Cochise County Board of Supervisors votes 2-1 in favor of ballot hand count

PHOENIX (AP) — Officials in Cochise County, located in southeastern Arizona, have voted 2-1 in favor of hand counting all ballots in November’s election alongside the normal machine count.

Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby had proposed the full hand-count alongside the regular machine count but ultimately joined the unanimous vote after an hours-long meeting. They were under intense pressure from voters in the heavily Republican county who believe Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. The two were joined by the third supervisor, Board Chairwoman Ann English, a Democrat who had encouraged her colleagues to rethink their stance. She had argued that the county’s insurance would not protect it from expected lawsuits.

“I implore you not to attempt to order this separate hand-count,” said County Attorney Brian McIntyre, a Republican. He said such action would be unlawful and supervisors could be held personally liable in a civil action.

That first proposal said that volunteers “are wishing to take part in this way to help people (including a few of the participants) who have lost trust in elections to see that elections are reliable and secure in our county.” After backing off from the first proposal, the supervisors then voted 2-1 on a second one, with English dissenting, for a hand-count audit in all precincts to be organized by the county recorder or other elections official to assure agreement with the machine count. McIntyre also called that plan unlawful.

Under state law, a small percentage of ballots in selected races already go through a mandatory hand-count with bipartisan teams to check the accuracy of vote-counting machines after all the votes are counted. More discussion on the matter was expected to come up at another county board meeting Tuesday morning.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a letter to Cochise County officials warning of a possible lawsuit before the vote.

A federal judge in August dismissed a lawsuit by Kari Lake, Republican candidate for Arizona governor, and Mark Finchem, Republican nominee for secretary of state, to require the state’s officials to count ballots by hand in November because of unfounded claims of voting machine problems. There’s no evidence in Arizona or elsewhere in the United States that fraud, problems with ballot-counting equipment or other voting issues had any impact on the results of the 2020 election.

Community members in support of the hand count spoke out during the committee claiming that the process was necessary since “hand-filled-out ballots are the only ones that can be trusted.” Several individuals claimed that they were concerned that the voting machines in Cochise County and potentially others in Arizona were uncertified machines that had not been checked by an accredited lab and, therefore, could not accurately count votes.

Those not in support of the hand count voiced that the process would take too long, subject ballots to human error and bias, and would be a waste of taxpayer and county resources. Still, others voiced that instituting a hand count was less about fair elections and more a political stunt. One resident said he believed that instituting a hand count just two weeks prior to the general election would “inject chaos into the electoral process.”

Several other testimonies resounded a similar concern: that it was criminally wrong to change the election process just two weeks before the general election and during the early voting timeline. One county resident said, “What we’re witnessing is a troubled relationship with the truth and an unwillingness to accept the rule of law.”

Those listening in on the committee meeting were frequently told to hold their applause and to be silent. Judd addressed the crowd saying, “We didn’t come here to have a circus. We know there’s both people on both sides of the issue, but they should be speaking to us.”

County Recorder David Stevens, a Republican, said the proposal to launch a hand count came mainly from conservative Republicans who said they had signed up 140 volunteers to hand count ballots. Stevens acknowledged in an interview and again before the board that there would be concerns about results being illegally leaked before they could legally be posted at 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Arizona counties can start tabulating early and mail ballots that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters as soon as they are signature-verified, but the results are tightly-held. In Cochise County, east of Tucson, only the election director knows those results before they are released.

The heavily Republican county had about 62,000 votes cast in the 2020 general election, but Stevens said a hand count could be done fairly quickly. Under state law, a small percentage of ballots in selected races go through a mandatory hand count with bipartisan teams to check the accuracy of vote-counting machines after all the votes are counted. A complete hand count would be much more difficult. Stevens said 31 races county-wide will have to be tabulated, plus additional races like school board members.

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