More than 56 percent of Cochise County’s registered voters cast ballots in the general election, and as expected the majority of the Republican candidates won.
What wasn’t expected was that nearly 80 percent of the 46,283 ballots were turned in before Election Day. That means only 9,.425 in-person votes were cast spread out across the county’s 17 voting centers.
Lisa Marra, Cochise County’s elections director, announced shortly before 10 p.m. that the only ballots left to tabulate are an unspecified number of provisional ballots along with early-voting ballots dropped off on Tuesday. Those will be reviewed and counted later this week, she said.
Early voters in Cochise County have customarily leaned toward Democratic and Independent candidates, while Republicans traditionally have a higher turnout at the polls on Election Day. And that trend held true this year, with the Trump/Pence ticket, U.S. Senator Martha McSally, and Brandon Martin for U.S. Representative receiving 51 percent of the early vote.
Yet once the in-person votes were counted, that percentage went up to 57 in those three races.
As expected, Republicans Gail Griffin, Becky Nutt, and David Gowan handily won their races, as Republicans Lea Marquez Peterson, James O’Connor, and Eric Sloan for the Arizona Corporation Commission. Meanwhile, the Republican candidates for county assessor, county attorney, county recorder, county sheriff, and county treasurer were unopposed, along with two of the three seats for board of supervisor.
Only two partisan county races -Board of Supervisors for District 2 and School Superintendent- were contested, with incumbent Superintendent Jacqui Clay, a Republican, winning by more than 10,000 votes.
The only partisan race in Cochise County won by a Democrat was the county supervisor seat long held by Ann English, who faced her strongest challenge in years by Lori Kilpatrick. The evening ended with English up by 1,400 votes out of 13, 175 cast.
For decades District 2 has been a Democratic stronghold in Bisbee and Douglas, but Kilpatrick rallied strong support among Republicans in her hometown of Tombstone and neighboring conservative communities. Kilpatrick also hit hard on English’s involvement in recent litigation against the county board, including a lawsuit which seeks to have English removed from office for violating Arizona’s open meeting law and conflict of interest statute.
On the issue of Proposition 207, 54 percent of Cochise County voters legalizing marijuana use and possession by adults. However, voters were much less enthusiastic about Proposition 208, which would provide additional funding for public education.
Early-ballots had Prop 208 passing at 53 percent, but after in-person voters overwhelmingly reject the plan. In the end the “yes” votes dropped to 48 percent while the no votes jumped to 51 percent.
The most hotly contested race in Cochise County has been a seat on the superior court sought by three attorneys, all of whom have worked at some time for the Cochise County Attorney’s Office. That race is too close to call, with the top two vote getters only 65 votes apart heading as of press time.