The Secretary of State’s Office says it will sue Cochise County if leaders there vote to hand-count the 2022 election instead of using electronic tabulating machines, like those shown here in Maricopa County. Photo by Courtney Pedroza | Getty Images
By Jen Fifield || Votebeat
State Elections Director Kori Lorick sent a letter Wednesday to the county supervisors saying the office agrees with the Cochise County Attorney’s Office and state Legislative Council that, under state law, the county is not authorized to count its ballots by hand. Also, Lorick wrote, a hand count would put the accuracy of the election at risk and the time it would take to hand-tally all votes would make it impossible to meet the state’s deadline for finalizing election results.
(This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.)
“If the Board votes to proceed with a full hand 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,” Lorick wrote.
Still, it appears the supervisors will take a vote on the plan, even though early voting is already underway for the Nov. 8 election. They will meet at 2 p.m. Monday to discuss it and possibly vote, according to an agenda posted on the county’s website on Friday.
Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, the two Republicans on the three-member board, want to hand-count all votes cast in the midterm election by the county’s 87,000 registered voters. After receiving Lorick’s letter, Judd told Votebeat that she does not know whether she will vote to make the hand count happen, but she still wants to have the discussion and vote next week.
“I’m not going to give up on it yet,” Judd said.
She doesn’t believe the hand count would be illegal, saying, “there are a lot of legal opinions out there.” Judd was a state lawmaker before she was elected to the county board in 2016.
She brushed off other concerns in the letter, saying that votes were counted by hand before vote-counting machines and it worked. She said it would be challenging to recruit a bipartisan team, and it would take a long time, but she wanted to try to make it happen.
“It’s not as big of a deal as some people are worried about,” she said.
