TUCSON, Arizona (KGUN) — It was a tense but peaceful sight on Saturday as Cochise County Sheriff’s Department vehicles surrounded the Cochise County Courthouse. A volunteer counted his 2% of the ballot by hand, so they were there to make sure everything went smoothly.
This came after the Cochise County Board of Supervisors controversially decided to count 100% of ballots by hand.
Arizona law allows the county to count only 2% of ballots by hand to make sure machines count ballots correctly.
After Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs threatened to sue them, the Cochise County Supervisor unsuccessfully appealed to the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court.
The county supervisor has since decided not to do 100% hand counts in accordance with Arizona law. Instead, they approved a commission to audit every district in the county.
However, some Cochise County residents, like Rachel White, oppose 100% hand counting. She said she has confidence in the county’s electoral system and voting machines.
“I don’t understand why they would want to waste their time when machines can’t make mistakes,” White said.
Cochise County Recorder Attorney Alexander Collodin said the Arizona courts ruled that the county would manually re-retake Election Day ballots from up to 16 of the 17 randomly selected polling places. He said he was allowed to count.
He feels like hand-detailing 100% of the votes comes down to election security.
“The machine results are already tallied. It’s all a safeguard and I don’t think anyone can argue against that,” Collodin said.
County Recorder David Stevens said ballots were not hand-counted. He said it was done by the Electoral Commission.
The Associated Press reported that the Cochise County Board of Supervisors is proposing to increase the count to 99.9% of ballots cast on Election Day.
The county hopes to certify the election results by the end of this month.
But some residents, like Toby Merrick, said they were happy with the county’s current system of counting votes.
“There is no evidence that anything went wrong,” Merrick said.
