Arizona Secretary of State Candidate Alex Kolodin Is the Perfect Man for the Job!
Alex Kolodin Puts Election Law, Election Officials, and His Own Judgment to the Test… and Used This to Beat His Opponent in Court!
Arizona Secretary of State Candidate Alex Kolodin Is the Perfect Man for the Job!
In Part 1, we established the test, including, Election Law. Election Administration. Constitutional and Statutory Knowledge. Leadership. Management. Transparency. Integrity. Judgment. Accountability.
In Part 2, Adrian Fontes has nearly 4 years as Arizona Secretary of State (and 4 as County Recorder), giving voters a record of decisions, failures, court challenges, and responses to examine.
Today, we highlight Kolodin’s record and compare it to Fontes.
When comparing Kolodin’s record to Fontes, he has experience…
- In the Arizona Legislature.
- In election laws he wrote and helped move through a divided government.
- In constitutional changes he has asked voters to consider.
- And there is also an excellent disciplinary record that will have to be weighed in the final report card.
Kolodin Has Done Things that Show How He Approaches Election Law, Government Authority, Leadership, Judgment and Accountability.
And one of the clearest answers takes us back six years – years before they became opponents for Secretary of State.
BEFORE HE RAN AGAINST FONTES, HE TOOK FONTES TO COURT
In 2020, Adrian Fontes was Maricopa County Recorder, and Alex Kolodin was one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in Arizona Public Integrity Alliance v. Fontes. The dispute involved instructions Fontes had developed concerning mail ballots containing overvotes — ballots on which a voter had marked more choices than permitted in a particular race.
The issue before the Arizona Supreme Court was not whether Fontes thought his new instruction would help voters: It was whether he had the legal authority to create it. The Arizona Supreme Court’s answer was unequivocal:
“We hold that the Recorder [Fontes] acted unlawfully.”
The Court concluded that the Maricopa County Recorder did not possess constitutional or statutory authority to create his own mail-ballot instructions or voter guidelines for correcting over votes. Instead, the Recorder had a nondiscretionary duty to use the instruction authorized through the Secretary of State’s Elections Procedures Manual.
Kolodin did not win a political argument against Fontes: He represented the challengers in a case that asked the Arizona Supreme Court to define where an election official’s authority stopped — and the challengers prevailed.
The Court prevented Fontes’s new instruction from being used in the November 2020 general election. This shows Koldin’s:
CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY KNOWLEDGE
Kolodin had already litigated Arizona election law, argued the limits of an election official’s authority, and helped persuade the state’s highest court that the Recorder had crossed that statutory boundary. But winning an election-law case proves something very different from running an election system. And that brings us to the next part of his record.
FROM THE COURTROOM TO THE STATUTE BOOK
Four years later, Kolodin was no longer merely arguing about Arizona election law.
HE WAS WRITING IT.
In 2024, Representative Alexander Kolodin was the sponsor of HB 2785, a broad election-administration measure dealing with election deadlines, canvassing, recount procedures and other mechanics of conducting Arizona elections. The official legislative record identifies Kolodin as the sponsor. Kolodin’s legislation after he wrote it. HB 2785 had to survive committees, negotiations, two chambers of the Legislature; — and ultimately the desk of a governor from the opposing party. It did.
HB 2785 passed the Arizona House 56–2 and the Senate 24–2 before being signed by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs on February 9, 2024. That matters for a different reason than Kolodin’s courtroom victory: Winning a lawsuit can demonstrate an understanding of what the law says. Writing a law and getting people from both parties to vote for it, tests something else. Negotiation. Compromise. Legislative judgment. And the ability to move complicated election policy through people who do not necessarily agree with you.
HB 2785 was not a campaign promise. It became Arizona law. The final chaptered measure changed election procedures involving polling places, early ballots, signature verification, canvassing and recounts.
This legislation success gives us a glimpse into something else we said mattered:
LEADERSHIP.
Kolodin may have been the sponsor, but a 56–2 House vote and a 24–2 Senate vote do not happen because one person simply writes a bill and demands everyone follow. They require other legislators, election officials, lawyers, county interests and a governor from the opposite party to arrive at language enough of them can accept. This shows he has worked inside the machinery that determines how that office must operate.
THE WORK DID NOT STOP WITH ONE BILL
In 2026, Kolodin sponsored HB 2022 — “elections; July primary; curing; observers.”
The measure changed the primary-election calendar, adjusted signature-curing deadlines and expanded the types of voting locations where political-party representatives may observe and challenge. That legislation is important because it connects us directly to one of the arguments Kolodin made against Fontes during their August 31 Arizona PBS conversation:
Kolodin argued that Arizona elections may be statewide in consequence, but they are administered locally — and that the Secretary of State must understand the boundary between statewide authority and county control. That sounds familiar. Because it is essentially the same question we asked when examining Fontes:
DOES AN ELECTION OFFICIAL UNDERSTAND NOT ONLY WHAT POWER HE HAS — BUT WHERE THAT POWER STOPS?
Kolodin was the primary sponsor of HCR 2001 — Proposition 144, a proposed constitutional amendment dealing with voter identification, election administration, foreign election spending and the rules governing early and mail voting. And this is where campaign descriptions are not enough…
During the August 31 debate, Fontes argued that Proposition 144 threatens Arizona’s vote-by-mail system. Kolodin said it does not. So rather than choose between the candidates’ descriptions, we can read what Arizona voters are actually being asked to approve.
The official ballot language says Proposition 144 says every voter must show valid government-issued proof of identity before casting a ballot in each election — ‘whether voting in person or by any other method,’ as prescribed by law. It would also require Election Day voters to have the option of having their ballot tabulated at their voting location, prohibit foreign nationals from contributing or spending money to influence Arizona elections, and permit laws governing early and mail voting when those laws are rationally connected to specified state interests such as election security, timely results and public confidence.
That means both the policy and the implementation matter.
The Proposition amendment itself establishes the ID requirement. But it leaves important details of how a mail voter would satisfy that requirement to laws enacted afterward. So, the disagreement between Fontes and Kolodin is not merely about whether mail voting appears in the measure. It does. The real question is what those constitutional changes would permit Arizona lawmakers to require once Proposition 144 became part of the Arizona Constitution.
AND THAT TELLS US SOMETHING ELSE ABOUT KOLODIN
Kolodin is not running only on promises to administer the election system Arizona already has. He has already been working to change the constitutional rules governing that system.
He must administer the laws Arizona voters and the Legislature actually give him — including laws he opposed. Kolodin has demonstrated courtroom, legislative and oversight experience. What he cannot yet demonstrate is the experience of actually managing Arizona’s statewide election operation.
Kolodin Has Taken His Version of The Test.
NOW ARIZONA GETS TO COMPARE THE ANSWER SHEETS.
COMING NEXT IN THE SECRETARY OF STATE FILE…
PART 4 — THE FINAL REPORT CARD
By Linda Brickman
©2026 Linda Brickman. All Rights Reserved.
None of this matters if you can't beat the cheat. I would recommend on voting early just in case the tabulators "don't work" again. But in the end it's whoever controls the printing and counting of the ballots that wins the race.