A Republican county supervisor in rural Arizona who refused to certify the 2022 midterm election has agreed to a plea deal, becoming the first person criminally sanctioned for refusing to certify an election since 2020.
Peggy Judd, a Republican supervisor in Cochise county, Arizona, agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge for failing or refusing to perform an official duty by an election officer. She will serve an unsupervised probation of at least 90 days and pay a maximum $500 fine, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, said in a press release announcing the plea deal on Monday.
Judd, who is still in office, will preside over the presidential election next month and be required to certify its results. The attorney general’s office said in court on Monday that the probation term lasted through the 2024 certification and that if Judd again refused, she would be in violation of her probation and would face up to 30 days in jail for the violation, the local outlet Capitol Media Services reported.
Tom Crosby, also a Republican supervisor in Cochise county, and Judd were charged with two felonies each for conspiracy and interfering with an election officer.
When asked if his client was interested in a plea deal, Crosby’s attorney, Dennis Wilenchik, said: “It does not look that way.
The case has been watched far beyond the county as officials in other parts of the US toy with the idea of not certifying election results, a duty that is classified as ministerial and not up to the discretion of each individual elected official. The tactic has become popular with Republicans who cite false claims of voter fraud and election irregularities when they refuse to certify results at the county level, causing confusion and potentially delaying results.
A recent report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that 35 local elected officials across eight states had previously refused to certify election results and could be in a position to do so again this year. Arizona is the only state that has brought criminal charges against the officials who refused to certify, according to the report.
Two county election board members in North Carolina, Jerry Forestieri and Timothy DeHaan from Surry county, were removed from their positions by the state election board for refusing to certify elections there. In other instances, in Nevada and Michigan, warnings from state officials that refusing to certify was illegal led to reversals and officials ultimately certified election results.
The charges against Judd and Crosby are intended to help deter others who would consider opposing election certification, Mayes said.
“Any attempt to interfere with elections in Arizona will not be tolerated. My office will continue to pursue justice and ensure that anyone who undermines our electoral system is held accountable,” Mayes said in a statement. “Today’s plea agreement and sentencing 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.”
While a misdemeanor with a short probation and small fine is a lesser punishment than the felony that the state originally chargedJudd with, “she’s still going to have this on her record. She’s going to have a criminal plea on her record,” said Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “So I do think that that is significant in and of itself.”
Judd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the plea agreement, Judd attested that she “knowingly refuse[d]” to perform her duty of certification.
“I voted to delay the canvass during a public cochise county board of supervisors meeting,” her statement in the agreement said. “I knew that the canvass would be delayed if one other supervisor voted with me.”
Judd’s attorney, Kurt Altman, said Judd was glad to have the case behind her and “resolved to basically a giant nothing burger after years of investigation and money and whatever, but it’s best for her. She’s moving on. It’s done. So she’s happy.
“It’s been a major ordeal for her,” Altman said. “Pretty much bankrupted her. She lost her husband to cancer in the middle of it, she was caring for him while she was under indictment. This is a chapter that she wants closed.”
