The controversy started inside the county seat of Bisbee in mid-November 2022. Facing immense public pressure from conservative activists who questioned the integrity of Dominion voting tabulators, Judd and Crosby pushed to conduct a 100% hand count of all ballots cast in the county. When legal challenges blocked that effort, the two-member majority shifted focus to whether the machines used during the midterms held lawful federal certification.
Under Arizona Revised Statutes § 16-642, county boards of supervisors must canvass election returns within a tight statutory window. For the 2022 general election, that legal cutoff expired on November 28, 2022. While Democratic Supervisor Ann English voted to approve the county totals, Judd and Crosby held back. They withheld certification, arguing that the Secretary of State’s office had not sufficiently established the validity of the testing laboratories that inspected the county’s voting hardware.
The delay threw Arizona's entire statewide certification process into jeopardy. Had Cochise County's 47,288 ballots been omitted from the official tally, it would have flipped the outcome of Arizona's 6th Congressional District race, altering national congressional seat distributions. The resulting public furor turned a routine county administration meeting into an emergency courtroom dispute.
