Many county-level political parties have failed to participate in post-election hand counts required under state law.
The hand count is a county-based audit of votes cast in five randomly contested races to compare a manual count of a sampling of ballots to the counts provided by electronic tabulation equipment. But as previously reported by Arizona Daily Independent, only 3 of Arizona’s 15 counties conducted hand counts in March following the Presidential Preference Primary Election.
In fact, Arizona Revised Statute 16-602 appears to provide no sanctions against county officials or the political parties for failing to conduct the hand counts, and there seems to have been no prior action taken by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office nor the Arizona Attorney General’s Office due to a lack of compliance with the hand count law.
In Maricopa County, members of the Democratic, Libertarian, and Republican parties recently audited nearly 3,000 in-person ballots and 5,165 early ballots, resulting in a 100 percent accuracy match. But on Monday, a judge will hear arguments in an elections complaint filed last week by the Arizona Republican Party about how those ballots were selected for the hand count.
The lawsuit contends Maricopa County must audit a sampling of in-person votes from two percent of the county’s 748 polling places and not two percent of the county’s 175 voting centers as was done. ARS 16-602 specifies precincts but the law also refers to the Arizona Elections Procedure Manual which equates a voting center with a precinct.
The elections manual is written by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, then reviewed by the attorney general’s office and Gov. Doug Ducey before being released. There is no indication that the Maricopa County Republican Party protested the issue of auditing two percent of the voting centers instead of the county’s precincts.
Last week, Chief Deputy Attorney General Joseph Kanefield sent a letter to Senate President Karen Fann and Speaker of the House Russell Bowers expressing support for equating voting centers with precincts. A formal opinion on the issue, however, will follow “in due course,” he wrote.
Public records obtained from the secretary of state’s office show only Coconino and Maricopa counties performed hand counts in March in the method specified by statute, while Pinal County elections officials followed a slightly different process because the local Democratic and Republican parties failed to participate.
The other 12 counties either reported cancellation of the March hand counts due to COVID-19 concerns or due to a lack of participation by some or all of their local political parties, according to Hobbs’ office.
It was also revealed last week that four counties -Gila, Graham, La Paz, and Yuma- informed Hobbs they were not conducting hand counts of the General Election because one or more of their local political parties failed to designate the required participants.
In a Nov. 6 letter to Hobbs from Eric Mariscal, Gila County Elections Director, “no Republican board member names were submitted” so the hand count was not conducted. The elections departments in Graham, La Paz, and Yuma also reported no participation by their local Republican chairs.
Meanwhile, the chairs of the Democratic parties in Graham and La Paz counties also failed to designate participants for the hand count. And the Libertarian Party chair in Yuma County did not provide names of its participants, according to Yuma County Election Director Tiffany Anderson.
The counties of Cochise, Coconino, Greenlee, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, and Yavapai have completed hand counts for the general election. It was unclear as of press time whether Apache, Mohave, and Santa Cruz counties intend to conduct their hand counts.
Early voting ballots are also subject to a hand count based on a sample size of one percent of early ballots or 5,000 early ballots, whichever is less.