Arizona: Despite progress in Arizona, early ballots again delay vote count | The Arizona Republic

Despite Arizona’s progress in lowering the number of provisional ballots cast in the recent general election, results in several legislative and congressional races were again delayed because voters continue to drop off their early ballots at the polls. The number of early ballots left to count after this year’s Election Day dropped 38 percent compared with 2012. Experts and election officials attributed the decline to this year’s decreased turnout. The number of provisional ballots cast statewide, however, dropped by more than 60 percent compared with 2012, when Arizona was embarrassed on the national stage as record numbers of provisional and early ballots went uncounted for two weeks after the polls closed, leaving key races hanging in the balance. Election officials said there were fewer provisional ballots cast this year due to voter-education efforts by the state and Maricopa County, the county’s use of easier-to-notice yellow early ballots, and its new electronic poll books that helped lessen the number of provisional ballots cast in the wrong polling places.

Arizona: Barber loses lawsuit ahead of recount | The Hill

The campaign for Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.) lost a lawsuit it filed just days ago with a federal district court seeking to force two counties in Arizona to include the 133 ballots the campaign says were legally cast but have been erroneously disqualified. Cindy Jorgenson, a U.S. district court judge in Tucson, notified the Barber campaign of her ruling on Thanksgiving Day. “While we are disappointed in the court’s decision, we remain committed to ensuring that Southern Arizonans are able to trust the integrity of this election, and we thank the voters who not only took the time to vote in this election, but who came forward to ask that their voices be heard,” Barber campaign manager Kyle Quinn-Quesada said in a statement.

Arizona: Team Barber Gets Its Day in Court: Will Disqualified Ballots Get Back Into the Mix? | Tucson Weekly

Kevin Fink wants his vote counted. He dropped off his early ballot at a polling station on Election Day, just like plenty of other folks. But his ballot was disqualified because his modern-day signature didn’t match the one he put on a voter-registration card he filled out some dozen years ago. He remembers he got word from the Pima County Recorder’s Office: He had a day to get back to them or his vote wouldn’t be counted. He called a hotline number and left a message, but no one called him back. And then the deadline passed and his vote was tossed out. Fink is a partner and chef at the award-winning Zona 78, and while he’d love to say that the restaurant gets it right 100 percent of the time, he knows that mistakes get made. But given that the state is going to recount the ballots early next month, he wants to see his vote included in the mix. “I realize there are going to be problems, but when it’s so close like this, I thought it was really important to be able to sway the political situation here in Arizona,” Fink said. “The number one thing I hear from my generation is that it doesn’t really matter if you vote.”

Arizona: Barber-McSally ballot flight unleashes flood of records requests | Arizona Daily Star

The fight to count some, if not all, of the 479 rejected provisional ballots cast in Congressional District 2 continues here in Pima County, with all indications it is headed for the courtroom. Legal teams representing the Ron Barber and Martha McSally campaigns have flooded the Pima County Recorder’s Office, making more than two dozen requests for public documents. Attorneys are also calling those who cast provisional ballots, asking them to offer up their stories that led to their ballots being rejected, and to sign declarations, likely to be used in future legal proceedings. Both campaigns have refused to discuss their legal strategies. But the requests seem to have set the stage that both sides are at least preparing to file legal challenges in Pima County. The requests have created a near constant din in County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez’s offices as her staff moves boxes, shuffles paperwork and feeds copiers to comply with the mounting requests.

Arizona: Barber sues to count 133 votes in McSally race | The Arizona Republic

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Barber filed suit in U.S. District Court Monday, seeking to count the ballots of 133 voters his campaign contends were disenfranchised in the congressional race against Republican Martha McSally. McSally has a razor-thin lead of 161 votes, out of more than 219,000 cast in the 2nd District race. A recount is scheduled for after Dec. 1, but it will be delayed if Barber’s legal challenge is heard by the courts. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop the state from certifying the results of the election on Dec. 1, less than a week away. Rodd McLeod, a campaign consultant for Barber, said a time or place for the hearing has not been set. Pima and Cochise counties last week rejected calls from the Barber campaign to delay certifying votes in those counties and examine disputed ballots. Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett and the Pima and Cochise boards of supervisors are named in the suit, along with “all those acting in concert with them or under their direction.”

