# Ken Bennett **Ken Bennett** is a Prescott Republican who was Arizona's Secretary of State from 2009 to 2015 and the Arizona Senate's on-site liaison to the [[2021 Maricopa County Presidential Ballot Audit]]. He also served as Arizona Senate president (2003–2007) and as a state senator for District 1 (2023–2025). ## Career - **Prescott City Council**, 1985–1989. - **Arizona Senate president**, 2003–2007. - **Secretary of State.** Gov. Jan Brewer appointed him in January 2009. He won a full term in 2010 and served until January 2015, so he was Arizona's chief election officer when the state defended its public-financing law in [[Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett]] (2011). - **Governor's races.** He finished fourth in the 2014 Republican primary that [[Doug Ducey]] won, with 11.45% of the vote, and lost again in 2018. - **State Senate, District 1**, January 2023 to January 2025. He succeeded [[Karen Fann]] in the seat. He lost the July 30, 2024 Republican primary to [[Mark Finchem]]. ## Liaison to the 2021 review Fann appointed Bennett as the Senate's liaison between the auditors, Senate leadership and Maricopa County. NPR reported that he was at the site nearly every day and closely involved in every part of the review. The arrangement broke down in late July 2021. Bennett was barred from the site after he gave 24 boxes of the auditors' machine-count data to Larry Moore, former CEO of Clear Ballot, for an independent check. He complained that [[Cyber Ninjas]] was withholding basic information from him, including ballot count totals, and said he could not "be part of a process that I am left out of." He announced he would resign, then stayed on once his access was restored. ## Significance Bennett is the review's credibility layer. A former chief election officer gave a Senate-commissioned partisan review the look of election administration. His one serious conflict with the auditors came when he tried to verify their counts independently. ## See also - [[2021 Maricopa County Presidential Ballot Audit]] · [[Cyber Ninjas]] · [[Karen Fann]] - [[Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett]] · [[Mark Finchem]]