Stevens, who mostly remained behind the scenes.” [Votebeat, 2/7/23]
STEVENS WORKED FOR ELECTION DENIER MARK FINCHEM AND TRAVELED WITH HIM TO AN ELECTION DENIER SUMMIT
David Stevens Traveled To A “Ballot Integrity Summit” In Dallas With Prominent Election Denier Mark Finchem And Raised Concerns About The Integrity Of Maricopa County’s Elections. “Recent public commentary by our county recorder and last week's trip to Dallas, accompanying Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, should create concerns for anyone — regardless of party affiliation — about his intentions and the future of county elections. Finchem has been a leader in the ‘Stop The Steal’ campaign in Arizona. He traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Jan. 6 ‘rally,’ but has stated he did not enter the Capitol building. When the Republican-driven Senate election audit turned up no evidence of fraud last month, Finchem immediately called for an audit of Pima County ballots. As a representative in the state Legislature, Finchem has sponsored and co-sponsored numerous measures that would dramatically change how elections are conducted in Arizona. The proposals have been harshly criticized as efforts to discourage minorities from voting, compromise the privacy of voters, and empower politicians with the authority to arbitrarily overrule election outcomes. Finchem's campaign has focused on the premise that the 2020 election was fraudulent — which the Senate audit he supported disproved — and he alone can restore integrity to the process. Cochise County Recorder David Stevens has suddenly decided he will join this circus. In a recent interview with James T. Harris, a well-known conservative radio talk show host in Phoenix, Stevens disparaged Maricopa County's refusal to cooperate with the Senate audit. He argued that several of the issues raised in the auditor's reports pointed to the very real possibility of election misconduct despite admissions by the audit team that they did not know the procedures followed by Maricopa County election workers. Stevens' statements were consistent with the ‘stolen election’ nonsense spouted by Finchem, which has generated the candidate tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Then there is the trip Stevens recently made to the ‘Ballot Integrity Summit’ in Dallas with candidate Finchem. It can be argued that Stevens, wearing his recorder's hat, attended the event to research his proposal to validate the paper that ballots are printed on. He has publicly commented that it would be a good idea to place unique identifiers on the stock for ballots, including a watermark or a ‘chip’ that can be embedded in the paper and scanned for veracity.” [Sierra Vista Herald, Editorial, 10/8/21]
David Stevens Was A Director Of A Mark Finchem-Run Nonprofit Called Election Fairness Institute, Which Worked With Researchers Known For Spreading False Claims of Electoral Fraud. “Votebeat found that Stevens is a director of a Finchem-run nonprofit now called the Election Fairness Institute. It posts untrue statements about elections on its website and says it will rely on researchers who have become known for spreading false claims of widespread election fraud. Stevens said that his initiatives and proposals are focused on improving transparency and security of elections. He runs his office in a nonpartisan and open manner, he said, and has defended the parts of the county’s election system he trusts.” [VoteBeat, 2/7/23]
STEVENS QUESTIONED THE RESULTS OF THE 2020 ELECTION
David Stevens Defended Cochise County’s 2020 Election Results But Questioned The Results Of Other Counties, Like Maricopa. “Low profile aside, Stevens has been making his doubts about the election system known since shortly after the 2020 election. He’s not often quoted in the media. He doesn’t have public social media profiles. He has little to no public persona, said Elisabeth Tyndall, the county Democratic Party chairwoman. [...] After the 2020 election, as other Republican recorders in the state defended the security of elections, Stevens took a different path. He said he defended his own county’s election but couldn’t defend elections elsewhere in the state. In fact, he told the Arizona Daily Independent a few weeks after the election that he supported putting Arizona’s electoral votes on hold to look into potential vulnerabilities in Maricopa County’s election. ‘Take several ballots that only have Trump ovals filled out, and feed them through the machine,’ the paper quoted Stevens as saying. ‘If votes are reported for Biden you have a problem somewhere.’ He didn’t note that Arizona law already requires counties to check that machines are counting votes accurately with a test before and after the election, and through the post-election partial hand-count audit. On conservative radio, he criticized Maricopa County’s uncooperative response to the state Senate’s partisan and dysfunctional 2021 audit of the county’s election, and said the county needed better security practices. He also repeated a false claim that the county deleted election files.” [Votebeat, 2/7/23]
David Stevens Acknowledged That Trump Lost In 2020 But Added He Could Only Be Sure About Cochise County, Not Pennsylvania Or Georgia. “Asked if he [David Stevens] was willing to say that Trump lost in 2020, he acknowledged Trump lost. But he quickly added that he can only be sure about Cochise County. ‘I saw the videos of what they did in Pennsylvania and in Georgia, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t in charge of it’ he said. ‘I was in charge of it here.’” [Votebeat, 2/7/23]
STEVENS SUPPORTED ENDING MAIL-IN AND EARLY VOTING
David Stevens Supported Reducing The Time For Early Voting, Claiming It Gave People Less Time To Lose Ballots And Thus Lowered Costs. “That recorder, I clarified Friday, is Cochise County’s David Stevens, with whom Gowan worked closely when they were both in the state House. Some of the ideas in the bill Stevens had proposed when he was in the Legislature, he told me. As to the reduced time for early voting, Stevens said ‘It gives you less time to lose the ballot.’ Too many people lose their ballots, requiring higher costs for printing and mailing additional ballots, he said. Fewer would lose them if they had them less time, he reasoned.” [Arizona Daily Star, 2/28/21]
David Stevens Believed A Secure Election Would Not Involve Any Mail-In Or Early Voting And Would Entirely Consist Of Hand Counts. “The most secure election, Stevens says, would not involve any mail-in or early voting and would tally results by hand. He worries that he has no control over the ballots when they are out of the county’s custody, and he said he has found a few instances where the U.S. Postal Service has failed to properly track and deliver all ballots.” [Votebeat, 2/7/23]
STEVENS OPPOSED A PROPOSITION THAT WOULD MAKE VOTING MORE DIFFICULT
David Stevens Signed A Letter With Fellow County Recorders Urging Arizonans To Vote Against Proposition 309 For Addressing A Non-Existent Problem, Likely Disenfranchising Voters, And Delaying Tabulation Results. “The Arizona Association of County Recorders urges Arizona voters to vote ‘NO’ on Proposition 309 on the November 2022 General Election ballot. From the letter: ‘We, the Arizona Association of County Recorders, oppose Proposition 309 because it addresses a non-existent problem, it imposes new burdens on voters, it delays tabulation results, it jeopardizes voter data privacy, and it will likely disenfranchise thousands of voters.’ [...] Larry Noble, Apache County; David Stevens, Cochise County; Patty Hansen, Coconino County; Sadie Jo Bingham, Gila County; Wendy John, Graham County; Sharie Milheiro, Greenlee County; Richard Garcia, La Paz County; Stephen Richer, Maricopa County (President); Kristi Blair, Mohave County; Michael Sample, Navajo County; Gabriella Cazares-Kelly, Pima County (Vice President); Dana Lewis, Pinal County; Suzanne Sainz, Santa Cruz County; Michelle Burchill, Yavapai County; Richard Colwell, Yuma County.” [Sierra Vista Herald, 10/13/22]