After officials initially failed to count hundreds of ballots due to human error in the Pinal County midterm elections, county regulators now want to attempt manual ballot counting. ing.

The county’s middle-of-the-road error wasn’t caused by the ballot-counting machine, but by workers misprogramming the machine and overlooking an error in the machine that left the ballots uncounted.a The Votebeat survey was announced earlier this month It turns out that the county lacked procedures to properly track ballots cast at polling places on Election Day, and election officials had not adhered to safeguards to ensure that each ballot was counted. bottom.

Still, the three Republican Overseers, who represent a fast-growing Republican-leaning suburban county just southeast of Phoenix, will count ballots by hand, not machines, on Wednesday’s ballot beat. He said he wanted to see if it was possible. It is, despite the fact that counting ballots by hand has repeatedly proven to be a long way off. Poor accuracy more efficient than counting votes by machine, according to many the study and election experts across the country.

Like many state and county regulators, they have been plagued by months of requests from residents to have their counties manually count ballots because: False Claims Regarding Vote Switching It’s been swirling since the 2020 election.

Oversight Board Chairman Jeff Sardy told VoteBeat on Wednesday that the county will conduct a trial hand count using a sample of ballots cast by voters in 2022 “to see what happens.” I said yes. Supervisor Mike Goodman told Votebeat he supports the plan.

Separately, manager Kevin Kavanaugh at Wednesday’s board meeting asked managers to discuss manually counting all ballots in 2024, which is now illegal in Arizona. there is State law requires paper ballots to be scanned and tallied by tally machines.

The Pinal County elections are plagued by problems that cannot be solved with manual ballot counting. In the primary election, the county ran out of ballots on Election Day or in nearly a quarter of polling places, resulting in significant delays for voters across the county.

A statewide recount ultimately revealed the error in the November election, in which election officials initially failed to count 442 votes, plus some dozens more. It has been found. Without the recount, these votes would not have been counted.

Serdi said Wednesday the county is taking steps to prevent future problems, including hiring more election staff, establishing additional checks and balances and building new election centers to streamline the process. Elections administrator Geraldine Rohl told the board he was working on new processes to better ensure accurate results, including the creation of a new ballot tracking form.

Alongside these amendments, a sample hand count of the 2022 ballots is also planned. Serdi said Pinal will set an example for the state as the state legislature seeks to pass a bill to do away with voting machines. He said the trial will be open to the public and will be attended by the press.

From 2020 onwards, other attempts to manually tally ballots across the country will take weeks to months, require dozens to hundreds of workers, and how difficult it is to get accurate results. indicates whetherState Senate Ordered Partisan Review 2.1 million Maricopa County 2020 election ballotsFor example, Cyber ​​Ninja and its contractors cost over three months, millions of dollars, hundreds of volunteers, and required votes to vote. repeated many times in order to get accurate results. In Nevada last year, workers in Nye County took longer than expected to count by hand. at a pace of about 2,000 votes one day.

More than 145,000 votes were cast in the Pinal County midterm elections.

Kavanaugh, who wants to discuss a full hand count of all 2024 ballots, said he wants to discuss hand counting, even though county officials have blamed human error for the error. Stated. problem. However, county officials were not clear about this, saying that incorrect machine settings and ignored error messages on the tally machine caused inaccuracies, along with two-page ballots that made counting difficult. He explained that it was the worker’s fault.

“If we have [issues with the machines]We need to debate the merits of doing manual counting and whether there are machines that do better counting than what we have,” Kavanaugh said.

“I’m not an election expert,” said Kavanaugh when told that hand-counting ballots has proven less accurate than machines. He said he knew workers had problems running ballots through the machine and believed it was worth discussing.

Cochise County was blocked from conducting a full hand count of ballots in a post-election audit in November following a judge’s ruling that it was prohibited by Arizona law.

But the interest in counting by hand continues today. on monday, State Senator Sonny Borrelli Makes False Claims A non-binding resolution passed by Congress earlier this year barred counties from using tally machines in upcoming elections, they said.it is after Attorney General Chris Mays Issues Opinion On May 18, it clarified that the full hand-counting of ballots is illegal.

At Wednesday’s Pinal County Supervisors’ Meeting, three residents told supervisors in public comments that they believe ballots should be counted by hand while speaking to supervisors about election issues in the county. .

“My suggestion is to start looking at hand numbers,” Bootshawks said. “This is festering and we cannot continue to ignore it.”