By Bob Christie | Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Allowing an Arizona county’s decision to manually count most or all early votes would make the election “disruptive,” an attorney told a panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Stated.

And the three judges who heard an appeal from Cochise County officials, whose plans to count ballots entirely by hand in last year’s general election were blocked by a trial judge, said one of the judges With counties who almost seemed to agree, even though one wrote a draft ruling in favor of this.

Attorney Aria Branch, president of the Arizona Retired American Association, which has filed a lawsuit to block the county’s full hand-counting scheme, said Arizona’s election law required a small amount of vote-counting machines to check their accuracy. He told the committee that he had explained how a large hand count audit would be conducted. If counties could count all ballots by hand, the system would be useless.

“Full hand calculations are only allowed if there are problems with electronic aggregation,” Branch said. “It’s not something we take for granted.”

But Cochise County Attorneys Veronica Lucero and Brian Brem disagreed. They argued that the state’s election law requires a minimum number of early votes to be audited, and that the county requires more votes to ensure that the oversight board has sufficient results to certify the election. and counting all votes manually.

Brehm told the judge that state law sets only a minimum number of early votes to be audited.

But Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom cut him off.

“Let me stop there,” Eckerstrom told Bremm. He said the “plain language” in the law covering early voting audits “provides that the maximum number of early votes that can be audited in the first instance is 5,000.”

Brehm countered that county commissions do not simply exist to approve election results handed to them by election staff.

“They must swear that it is true and correct,” he said. “And to do that, we need to educate ourselves as to whether it is true and correct.”

The final decision the Court of Appeals will make will have a significant impact on the Arizona election.

Republicans are pushing for manual counting in several Arizona counties, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations that vote-counting machines are inaccurate, but so far none have followed suit. no.

If the Court of Appeals sided with Cochise County’s Republican-led board and county registrar David Stevens, hundreds of volunteers would help hand over tens of thousands of ballots to the county in the 2024 election. need to solicit That could delay certification, and as Branch told the Court of Appeals judge, it’s no secret that a machine count is more accurate than a human count of multiple races on each ballot. , which can lead to two separate outcomes.

And while other Republican-led counties are almost certain to follow Cochise County’s lead, with Mojave County regulators considering eliminating tally machines altogether ahead of next year’s election, Adrian Faced backlash from Secretary of State Fontes.

The Manual of State Election Procedures, a roadmap for county elections administrators that provides detailed guidance for conducting elections under state law, specifically states that counties can expand manual count audits of early voting. It is described in. More than 80% of the ballots cast in Arizona are cast early, and different audit rules apply to the remaining ballots cast in person on Election Day.

Branch noted that former Attorney General Mark Brunovich’s informal opinion last year that the county could manually count all ballots was withdrawn and replaced by new Attorney General Chris Mays. said an appeals court could sidestep the issue. And Governor Katie Hobbs, who signed the 2019 manual when she was secretary of state, told the court that the provision violated the law and should be ignored.

There’s also the fact that state law, which overrides election procedures manuals, doesn’t allow perfect hand counting, Branch said.

Fontes, a Democrat like Mays, is currently working on a new version of the manual.

Fontes spokesman Paul Smith Leonard declined to say Tuesday whether the clause would be removed, but Branch told the judge it would.

Branch said, “We have good reason to believe that the (manual of election procedures), which will be released at the end of the year, that counties have additional discretion, will be removed from the EPM.” “Because all state officials, attorneys general, governors and secretaries of state involved in the EPM process all agree that the line should be disabled because it violates state law.”