Pinal County Elections Director Virginia Ross holds up a certificate of accuracy that was signed in November by Republican and Democratic witnesses in Coolidge for the general election. || Pinal County photo
By Howard Fischer || Capitol Media Services
While the statewide recount confirmed Thursday that Democrat Kris Mayes was elected the new state attorney general, the numbers show Pinal County had the biggest discrepancy between canvassed results and the recount.
Mayes’ margin of victory over Abe Hamadeh was smaller than originally reported.
Official returns had put Mayes 511 votes ahead of her Republican foe out of more than 2.5 million ballots counted in that race. That fell within the margin under which state law mandates a recount.
The recount tally, announced by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason, sliced that to 280, with Mayes picking up an extra 196 votes from the original reports and Hamadeh adding another 427.
Of note is that the difference in tallies were not all from one county. In fact, the recounts in 11 of the state’s 15 counties produced different results for one or both of the candidates.
The biggest shift, however, came in Pinal County which gave Mayes another 115 votes on top of the 58,953 initially reported; Hamadeh’s tally went up 392 from the official tally of 82,724.
