Rural Arizona county officials push ballot hand count

By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Elected officials in a rural county in southeastern Arizona are debating a hand count of all ballots in the midterm election alongside the machine count even though the Cochise County attorney’s office and state authorities have said they don’t have legal authority.

Cochise County Board of Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby proposed the hand count being considered in a formal vote Monday after an hours long public meeting. They are under pressure from voters in the heavily Republican county who believe Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

The third supervisor, Board Chair Ann English, is a Democrat and encouraged her colleagues to rethink their stance.

A similar hand-count push in rural Nevada’s Nye County prompted a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues it risks illegal release of election results. It is among the first counties in the nation to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust in voting machines.

Nevada’s state Supreme Court ruled Friday that Nye can start hand-counting mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day, but it won’t be allowed to livestream the tallying and must make other changes to its plans.

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.

In Cochise County, Recorder David Stevens, a Republican, has said that with a hand count there could be concerns about results being illegally leaked before they could legally posted at 8 p.m. on Election Day Nov. 8. The county had about 62,000 votes cast in the 2020 general election.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor whose office oversees state elections, in a letter urged the board to abandon its effort to mandate a hand count, agreeing that it would be unlawful.

“If the Board votes to proceed with a full count — putting at risk the accuracy and integrity of our elections — the Secretary will take all available legal action to ensure that Cochise County conducts the 2022 General Election in compliance with Arizona law,” said the letter, suggesting the board members voting in favor could be personally liable for their actions.

“We are all stewards of taxpayer dollars, and taxpayers should not bear the burden of the Board’s contemplated actions,” it added. “We sincerely hope such action is unnecessary and the Board will follow the advice of its own attorney.”