by Bob Christie
capitol media services
PHOENIX — Democratic Attorney General Chris Mays has retracted an informal opinion issued by his Republican predecessor. He said counties could manually count all ballots during elections. Cochise County Republicans attempted the procedure last year based on unsubstantiated concerns that mechanical ballot-counters were fraudulently counting. Neither safe nor accurate.
Mays issued an alternate formal statement late Friday, stating that current election law prevents counties from conducting full manual counting of ballots cast on Election Day and early by mail. rice field.
The new opinion follows a judge’s ruling that stopped Cochise County officials from conducting a full hand tally mandated by the Republican-controlled Congress after last November’s election. Judges have consulted the Attorney General’s opinion for important guidance in interpreting state law, but it is not legally binding.
In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 7 election, two Republican members of the Cochise County Oversight Board pointed to questions raised by former President Donald Trump and his supporters about the accuracy and safety of electronic ballot counting machines. , justified the decision. They did so even though there was no evidence that the machine was inaccurate or vulnerable to hacking.
Former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovic backed them when they had the Deputy Attorney General issue an informal opinion just over a week before the election, concluding that their plan had passed legal mobilization. However, contrary to official opinion, Brnovic did not sign the document.
Retirement groups sued Cochise County, and Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley ruled the day before the election that full manual counting is prohibited by law.
He pointed to detailed instructions Congress has set on how to manually tally samples for both Election Day and early voting, as well as rules for expanding audits when numbers don’t match. He said the number of early ballots would be severely limited, except in the event of inconsistent results, but starting counting the ballots on Election Day from the entire hand would be against rules requiring ballots to be selected at random. I wrote that I violated.
The judge concluded that doing a full hand count would invalidate part of the law about how to handle mismatched machine counts, rendering the extended clause useless. The county board is still appealing this decision.
Mr. Mays joined in the thick of it.
In his signed opinion, Mays wrote that Brnovic had misunderstood the law and should not have bypassed the agency’s normal process for issuing an opinion.
“After further consideration of the statute and[the judge’s]decision, the Department of Justice concluded that the informal opinion misunderstood the applicable law,” Mays wrote. A formal opinion should not have been issued in a similar manner.” As a formal opinion. ”
Mays narrowly defeated Republican Abe Hamade to take office in January, giving Democrats the top three state offices for the first time in decades. Mays accuses Brnovic of politicizing the official residence and, in defense of a law that outlaws virtually all abortions, tells landlords they shouldn’t discriminate against tenants just because the rent is cheap. He has reversed or taken the opposite view of some of his decisions, even on city rights. He is subsidized by federal programs.
In a new opinion, she agreed with McGinley that allowing full hand counts would render detailed instructions on how to magnify the counts if the results do not match the machine counts, both unnecessary and pointless. Hand counting is intended to ensure that the tally machines are counting ballots accurately.
Cochise County Registrar David Stevens, a Republican, backed the count tally effort and recruited volunteers from both major political parties to do the tally before it was blocked, but Monday’s call for comment was forthcoming. did not return to
But Alexander Collodin, an attorney representing Cochise County on appeals, said he believes the county will win on appeals regardless of what Mays says now.
Corrodin, also a Republican member of the Scottsdale State House of Representatives, said, “All I can say is that it’s clearly a political act to overturn your predecessor’s opinion,” and Mays’ opinion is, even if it’s an opinion. Yet that is exactly what is formal in her role as Attorney General.
“At the end of the day, these AG opinions are not law, they are not case law, they are not precedents,” Corrodin said.
According to a lower court judge’s decision, Arizona law limits early voting to 1% of those cast or 5,000, whichever is less, and expansion will not occur unless that number matches the machine’s tally. not allowed. For votes cast directly on Election Day, at least 2% of him in a constituency or 2% of his at random, whichever is greater.
Mr. Corodin ruled that as long as ballots were randomly selected and 100% hand counting was not possible, the number of votes cast directly on Election Day could be increased, and the judge justified that part of the ruling. said he did. But the “at least” part allows more information to be manually aggregated, he argues.
Republicans, who control Congress, have passed a law allowing counties to extend manual count audits to 100% of the total votes cast. But Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’s fate is uncertain after she opposed Cochise County’s expansion plans last year when she was Arizona’s secretary of state in charge of election administration.
Mr. Corodin said the fate of the current law did not depend on Mr. Mays.
“They can do politics as they please, but it’s the judiciary’s role to say what the law is. So we’re waiting for the Court of Appeals to say what the law is,” he said. Stated.
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Twitter: @AZChristieNews