Hey, Arizona!

There’s been lots of election news out of the courts since we last talked. Perhaps most pressingly, a county recorder could be in danger of losing his seat.

Navajo County Recorder David Marshall got the post after resigning from his legislative seat and quitting a campaign for a spot on the state’s utility regulatory commission. But he’s now facing legal challenges questioning his eligibility to hold the office.

Suzanne Hudspeth, one of his rival nominees for the role, filed suit earlier this week. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says she also will seek to oust Marshall, foreshadowing a coming legal action before the state’s top court.

Mayes’ and Hudspeth’s legal issue with Marshall centers around a key provision of the state constitution that states “no member of the legislature” can hold a different elected office or government job “during the term for which he shall have been elected.”

Historically, there have been mixed interpretations of what exactly that means. It could mean that a lawmaker simply has to resign their seat before being sworn into another office, as Marshall did.

But Mayes and Hudspeth say it means that a state legislator cannot hold another office until the end of their elected term. In Marshall’s case, that would bar him from becoming recorder until January 2027.

It’s worth noting that they’re an odd pair of bedfellows. Hudspeth, like Marshall, is a Republican. She’s being represented by Tim La Sota, a conservative attorney who had signaled for weeks that he intended to take up a case challenging Marshall’s eligibility — which is somewhat strange, given that he has long been closely affiliated with many of Marshall’s former allies in the statehouse.

Mayes, a Democrat, has been praised by many members of her party as its fiercest fighter in Arizona. She faces reelection this year, and she’s almost certain to dislike Marshall’s voting record. At the state legislature, he was an out-and-proud member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, and supported legislation to ban vote centers, severely restrict mail voting, and require ballots cast in local elections to be counted by hand.

Potential motivations aside, I’ll keep you posted as Mayes files her legal challenge, and as both cases move forward in the courts.

That’s it for this week — but I’ll be back in your inbox soon. Tell a friend to sign up here so they don’t miss out.

In the meantime, let me know what I should look into next. You can reach me anytime at [email protected].

On the Lighter Side

Remember President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail ballots?

It was big news when it dropped last month, and predictably, the Democratic Party and a bunch of voter advocacy organizations immediately moved to challenge it in court.

Those cases recently hit a tiny snag last week when U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols noticed that a document filed by federal lawyers didn’t appear to be double-spaced. Most courts require that parties submit their legal filings with such type — à la the essays submitted by most high schoolers and college students.

A day later, the feds resubmitted the document — and explained they’d been confused by exactly what the court meant by “double-spaced.”

“As is in many jurisdictions, the local rules require briefs to be ‘double-spaced’... but do not define the term ‘double spaced,’” the defendants wrote. “Undersigned counsel’s typical practice in such jurisdictions is to use line spacing that is exactly ‘double’ the font size. In other words, when using a 12-point font size, ‘double spaced’ would mean ‘exactly 24-point’ line spacing. This practice is supported by judicial authority, and by a leading treatise on legal typography.”

They added: “Defendants’ interpretation of yesterday’s minute order is that the court’s view, however, is that double spacing should conform to the line spacing created by using the automatic ‘double’ line-spacing function in the current version of Microsoft Word. And defendants, of course, defer entirely to the court’s interpretation of its own standing order.”

I know this isn’t technically a funny moment specific to Arizona, but it was so good that I couldn’t resist typing it up (although not in double-spaced font!). ⌨️