PHOENIX - A federal judge has blocked Secretary of State Adrian Fontes from refusing to include a county's vote in the statewide totals if the local supervisors fail to certify the results, calling what he proposed "utterly without precedent'' and comparing it to a nuclear weapon.

In an often strongly worded ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi late Friday acknowledged there has been at least one attempt in the past by a board of supervisors to delay certification. And that action threatened to hold up the formal canvass of all the votes through the entire state and even change the outcome of some races.

But Liburdi said the solution Fontes has incorporated in the Elections Procedures Manual - allowing him to skip over those uncertified votes simply to finalize the state results - would unfairly and illegally disenfranchise the voters who had cast their ballots.

"If the right to vote is the right of qualified voters within a state to cast their ballots and have them counted, then the canvass provision imposes the most severe burden: state-sanctioned disenfranchisement,'' the judge wrote.

Consider, Liburdi said, what would happen if Maricopa County supervisors balked.

Under the rules Fontes enacted in the manual, he would be permitted to certify the state results without including those votes. And that, the judge said would mean all 2.4 million votes from the residents would not count when the state finalized the results - meaning the results would be determined based on the votes only from the other 14 counties.

What's worse, Liburdi said, is that none of this would be the fault of the disenfranchised voters.

"A registered voter in Arizona may perfectly comply with all voting requirements and obligations but nonetheless have her vote excluded based on the mal- or nonfeasance of public officials,'' he wrote.

Nor was Liburdi convinced by assurances from Fontes that the provision was meant largely to spur county supervisors to comply with the law and likely would never be enforced.

"A nuclear weapon does not become any less dangerous simply because a world leader avows never to unleash it,'' the judge said. And he said the same is true of claims by Fontes never to follow through.

"The canvass provision imposes a nuclear-level burden on voting rights,'' Liburdi said. "It is a weapon in the secretary's arsenal that he has discretion to use should the circumstances present themselves - a weapon that does not become any less threatening simply because the secretary is self-professedly 'committed' to not pulling the trigger.''

Strictly speaking, Liburdi's order does not void the provision of the manual. That will take a full-blown trial. But it does preclude Fontes from enforcing or relying on that provision this year.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.