The Cochise County Oversight Board’s effort to complete a 100% audit of the 2022 general election tampering continued on Tuesday, when the board appealed an initial ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley that the board’s tampering audit violated Arizona election law.
Veronica Lucero, attorney for Cochise County Recorder David Stevens, argued that state law allows the commission to conduct 100% hand tally audits of early and Election Day ballots since the language of Congress. law A randomized population audit of “at least 2 percent of the county’s subdivisions, or the greater of the two subdivisions,” is required.
Lucero also argued that: Another provision of Arizona lawThe law states that all ballots cast in local and state elections “may” be cast and counted by ballot counting machines, leaving the door open to counties not using ballot counting machines.
she quoted McDonald’s v. Cochise Countyin a 1930 lawsuit, upheld the voters’ decision of Cochise County to move the county seat from Tombstone to Bisbee.
“The board, as the legislative authority of the county, has the authority to enact procedures as necessary,” Lucero said. “I think ARS 16-443 says the tally table says voting ‘can.’ It doesn’t say that voting ‘should.’ So I think the county reserves the right to do the initial tally manually if it so desires.”
Cochise County Oversight Board Attorney Brian Brehm added, “If they decide not to use the electronic voting machines and count the ballots by hand, 16-602 doesn’t matter. It goes away. It makes the whole statue unnecessary.”
Appellate Judge Sean Blaircliffe said the entire law was not unnecessary. It’s just unnecessary for counties where it doesn’t apply. It added that the law still applies.
Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Stephanie Stevenson’s attorney, Aria Branch, said Arizona law does not allow a full county audit unless there are discrepancies that would trigger a subsequent expanded audit, of which the county has never met the conditions to begin the process.She is subject to Arizona law, especially 16-621 and 16-622requires the use of vote-counting machines to certify election results.
“The count to be certified is the number of machines,” Branch said. “Looking at the electronic procedure manual, it states that machine counting should also be certified unless the use of the machine is impractical … Allowing the county to choose whether to do 50% or 100% of the moves will, and others will choose not to…
“There are absolutely no exceptions in 16-602 or anywhere else that would allow the county to have a 100 percent audit in the first place,” continued Branch. “Of course, if we’re going to have a 100% audit of the votes in this election, there’s no exception in the first place. We don’t have to follow the rest of the statutory procedure.” ”
Branch also said there is a section in the 2019 Election Procedure Manual (EPM) related to requirements for early voting count audits that violates Arizona law. The first requirement of the EPM states that election officials must conduct “1% of the total number of early votes or 5,000 early votes, whichever is less.”
But it is the sentence immediately following that requirement that Branch claims violates Arizona law. That section of the EPM states, “Counties may choose to audit more ballots at their discretion.”
“Certain provisions of the EPM are against the law and should not have been included in the EPM,” Branch said. “And Arizona law is very clear about what happens in that situation. EPM and Arizona law, Arizona law, are not the same. The statute is better, and if an EPM provision conflicts with Arizona law, it is deemed unenforceable and unenforceable.”
He said this has been the focus of the lawsuit so far, and the governor, attorney general and secretary of state have agreed to remove the ruling from the intended 2021 EPM. His EPM proposal for 2021, currently on the Secretary of State’s webpage, still includes that line.
The appeals court has not set a date for a ruling.
Arizona Treason Audit Background
according to Arizona lawAt each primary, general, and special election, county elections officials conduct a randomized count audit of 2% of the ballots in that county or two precincts, whichever is greater.
In the 2019 edition of the Arizona EPM, electoral district turn margins are compared to designated margins set by the Voter Verification Commission. The Arizona Secretary of State said the Voting Verification Commission, her seven-member commission, an offshoot of the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, meets before every primary and general election to determine the designated margin. website.
Currently, the specified margins are “set at 3 votes or 1 percent, whichever is greater” for early voting, and “set at 3 votes or 1 percent, whichever is greater” for polling place votes.
Election results audits are permitted under Arizona law only if certain conditions are met. If a standard 2% or 2 constituency count audit results in a margin of moves less than the specified margin compared to an electronic count of the same ballot, then the count audit is complete and closed and the electronic count becomes the official result.
However, if its move margin is equal to or greater than the specified margin when compared to the electronic tally, then the same number of votes and races are counted secondary. As with the first step, if the handcount margin is less than the specified margin, the handcount audit is stopped and the electronic tally is recognized as the official result. If it is equal to or greater than the specified margin, the number of hands will be expanded to twice the “original number of randomly selected precincts” according to: ARS 16-602 Section C.
