Arizona has been a hotbed of denial about the 2020 election, with several Republican candidates for public office statewide saying they believe the election will be successful. The 2020 election was somehow stolen From former President Donald Trump. Two years later, no evidence of widespread elections has been found.

Daniel Wood, Pinal County Republican, Q anon believer failed person run for parliament and state legislaturetold supervisors that the voting machines were not accredited and that ballots tallied by machines were illegal. Wood’s lawsuit Others made similar arguments after the 2020 election was rejected.

“This is like disenfranchising,” said Wood, who said he was unable to expand his handcount.

Pinal County election administrator Virginia Ross later revealed that the county’s tally machine had passed logic and accuracy tests conducted by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.

Pinal County Already Faces Criticism two election gaffes Earlier this year, it missed the town election and the August 2 primary when the county cast more than 60,000 early votes. And on Election Day in August, more than 20 precincts ran out of ballots, leaving some voters waiting for a long time.county dismissed the election managerDavid Frisk, replaced him after the primary with Ross, who had previously overseen the election as the country’s scorer.

Counties are legally required to hand-count some races in 1-3% of precincts each election to ensure the accuracy of machine tallies, but the Republican Pinal County Super Kevin Kavanaugh, a visor, argued that the county should have a bigger handcount. The number of votes to confirm that the audit is statistically significant. He suggested doubling the number of manually audited districts from his two districts to his four.

Kavanaugh admitted that Manual audit of the past Pinal County has consistently matched machine tallies, and Ross confirmed through hand counting over the past decade that no issues with machine tallies have been discovered.

The Cochise County Board of Supervisors last month 100% hand count of all votes After the midterm elections the Office of the Secretary of State said this would be illegal and open the county to lawsuits from the state. facing lawsuit About that plan by the Arizona Alliance of retired Americans.

to the question from arizona mirrorCochise County spokeswoman Jane Montgomery declined to clarify whether the county still intends to move forward with a full handcount.

Multiple Pinal County supervisors said at Wednesday’s meeting that they received hundreds of emails asking for a hand count for all ballots from citizens who don’t trust electronic tally machines.

Jennifer Hilbos, Democratic Speaker of the Legislative District No. 15 that includes Pinal County, pointed out to supervisors that even 2,000 emails account for only a small portion of the county’s 262,000 registered voters.

Hilbos acknowledged that state laws on increasing the number of hands were “clear as mud,” but that the increase was to relieve a small percentage of voters over issues that had no basis in practice. did not recommend.

Casa Grande Democratic Party member Noel Leck said there was no rational reason for handcounts to be called by a small number of people who “can’t face a candidate losing in 2020.”

“This has nothing to do with the integrity of the election,” he said. “They are trying to sow distrust in the system with crazy conspiracy theories.”

And Lisa Sanor, chairman of the Pinal County Democratic Party, said the Handcount proposal was “shallow, unwise and ill-timed.”

“Anyone who has been involved in handcounts in the past knows that this injects a partisan ideology into a nonpartisan issue,” Sanor said.

Other speakers agreed that it would be a bad idea to decide to expand the number of hands a week before Election Day.

hand count audit It should be run by different people from two political parties.

Ross told her supervisor that because the districts to be audited are selected at random, she doesn’t know what impact her office will have if the hand count increases to 4% of the districts in the county. . Its impact depends on the population of electoral districts and voter turnout within them.

Republican Superintendent Mike Goodman says if voters think more votes should be counted by hand to verify machine tallies, they should take it up to state legislatures that decide election laws. Republican Director Stephen Miller agreed.

“I believe it will be a fair election,” Miller said.

Miller is critical of states and counties for changing rules just before the 2020 election, adding he doesn’t want to be hypocritical.