Votes are counted by staff at the Maricopa County Elections Department office on Nov. 5, 2020. Photo by Courtney Pedroza || Getty Images
Cochise County is considering counting all ballots by hand in the 2022 general election
By Jen Fifeld || Votebeat
Votes are counted by staff at the Maricopa County Elections Department office on Nov. 5, 2020. Photo by Courtney Pedroza | Getty Images
Cochise County officials are considering hand-counting all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters this election, a radical measure for a county of its size that election experts say is also problematic and unnecessary.
A hand count would produce inaccurate results, confuse voters, and consume extensive time, money, and labor, said C.Jay Coles, senior policy and advocacy associate at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections. The county elections office estimated a hand count in Cochise would take 2,500 total hours of work. Election researchers and consultants generally advise against hand-counting ballots, because machine counts are proven to be more accurate and efficient.
“It’s such an opportunity for confusion, and, really, downright chaos,” Coles said.
The Republican-leaning county on the southern Arizona border is the latest to propose such an idea, part of a larger trend fueled by distrust of vote-counting machines that emerged after the 2020 election, when conspiracy theorists spread unfounded claims that the machines had been programmed to switch votes in favor of Joe Biden.
In neighboring Nevada, a state judge recently ruled that Nye County could move forward with a similar plan that had been challenged by a progressive advocacy group, ruling that the state law doesn’t prohibit hand-counting ballots. Efforts to force hand counts in New Hampshire slowed down election results last month for the primary. And after the election, in El Paso County, Colorado, losing candidates called for their races to be recounted by hand, which is not allowed under state law.
Less than one percent of registered voters in America live in jurisdictions where ballots are hand-counted, and many of them are small towns or precincts, according to research conducted by Verified Voting.
Cochise County officials will meet Tuesday, the day before early voting begins in Arizona, to consider whether to follow the county’s machine tabulation of paper ballots with a full hand count of those same ballots.
