Automatic recounts are expected
A new law expanded the threshold to retabulate
Election results will be certified after Thanksgiving, but changes to Arizona law around automatic recounts is expected to keep the counting going at Maricopa County’s election headquarters until Christmas.
A new law, passed with bipartisan support, expanded the threshold for recounts after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 10,457 votes in Arizona. Two statewide contests currently are within the margin, which went from one-tenth of one percentage point to half a percentage point.
And under the new law, a recount truly means a complete recount.
After the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office canvasses, or certifies, election results on Dec. 5, election workers will have to completely retest the county’s tabulators, retally the races in question and repeat a hand count audit of a statistically significant number of the ballots.
That means bringing back some temporary employees to the county’s tabulation facility just south of downtown Phoenix, as well as hosting observers selected by the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties.
Several county supervisors have criticized the new law for being time consuming, costly and unnecessary.
The law was not passed with money attached for counties.
Maricopa County election officials were not immediately able to give an exact cost estimate for the recount. The county estimated it would spend $12.7 million overall for the regular November 2022 election, which includes all of the time and work at voting centers. Of that, about $2.5 million was budgeted for temporary workers to complete ballot processing and tabulation at the county’s election centers.
“We know it’s a hefty lift,” Supervisor Steve Gallardo said. “We know it’s going to take time. I think even prior to this bill being passed, this new law, Maricopa County and the state of Arizona has so many provisions and steps. There’s a lot of checks and balances.”
The point is to provide total assurance around the outcome of elections,
said Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, RScottsdale, the original sponsor of the legislation.
“You can tell me all day long that the elections are run well and are maybe even the gold standard, although I don’t believe that,” said Ugenti-Rita, who lost in the August primary for the Republican nomination for secretary of state.
“But there’s a perception issue. And right now, the public doesn’t believe that, because trust has been broken.”
One reason for that lack of trust: multiple allegations by prominent public figures of election rigging and fraud, which have been proven to be baseless.
What’s the process?
Any recounts will start with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office or the Maricopa County Elections Department going to court, county Elections Director Scott Jarrett said.
The Secretary of State’s Office has authority over federal, legislative or statewide races, while county election officials represent local contests.
“This is automatic, so it can’t be asked for by the candidate or anyone else,” Jarrett said. “But it does require the filing officer to go to court and have the court initiate the automatic recount.”
The recount process cannot begin until after the Secretary of State’s Office cavasses, or certifies, election results on Dec. 5, he said. In the days after, the county will reprogram its tabulators – machines that count votes on paper ballots
– to recount only the races that fall within the new recount margins.
Then, both the state and the county will test the tabulators for accuracy.
“We’re anticipating that could take a few different days, for them to get out to all the counties,” Jarrett said.
Once the tabulators are determined to be counting correctly, county election workers will retally the votes in the impacted races.
Observers appointed by the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties will be present throughout the process and will ultimately select a statistically significant sample of ballots to be hand counted, an additional check for accuracy. The results of any recounts will be unsealed in court by a judge. Jarrett predicts the entire process could take until the end of the year to complete.
Law aims to serve as extra check, but leaders say it’s expensive
Had the new law and margins been in place in 2020, Jarrett said the county would have needed to recount five extra contests, including the presidential and the county recorder races.
So far, two statewide races are shaping up to fall within the margins for the most recent election: the attorney general’s race between Democrat Kris Mayes and Republican Abe Hamadeh, and the superintendent of public instruction contest between Republican Tom Horne and Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman.
As of 7 p.m. Thursday, Mayes was ahead by fewer than 150 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. Horne was ahead by fewer than 9,350 votes out of almost 2.5 million cast.
The county bought seven additional tabulators to ensure it could meet statutory deadlines for the recounts, Jarrett said, and is keeping some temporary staff on its payroll for longer than normal to assist with the process.
With likely recounts, Jarrett said his staff is looking at “very long hours” through the holiday season.
County leaders are annoyed about it. Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin said the expanded threshold could lead to more work for little gain. It’s highly likely recounts will produce the same results, he said, and the wider threshold simply subjects more races to a rerun of vote tallies.
Gallardo said the county will follow the law. But it already gets criticized for taking too long to count. The new law will only exacerbate those complaints, he said, and is a waste of taxpayer resources.
“This happens so much,” said Gallardo, who previously served a decade as an Arizona state lawmaker. “Even when I was there in the Legislature, bills would be passed without the Legislature thinking them through. These are bills that they’re trying to prove a point or trying to make a statement, and they put it in legislation and get it passed.”
Ugenti-Rita pushed back on the idea that cost is an issue, saying it’s not that much of an additional expense and that counties are “flush with COVID cash.”
“They have more money than they know what to do with,” she said. “I’ve done this and been down this road a million times with them. That’s a red herring ... this has nothing to do with money.”
She criticized Maricopa County for “hemming and hawing.”
“This is reasonable, in line with other states and has broad support,” UgentiRita said. “This isn’t an avalanche of races. They’re fine, and instead of bitching, it’d be great if they just embraced something for a change so that the public was like, ‘OK, they do care.’”