PHOENIX (AP) — Two county council Republicans in rural southeastern Arizona approved a proposal 2-1 Monday to hand-count all ballots in the Nov. 8 election after rejecting a differently worded motion during a chaotic meeting.
Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby voted in favor of the measure after rejecting the first proposal, which called for 100 volunteers who had already been vetted and trained to count hands. A third board member, Chair Ann English, is a Democrat who voted against both proposals, arguing that the country’s insurance would not protect her from pending lawsuits.
“I’m asking you not to try to order this separate hand count,” said District Attorney Brian McIntyre, a Republican. He said such actions would be illegal and the executives could be held personally liable in a civil suit.
Republicans have been under intense pressure from voters in the district, which has many Republicans who believe Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election.
“The Cochise County Supervisors are clearly crafting a script to delay the certification of Arizona’s election results,” said Natalie Fierce Bock, a member of the Arizona Voting Rights Coalition. seen today in Cochise County would be part of their strategy to overwhelm our election officials.
“These tactics are irresponsible, dangerous, and in some cases clearly against the law,” she said.
The first rejected proposal stated that the volunteers “want to participate in this way to help people (including some participants) who have lost faith in elections, to ensure that our country’s elections are safe and secure.”
The measure that was approved calls for an audit of the manual count at all precincts to be arranged by the county registrar or other election official to ensure agreement with the machine count. McIntyre also called the plan illegal.
Under state law, a small percentage of ballots in select races already undergo a mandatory manual count by bipartisan teams to verify the accuracy of the vote-counting machines after all votes have been counted.
More discussion on the matter was expected at the county council’s regular meeting on Tuesday morning.
A similar vote count in rural Nevada in Nye County has sparked a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which it says threatens to illegally release election results. It is one of the first constituencies in the country to take action against an election conspiracy involving mistrust of voting machines.
The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Friday that Nye can begin hand-counting mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day, but he will not be allowed to broadcast the vote count live and must make other changes to his plans.
In August, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, and Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, to require state officials to count ballots by hand in November over unsubstantiated claims of voting machine problems .
There is no evidence in Arizona or anywhere else in the United States that fraud, problems with ballot counting equipment or other voting problems affected the results of the 2020 election.
In Cochise County, Recorder David Stevens, also a Republican, said the manual count could raise concerns about the results being illegally leaked before they are legally released at 8 p.m. on Election Day. About 62,000 votes were cast in the constituency for the 2020 general election.
Arizona Secretary of State Kathy Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor whose office oversees the state’s elections, urged the board of directors in a letter to abandon efforts to impose a mandatory hand count, agreeing that it would be illegal.
“If the board votes to conduct a full vote count — putting the accuracy and integrity of our elections at risk — the Secretary will take all possible legal action to ensure that Cochise County holds a general election in 2022 in accordance with Arizona law,” the governor said. letter stating that council members who voted yes could be held personally liable for their actions.
“We are all stewards of taxpayer dollars and taxpayers should not bear the burden of the Council’s planned actions,” the statement added. “We sincerely hope that such action is unnecessary and that the Board will heed the advice of its counsel.”
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