Arizona: Election watchdogs concerned about CD2 recount protocols | Arizona Daily Star

The Pima County Election Integrity Commission is concerned that state law might complicate the expected recount in Congressional District 2 next month. The commission fears complexities in the recount law could force Pima and Cochise counties to recount all 220,000 votes in the CD2 race by hand, although Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Matt Roberts said there are easier ways to comply with the law. A portion of the state’s election law requires that the ballot tabulating program used for the recount “differ” from the initial vote counting system. But the law is vague on what exact changes need to be made. Commissioner Bill Beard said the commission, which advises the Pima County Board of Supervisors, is in virgin territory in terms of the state’s first general election congressional recount. He said that while the commission is not making any recommendations, it is important that the supervisors be aware of the state law. Possible alternatives could include a recount by hand, Beard said. But Roberts said the law won’t require new machines or an army of election officials.

Arizona: Barber team open to legal challenge as recount looms | CNN

An attorney for Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.) is raising the prospect of a long, drawn-out battle over control of his Tucson-area district, a seat once held by his former boss Gabby Giffords, as his contest with Republican Martha McSally looks increasingly likely to head to a recount. Kevin Hamilton, Barber’s legal counsel, said Wednesday that the campaign isn’t taking “anything off the table” in potentially challenging the outcome of the race when it’s certified next month. “There are lots of potential options. There is the ability to file an election contest under state law. There’s a recount that goes forward, and as we’ve seen in other states that can affect the outcome of the election,” he said. “There’s a range of options and we’re not taking anything off the table.”

Arizona: Barber’s bid to delay vote canvass rejected | Arizona Republic

Lawyers for U.S. Rep. Ron Barber asked Pima County on Tuesday to delay finalizing the canvass of the Nov. 4 election, with the campaign saying it had sworn statements from 132 voters that they were disenfranchised by poll-worker errors. Pima County rejected the request and finalized the canvass of votes at midday Tuesday. Barber, a Democrat, is locked in one of the closest elections in Arizona history with Republican challenger Martha McSally, whose lead in the race is a minuscule 161 votes out of more than 219,000 cast. If nothing changes, the race will head to Arizona’s first-ever general-election recount for Congress. A recount will not start before Dec. 1.

Arizona: US justices could toss legislative maps in Arizona | Arizona Daily Star

The fact that politics may have been involved in drawing new legislative district lines is no reason to declare them illegal, the attorney for the Independent Redistricting Commission told the U.S. Supreme Court. In legal arguments to the court, Mary O’Grady does not dispute that two federal judges found that some of the commissioners altered the boundaries of at least one district to make it more politically competitive, a move that would give Democratic candidates a better chance of getting elected. And O’Grady conceded the final map for the 30 districts had a population differential of 8.8 percent between the largest and smallest, despite requirements for equal population. But she said the full commission approved the plan not out of partisan motives but because the panel believed it would provide the best chance of complying with the federal Voting Rights Act. That law generally prohibits political changes that dilute minority voting strength. And that, she told the justices, justifies the changes, as well as the population differential. The effort by challengers to void the map is more than a debate about legal niceties.

Arizona: Barber-McSally: Arizona’s First Congressional Recount | Arizona Public Media

The election in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District will give the state its first congressional recount ever. The recount coming in less than a month will decide if Democratic incumbent Ron Barber loses his seat in Congress, where he represents Tucson and Cochise County. His campaign said the recount is critical because of the potential for human error in ballot counting. But Michael O’Neil, a political pollster in Tempe, said voting technology makes it unlikely there was a large enough human error to push Barber ahead of Republican Martha McSally. She declared victory Wednesday night with a 161-vote margin after all votes were counted. “It is very rare for machine-read ballots to show a different result when you go through the recount,” he said. Still, Barber isn’t conceding. “I am not going to concede until the election is certified and the recount is conducted,” he said. O’Neil said the margin of victory could change if a judge orders the state to count provisional ballots that were previously thrown out. Those are ballots that were cast at polling places but were questioned because the voters weren’t registered or were in the wrong polling place. Nearly 800 of those were not counted.

Arizona: Ex-aide to Gabrielle Giffords faces recount in House race | Reuters

U.S. Representative Ron Barber, an Arizona Democrat who was an aide to Gabrielle Giffords, faces a recount after his Republican challenger finished the race for a congressional border district with 161 votes ahead of him. Tea Party favorite Martha McSally claimed a razor-thin victory over Barber, who was struck by gunfire alongside Giffords in the 2011 shooting rampage that killed six people and injured 13 outside a suburban Tucson supermarket. But Arizona law requires an automatic recount because the final tally in the Second Congressional District left the two candidates separated by less than 0.1 percent of the total, in this case fewer than 200 votes after the Nov. 4 election.

