Mohave County votes down hand count of ballots for 2024 election

MOHAVE COUNTY — Ballots will not be hand-counted for the 2024 election cycle in Mohave County after the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday morning not to move forward with the effort that was estimated to add an extra $1.1 million to the $18 million budget deficit they are already grappling with.

"I'm willing to have further conversation about this, but the first thing that we have to do in Mohave County in good conscience is to balance the budget," Chairman Travis Lingenfelter said.

"You can't talk about any other spending when you have an $18 to $20 million deficit," he said. "I mean, that's irresponsible."

The vote comes after the county's elections department presented its report of what exactly it would take for the county to conduct a hand count, including hundreds of volunteers.

Elections Director Allen Tempert was adamant from the start that a hand count would be unfeasible, and the report echoes numerous concerns he had raised regarding staffing, confidentiality, timeliness and cost to taxpayers.

For example, the sheer manpower required for the hand count would mean that instead of a few trusted staff members in the department having information about the results before they are announced, potentially hundreds of people would have that knowledge.

"These people will be counting the races, and they will learn, firsthand, who is winning and who is not. They will have knowledge leading up to the date the information can be released. The information can easily be leaked to the public, prior to 8:00 PM election night," the report reads.

Tempert repeatedly emphasized that potential breaches in confidentiality were one of his primary concerns.

"If I have people hand tallying results I cannot guarantee confidentiality no matter what piece of paper you have them sign," Tempert told the Board.

The study also estimated the amount of time it would take to count all of the ballots based on one ballot taking about three minutes to complete.

Related: The exodus of Arizona election officials continues. This time, it's in ruby-red Mohave County

Based on the 105,000 ballots cast in the 2020 General Election, it would take one group of seven people about 657 eight-hour days to tally all of the ballots, according to the report. Notably, this estimated time does not include the extra time needed to correct any errors or to consider votes for write-in candidates.

The report also states that due to population growth, there will likely be even more ballots cast in the upcoming election. Importantly, the county has just three weeks to submit general election results to the Secretary of State, per state law.

"I don't see any other jurisdictions nearly our size doing something like that," Tempert said.

The enormity of the effort would also require the county to utilize the fairgrounds in Kingman to house all of the people participating in the hand tally. The county would also have to purchase and install at least 40 cameras to monitor the hand count live, which is expected to cost around $100,000.

At the same time the board was considering approving the hand count, questions about the effort's legality remained. When the Board first voted to develop the report in June, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter to the supervisors warning that the institution of a full hand count could violate state law.

In the weeks since that letter, the legality hasn't gotten any clearer.

"It's up in the air, it's questionable whether it'd be legal to do a hand count," Deputy County Attorney Ryan Esplin told the Board.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli, whose district includes parts of both Mohave and Maricopa counties, has been one of the major advocates for a hand count and spoke at both meetings in support of the effort.

"Elections don't belong to us elected officials, they belong to the people. And if the people want to step up, volunteer and do a hand count, they should be allowed to do that," Borelli said.

But just before the vote, Lingenfelter read through a list of the narrow margins that Republicans lost by in 2022. Since Borrelli represents parts of Maricopa County, Lingenfelter asked why he was focused on their reliably conservative county when he could take the issue elsewhere where he would have a better chance of chipping away at some of those loss margins.

"I just don't understand why you're here and not down there when we've never really had a problem with our elections," Lingenfelter said.

Reach the reporter at LLatch@gannett.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mohave County votes down ballot hand count for 2024 election cycle