MOHAVE COUNTY – It’s not clear if Mohave County got the political message delivered by an arts-oriented Phoenix based group that says it advocates for various causes and people of color. The Fuerta Arts Movement has ended its brief campaign indicating opposition to hand counting election ballots in northwest Arizona.
The Board of Supervisors twice considered, and twice rejected dumping equipment in favor of hand counting election ballots in Mohave County. Executive Director Xenia Orona said the Fuerta Arts Movement believes hand counting ballots would be problematic while machine counting has provided fair and secure elections in Arizona for 20 years.
The group saturated Facebook with a late Jan., early Feb. campaign signaling that Mohave County should keep its “hands off’’ ballots. The FB post replicated on a local highway billboard featured a caricature of members of the board of supervisors passing election ballots into sacks.
“We were trying to be a little tongue-in-cheek,” Orona said. “The idea was to get outside of the noise that the hand count has been creating to drop a pebble in the pond to create the ripple.”
Spokesman Dominique Medina said the group tried to inspire locals to raise their voice against a hand count.
“The goal of the campaign is to sort of raise the alarm to people who might not be paying attention, that might jump in and advocate for themselves and their community,” Medina said. “We are looking to empower the local people over there who should have a say in what their board of supervisors is doing.”
The Fuerta Arts Movement said it has also engaged the public against voter integrity threats in Pinal County.
“The reason that we put the ads up in Mohave County is we want to make sure that our voter rights are protected at all levels,” Orona said. “When we see a threat in any part of our state we take action because things that are happening in your back yard in Mohave County are things that are going to affect us on the statewide level.”
Orona and Medina offered no names when asked if they’d succeeded in connecting locals to their anti-hand count commitment. They said the lacked permission to identify anyone, but expressed hope that locals will fight for using machines to tabulate ballots if hand count proposals resurface in the future.