Arizona: Martha McSally Ahead As Race Goes to Recount with Ron Barber | Roll Call

Retired Col. Martha E. McSally, a Republican, retained a small lead over Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., Wednesday, as initial ballot-counting ended in the 2nd District. McSally leads Barber by 161 votes, according to a local affiliate. As a result, the race will automatically go into a recount because it is within a 200-vote margin mandated by Arizona law. The Associated Press has not yet called the race in McSally’s favor, but the Republican claimed victory on Wednesday night. “All ballots are now counted and the voters have made their choice,” McSally said in a statement. “After nearly three years, some twenty million dollars in ads, and two campaigns, it’s time to come together. We are united in our love for Southern Arizona.” “I thank Congressman Barber for being willing to stand up and serve as he has,” she added. “While we still have a recount to go, we expect similar results and will provide the necessary oversight to ensure accurate results.” The Barber camp did not concede.

Arizona: CD2 recount almost certain, but it will take time | Arizona Daily star

A recount in the Congressional District 2 race most likely will take place, but not until at least December at the earliest. The 133-vote gap between Democrat Ron Barber and Martha McSally is small enough to trigger an automatic recount according to state law, but Secretary of State Ken Bennett won’t ask a judge for a recount until after the statewide results are certified next month. The Pima County Board of Supervisors is expected to canvass election results next week, but Bennett is not expected to certify those results until Dec. 1, when he signs off on all the races on this year’s ballot. Once the results are official and show less than a 200-vote margin, Bennett will present them to a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court, who will be asked to order the recount.

Arizona: Barber-McSally race heads toward potential recount | The Arizona Republic

Arizona could be headed toward its first congressional recount ever, as Republican challenger Martha McSally’s lead over incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Barber dwindled to only 179 votes Monday. A mandatory recount will occur if either candidate wins the race by fewer than 200 votes. There are still about 6,000 provisional votes left to count in Pima County, although not all of those votes will be in Barber and McSally’s 2nd Congressional District race. There are another 150 early ballots still to be processed and 300 “conditional provisionals” where a voter showed up to the polling place with no identification, said Pima County Registrar of Voters Chris Roads. Both candidates have started fundraising for legal bills for a potential recount, which election observers and campaign officials increasingly see as a possibility. “We’re down into Florida 2000 territory with this,” said Tempe pollster Michael O’Neil, referring to the historic standoff in the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. “With a margin potentially in the two digits.”

Arizona: Judge Denies Team McSally’s Motion, Allows Vote Count To Continue in Hotly Contested Race | Tucson Weekly

A Pima County Superior Court judge has denied an effort by Republican Martha McSally’s congressional campaign to stop counting a group of ballots in Democratic precincts in her hotly contested race against Democratic incumbent Ron Barber. Superior Court Judge James Marner said that he would not issue a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to stop the count of provisional ballots that were missing a signature from a poll worker. The race remains extremely tight, with McSally leading Barber by 341 votes. County officials say there are an estimated 9,300 provisional ballot awaiting tabulation in Pima County, where Barber ran ahead of McSally. An unknown number are in Congressional District 2. Pima County Election Director Brad Nelson said ballot counting would resume this afternoon but he did not expect the complete the count of the provisional ballots. Lawyers for both campaigns, as well as a deputy county attorney, were in court this morning to debate whether the questioned ballots should be set aside until a substantive argument could be made as to whether they are valid.

Arizona: Barber-McSally Count Resumes Monday Under Legal Cloud | Arizona Public Media

Ron Barber and Martha McSally may find out Monday which of them will represent Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District in the next Congress. Outcome of the too-close-to-call race will hinge on two factors: Pima County completing its count of early, duplicate and provisional ballots; whether the Republican McSally pursues a legal challenge that her lawyer brought up Sunday. The count, including several hundred votes posted Sunday, showed McSally with a 341-vote lead, or 0.16 percent. An estimated 9,000 Pima County provisional ballots and an unknown but likely much smaller number of ballots in Cochise County remained to be counted. Pima County officials were processing provisional and duplicate ballots all weekend and said they will count the ballots Monday with results expected in the afternoon. That could complete the count leading to declaration of a winner. That is, unless McSally’s campaign pursues a legal challenge it raised over provisional ballots Sunday.

Arizona: Glitch in Cochise County puts thousands of ballots on hold | KGUN

A major glitch in Cochise County held up thousands of ballots. The problem discovered hours after the polls closed last night. Cochise county elections officials had to scramble to fix it and asked Graham County to help out. A UHAUL full of black cases of ballots were rushed to Graham County where the ballots were re-tabulated — overnight and then transported back to Bisbee by 1 o’clock the next day. So what caused the glitch? The interim elections director Jim Vlahovich thought it was the machine that tabulates the votes. “We discovered last night that the sheets were 85 ballots short than what the machine was,” he said.

