Mohave County supervisors are asking a judge to bar Attorney General Chris Mays from receiving “threats and intimidation” for pushing for a hand-counted election.

Ron Gould argued in a new court filing that there is nothing in state law that would prevent counties from deciding to count ballots by hand. What's more, without Mays, a majority of the five-member board would have voted in favor of such a process, he wrote in a November letter to regulators. The lawsuit claims that this “could lead to a variety of felonies and misdemeanors.” Penalties.

“We hope that you will choose not to violate the law and that we will not have to consider whether criminal prosecution is warranted for conducting illegal hand counts,” the attorney general wrote.

But Gould's attorney, Dennis Wilenczyk, said Mays misread the law.

And the lawsuit the attorney general relies on to support her claims only concludes that the county cannot conduct a complete manual tally audit, and whether the results match what was reported. He said that means checking the accuracy of every ballot individually to make sure. Vote tabulation device. What the ruling didn't include, Wilenczyk said, is what at least some Mojave supervisors hope to do: scrap voting equipment altogether in favor of manual vote counting. It is said that it is something to do.

So Gould was told by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge that machine counting is voluntary, the choice can be made by regulators, and that he “should not be subject to intimidation or intimidation by the attorney general for using hand counting as grounds for voting.” They are seeking a ruling that “not.'' The primary initial method of vote counting. ”

A spokesperson for Mays declined to comment.

The outcome of the lawsuit will have implications beyond Mohave County. The final ruling will tell county supervisors across the state whether they are free to retire voting machines and return to the state they were in before such tabulation devices existed.

Wilenczyk said he believes Arizona law provides that.

Consider, he said, a section of the election law that states that ballots, or votes, “may be cast, recorded, and tabulated by voting or marking devices and vote tabulating devices.” The operative word there is “may,” Wilenczyk said, meaning “under the statutory system, the use of vote tabulation devices is optional, not mandatory.”

And while the federal government's Help America Vote Act prohibits the use of certain tabulation devices (for example, those that cannot create a permanent paper record) in federal elections, it does not prohibit manual tabulation. No, he said.

The dispute in Mohave County dates back to last summer, when the board voted to consider the 2024 race. The plan was scrapped by a 3-2 vote in August amid a variety of practical concerns.

But three months later, one of his opponents, Chairman Travis Lingenfelter, put the issue back on the table. This gave Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu City) an opportunity to argue to the board that hand counting is legal.

But it was also at the same meeting that Mays' letter was read to the board.

Gould argues that if it were not for Mays' letter, Lingenfelter would have voted in favor of the hand count, providing the necessary third vote given his previous vote against it.

Lingenfelter did not respond to requests for comment. But Gould said it was only logical.

“It seems pretty strange that he would bring it up again if he hasn't changed his mind,” he said.

An Arizona court has dismissed various lawsuits alleging that tabulation devices produced erroneous results in the 2022 election. And the Brennan Center for Justice concludes that counting by hand is more likely to result in errors.

There are also checks built into the system, such as requirements for testing machines before and after elections. Arizona law also requires random hand count audits, in which a certain number of races from a certain number of precincts are tallied by hand and the totals match what the machines counted.

But Gould said there are good reasons to want a judge to rule that the hand count is legal.

“My concern is that voters are losing faith in the electoral process,” he said. And Gould dismissed questions about whether this is happening simply because candidates like Donald Trump or Kali Lake are sowing the seeds because they lost elections.

“It doesn't matter why they're losing faith in elections,” he said. “My fear is that if they lose faith, they will stop voting.”

And Gould said he shares some of their concerns.

He noted that state law requires each county's board of supervisors to certify the results of each election.

Gould specifically cited requests for “voting records,” saying, “We don't know whether we had a clean election because the investigation doesn't provide us with the information we need.”

Essentially, it is a digital representation of each voter's choice, with any information that would identify the voter removed. Although primarily used as an auditing tool, it can also provide information to political enthusiasts, such as whether people who voted for Candidate X in one election also voted in all other elections. Such information cannot be verified by simply reviewing official documents. result.

“They don't give me the information to do my job,” Gould said.

Still, he said he has been threatened with prosecution if he refuses to rubber-stamp the results.

It's not just Maze. Gould said Cori Rorick, the state elections official under Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, is threatening to file a lawsuit after the 2022 election to sue counties that don't certify their results in time. he pointed out.

“I'm tired of people saying I'm going to go to jail just because I did my job,” Gould said.

All of this could be resolved if a judge rules that counting ballots by hand is legally permissible, he said.

A date for the public hearing has not been set.