PINAL COUNTY, FLORENCE — Elected leaders in Arizona County were considering following the rural county’s lead by expanding ballot handcounts from next week’s election, but announced that effort on Wednesday. I refused.
The reason why a majority of the Pinal County Supervisory Board doubts the current hand-counting audit, which, as one supervisor suggested, is verifying machine-counted results or expanding the audit to include more districts. I said no.
This leaves only local Cochise County to pursue a complete count of all ballots in the state. The move has been challenged in court as illegal.
At Wednesday’s All-Republican Pinal County Board meeting, supervisor Kevin Kavanaugh suggested doubling or tripling the number of precincts selected for post-election handcount audits.
hello, Unsubstantiated and Repeated Claims by Former President Donald Trump He also said Hillary Clinton had made a similar statement about the vote-counting machine that roused his supporters. , publicly acknowledged his victory and attended the inauguration ceremony.
“But as concerns have been brought to my attention, the question is whether the machine can be trusted,” Kavanaugh said. “Can you trust the number of ballots coming out of the machine?”
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He asked the board to approve the expansion, ensuring a sufficient sample of hand counts to get what he said would result in a statistically reliable number of votes.
The proposal received little support from the other four Republicans on the board, who opened up for public comment on the issue for over an hour. These comments, even from local county Republican leaders, were overwhelmingly against the proposal.
Kathy Nowak, a member of the county Republican executive committee, said she has attended six regular handcount audits and the tally matches the machine count each time.
“We look very solid. I think (increasing the count) is absolutely ridiculous,” Nowak told the board.
However, two local residents, including Daniel Wood, insisted the vote tallying machine used by the county was not legally certified and insisted on a higher hand count.
“For more than 200 years, we’ve been counting hands in this country of people, for people, by people,” Woods, who said he’s a combat veteran, told the board. All of a sudden we used machines and it’s not legal anymore, it’s horse crap.
County Attorney Kent Volkmer debunked the allegations at a recent board meeting, showing the machine’s federal certification.
Others urged the board to flatly reject the broadened handcount proposal, and the way those denying President Joe Biden’s victory stirs controversy, and that is what election integrity is all about. He said it had nothing to do with it.
Casa Grande Democrat Noel Leck said, “It’s all about stirring the pot and instilling distrust in our system, often discerning because of a candidate’s defeat.” There are conspiracy theories being used,” he said. – Deny and vote against this costly and unnecessary hand count expansion. ”
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Commissioner Stephen Miller said he had confidence in the county’s registrar and election commission, and routine audits confirmed the accuracy of the tallying machines. He also said it would be up to Congress to decide whether he in the constituency should expand the required manual tally of votes from 2% to a maximum of five races.
“I think it’s accurate enough and I believe it will be a fair election,” Miller said. “And I see no reason to go down this path of changing the rules right before an election.”
The denial of expanded handcounts in Pinal County, a formerly rural area just south of the Phoenix metropolitan area that has experienced explosive growth over the past decade, stands in stark contrast to the approach of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona. was.
There, last week, two Republicans on its three-member board, with the support of the Republican county registrar, pushed forward a plan to hand-count all early and Election Day ballots. .
Republican Attorney General Mark Brunovich released an unofficial statement last week He said it was legal to count all ballots by hand to ensure they were consistent with machine tallies. You can count, but it goes against the views of the Secretary of State’s elections officials who said early voting, which accounts for more than 80% of Arizona’s votes, is illegal.
Republican county attorneys elected in both jurisdictions have warned their respective boards that they have no legal authority to expand the voting handcount.
an independent group of retired Americans called the Arizona Alliance sued Cochise County and several of its officials on Monday Stop the magnified hand count. A judge is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Friday.
A similar effort is underway in Nye County, Nevada. suspended by the state’s Supreme Court Last week, however, officials there vowed to resume counting as soon as possible.
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