Arizona: McSally leads Barber by 36 votes; recount set for early Cochise County ballots | KGUN

Republican challenger Martha McSally grabbed a 36-vote lead overnight against Democratic incumbent Rep. Ron Barber in the rematch of a congressional race decided by less than one percent of the vote in 2012. McSally trailed Rep. Barber after the initial early ballot numbers from Congressional District 2 were released Tuesday night. But those numbers did not include early ballots from Cochise County, the conservative portion of District 2 McSally won with 59 percent of the vote in 2012. Late Tuesday night the Cochise County elections website posted this message: “Due to technical difficulties the early ballot counting machine did not match the hand count. Therefore, early ballots are in the process of being delivered to Graham County where they will be counted by their equipment.”

Arizona: Voter Fraud Allegations Land Protesters at Arizona Republican Party HQ | Phoenix New Times

The activist group Citizens for a Better went to the state GOP headquarters in Phoenix to demand an apology after Maricopa County Republican Party chairman A.J. LaFaro accused the group of voter fraud. LaFaro drummed up nationwide controversy by implying he witnessed voter fraud when someone with Citizens for a Better Arizona dropped off some voters’ completed ballots at the Maricopa County elections headquarters, which is actually a completely legal practice. “LaFaro started the rumor,” CBA organizer Ramiro Luna said to state GOP executive director Chad Heywood, who greeted the protesters in the lobby yesterday. “The Republican Party, the extreme right has been spreading that rumor so much that it has caused much harm. My young canvasser right here, the cops got called on her. We have another canvasser who got put in the back of a cop car because of these statements.”

Arizona: $15,000 cost for one ballot | Tucson News Now

The recent primary election chalked up a first: An unheard of cost. Every ballot cast because of the new bifurcated voting system cost taxpayers $14,867. State law says a voter can’t vote in state elections until or unless they can prove they are a United States citizen. The federal registration form does not require proof of citizenship. It asks only that the person swear upon penalty of perjury that they are indeed a US citizen. For the feds, that’s enough. For the state, it’s not. However, the federal courts have ruled that the voters who use the federal form will be allowed to vote for federal offices even if they are barred from voting for state and local officials.  So during the primary election, Pima County elections officials had to print separate ballots for those who used the federal form to register. That turned out to be for five different parties, even if there were no candidates for a federal office.

Arizona: Maricopa County elections officials dealing with 2nd ballot blunder | KPHO

For the second time this election season Maricopa County could be dealing with a ballot blunder. Monday night on CBS 5 News at 10 we told you about a voter who received two ballots in the mail. Now, voters are getting ballots with the wrong names on them. Early voters need to pay close attention to two areas on the front of their ballot envelope and make sure the two addresses match. In some cases they don’t. George Irrgang had already sealed his early ballot and was prepared to mail it back until we suggested he double check that ballot was in fact his. “I looked at it pretty carefully I thought,” Irrgang said. However, even though the ballot was addressed to him it actually belongs to someone else. “Yea, someone named Gwendolyn,” Irrgang added. After our story about two ballots delivered to a voter, more viewers hit our action button, alerting us to their own erroneous ballots.

Arizona: Dual Track Voting System to Affect Some First Time Voters | Arizona Public Radio

November will mark the first general election in which Arizonans use a dual track voting system. The new method prevents Arizona from imposing citizenship requirements on voters using the federal form. But it does allow the state to mandate proof of citizenship for local elections. It comes from a voter approved initiative to crack down on fraudulent voting. But, as Arizona Public Radio’s Justin Regan reports, the new system is proving difficult for some first time voters. Jason Kordosky is the campus vote organizer for the Arizona Students Association, today he’s at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff registering first time voters. “I think this is one of the most important elections so all these sort of state elections will have a huge impact on our educational system”, Kordosky said.

Arizona: The Supreme Court to look behind the “safe seats” issue | Constitution Daily

Few tasks that confront a state legislature are more jealously guarded than the power to draw new lines for election districts for their members and for their state’s members in the U.S. House of Representatives. But few actions of state legislatures may do as much to limit voters’ real choices than the use of those redistricting powers. With a month to go before this year’s congressional election, according to the respected Rothenberg Political Report, a total of 385 of the 435 seats in the House are considered safe for the party that now holds them: 212 Republicans, 173 Democrats. Thus, the Report’s most recent calculation is that only 50 seats are actually “in play.”

