Just one day after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced a 100 percent result of a hand count of votes cast in Maricopa County during last week’s general election, a major political party has filed a lawsuit against county officials over the method by which the audit was conducted.
The lawsuit by the Arizona Republican Party contends Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and the county’s board of supervisors failed to ensure its recent hand count of votes cast on Nov. 3 complied with state law. The hand count is an audit which compares a manual count of a random sampling of votes to the counts provided by electronic tabulation equipment.
While Maricopa County officials prepare to respond to the lawsuit, Arizona Daily Independent has confirmed only three of Arizona’s 15 counties -Coconino, Maricopa, and Pinal- conducted a hand count after the Presidential Preference Primary Election in March, despite a state law which states “the county officer in charge of the election shall conduct a hand count” of tabulation machine accuracy.
And as of Wednesday, three counties -Gila, La Paz, and Yuma- reported once more that they will not perform a hand count of the general election due to lack of full participation by the local political parties. Several other counties -Cochise, Coconino, Greenlee, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, and Yavapai- have already reported successful hand counts from last week’s election, and the four remaining counties had not yet reported their results.
The legal challenge to Maricopa County’s hand count stems from Arizona Revised Statute 16-602 which requires the hand count of at least two percent of a county’s “precincts.” Maricopa County has 748 precincts, meaning its hand count would normally involve at least 15 precincts.
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However, Maricopa County officials changed its election format this year to allow votes to be cast at any of 175 voting centers across the county. And although state law refers specifically to precincts instead of voting centers, the Arizona Elections Procedure Manual issued by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office equates a voting center with a precinct.
That means Maricopa County’s hand count covered four voting centers.
As a result, the law firm of Wilenchik & Bartness is seeking a court order on behalf of the Arizona Republican Party to compel Fontes to conduct the hand count in accordance with state law, not the elections manual.
Even if Maricopa County officials are ordered to re-do their hand count, not all races on a ballot are subject to a hand count. That’s because the hand count statute applies only to contested races and then no more than five of those races.
Under the statute, this year’s general election requires the presidential race to be one of the races audited. The others must include one statewide race for statewide office, one race for state legislative office, one race for the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives, and one statewide ballot measure if there is one.
With voter confidence in the election process under attack daily, it would seem that conducting a hand count could help dispel some of that distrust. But the lack of hand counts in many counties doesn’t appear to be simply a matter of local officials not caring.
That’s because the hand count statute puts certain authority in the control of the county chair of each political party. For instance, the local party chairs “shall conduct the selection of the precincts to be hand counted” and “shall select by lot the individual races to be hand counted,” and most importantly, “shall perform the hand count under the supervision of the county officer in charge of elections.”
State law allows for a political party’s state chairperson or designee to perform the actions required by the county chairperson if necessary, but it appears most counties chose to bypass the audit without full participating of the political parties.
However, public records show that Pinal County officials went ahead with a hand count in March even though there were participation issues. Another concern seems to be that there is no consequence or penalty for counties -or political parties- which don’t consider the hand count issue to be a priority.
The Arizona Republican Party lawsuit is expected to come before a judge in the next few days.