Arizona: U.S. Supreme Court could toss out voting boundaries | Arizona Republic

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Arizona Legislature’s argument that only state lawmakers have the authority to draw congressional boundaries. The court also wants to hear arguments on why the Legislature believes it has the legal standing to get involved in the case. Arguments could happen early in the new year. At issue is the ongoing dispute over the nine congressional districts the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission drew in 2011. Arizona lawmakers argue that the U.S. Constitution gives only the legislature the power to draw those boundaries.

Arizona: Supreme Court to weigh Arizona redistricting challenge | Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a challenge by Arizona’s legislature to a voter-approved plan that stripped state lawmakers of their role in drawing congressional districts in an bid to remove partisan politics from the process. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature is objecting to a 2000 ballot initiative endorsed by the state’s voters that set up an independent commission to work out the U.S. House of Representatives districts in Arizona. The legislature contends that the amendment to the state constitution violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution that requires state legislatures to set congressional district boundaries.

Arizona: Election mistake traced to ‘human error’ | San Pedro Valley News-Sun

A report from the vendor of the elections system used by Cochise County during the Aug. 26 Primary Election indicates that the issues surrounding incorrect ballot data being sent to the state on election night was the result of a procedural error at the local elections office. The report from Elections Systems & Software explains that the incoming results from a number of precincts throughout election night were aggregated incorrectly by the county elections staff selecting the wrong option on the system. This resulted in already tabulated election results being added multiple times to the aggregate total for those precincts. County officials received the report on Thursday, Sept. 4. Elections staff reviewed the report individually before holding a meeting by telephone with ES&S personnel on Monday, Sept. 8.

Arizona: GOP may sue to keep independents out of primaries | The Verde Independent

Republicans may try to block independents from participating in future party primaries after their turnout in last month’s election — close to one vote out of every seven — may have affected some races. A.J. LaFaro, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, said he wants the party’s lawyers to find ways around the 1998 voter-approved measure which allows independents to participate in choosing the nominees of any recognized party. He said independents who may not believe in the party’s “conservative values’ are affecting who ultimately runs under the GOP banner. Carolyn Cox, his Pima County counterpart, said she agrees that independents may be having an unwanted influence on GOP politics. “I just think it’s kind of unfortunate when people who are not in the party are selecting who the party is going to have as a candidate,’ she said. The state party isn’t quite ready to make the push toward closing the primary — yet.

Arizona: 2 Arizona counties tally more ballots than voters | Arizona Republic

Voter turnout during last month’s primary races was a little too good in some counties, Arizona elections officials said Friday. Some precincts in northern Arizona tallied more ballots cast than there are registered voters, the Arizona Capitol Times reported. According to officials, errors made by poll workers and elections officials in Apache and Navajo counties led to the miscalculations. Initial reports from some precincts showed a turnout of anywhere from 200 to 400 percent. In Apache County, the Puerco West precinct reportedly had 100 votes cast, but only 23 voters are registered there. The voter turnout added up to 434 percent. Similarly, the Fort Defiance precinct cited 1,046 ballots cast though only 357 voters reside there. As a result, turnout was shown to be 293 percent.

Arizona: Just 21 Arizona voters used new two-tier system | Arizona Daily Sun

Fears that thousands of voters would be denied the right to vote for state officials this year were proven wrong in the state’s first use of a two-tier voting system. Just 21 voters statewide who registered using a federal form for Arizona elections were forced to only vote for federal candidates in the Aug. 26 primary, Secretary of State Ken Bennett said Monday. Bennett created the system last year after the U.S. Supreme Court said Arizona can’t require additional identification from voters using the federal “motor-voter” form. Attorney General Tom Horne said that conflicted with state law requiring proof of citizenship. So Arizona let people who didn’t provide ID vote just for federal races, meaning they couldn’t vote for statewide officers such as the governor or state legislators. Instead, those who registered using only the federal form were given ballots with only U.S. House of Representatives races on them.

Arizona: Peoria checks options for council vote | Daily News Sun

Peoria officials continue to examine their choices for conducting this year’s election for City Council representing the Mesquite District a week after a federal judge ordered ballot counting stopped. The ruling came after a pair of errors by Maricopa County elections officials and the county’s printing firm that left one of the candidate’s names off the ballot. U.S. District Judge David Campbell ordered city and county officials to come up with a voting plan for the sprawling, mostly undeveloped district — Peoria’s largest — after candidate Ken Krieger sought a temporary restraining order preventing the election from continuing. Krieger’s name was left off the original ballot due to an error by county Elections Director Karen Osborne and was omitted from a replacement ballot due to a mistake by the county’s election-ballot printing firm, Runbeck Election Services of Tempe.