Votebeat

13 Detroit voters disenfranchised in primary because their absentee ballots were mishandled

2026-08-17T20:06:32+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Thirteen Detroit voters did not get their ballots counted in Michigan’s hotly contested primary because of an oversight by election officials.

The absentee ballots were delivered to the city clerk’s office before the deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day, Daniel Baxter, chief of operations for Detroit elections, told the Wayne County Board of Canvassers during its meeting Monday. But the ballots were “left behind” and not taken to the city’s Department of Elections, a necessary step before they are tabulated.

Instead, the ballots were discovered at the clerk’s office the day after the election, Baxter said. They were then sealed and held securely before being delivered to the canvassers Monday, nearly two weeks after Election Day.

The identity of the voters who were disenfranchised remains unknown. None of the races that were on the primary ballot in Detroit were decided by 13 votes or fewer, meaning that the exclusion of the ballots will not affect the outcome of any elections. However, the Aug. 4 election featured several contentious races that voters were eager to weigh in on, such as the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

It’s the second time in less than a year that the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, the body that certifies elections in Michigan’s most populous county, has had to decide whether improperly handled ballots could still be considered.

In last year’s municipal elections, the canvassers opted not to count 37 ballots from Hamtramck that were left in their opened envelopes in the city clerk’s office but never tabulated. The concern there was that non-election officials had walked into the clerk’s office while the ballots were there, breaking their chain of custody.

Becki Carmargo, assistant corporate counsel for Wayne County, told canvassers Monday that Detroit’s situation was different. Because the ballots were not delivered to the city’s elections department until after Election Day, Detroit never entered the 13 ballots in question into the Qualified Voter File, the statewide voter database in which absentee ballots are logged before they are counted — meaning they “basically don’t exist” in the eyes of the law. Carmargo advised the board against tabulating the ballots.

“We don’t know that they were received timely,” Carmargo told the board, referring to the fact that ballots have to be returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told canvassers the ballots were “absolutely” received before 8 p.m.

Baxter also argued the ballots’ chain of custody was maintained because the ballots were eventually delivered to the elections office by the deputy clerk, who documented the process throughout. He said that adding the ballots to the QVF when they were discovered would have led to their rejection. Officials confirmed that special permission would have to be granted from the state for those ballots to be entered after the deadline.

“I believe that we should ... fall on the side of the voter and not penalize them for the error that the department has made,” Baxter continued.

Democrat Richard Preuss, the chair of the board of canvassers, agreed.

“There’s no malice involved,” he said. Although Preuss noted no election was close enough for the 13 ballots to change the results, he still wanted to “make sure that ... people are voting and that their faith in the process is still solid moving forward.”

Republican Lisa Capatina, the vice chair of the board, chastised the city for waiting until Monday to turn the ballots over to the county and not properly advocating for the 13 voters in previous meetings.

She said that while she respected the amount of work Detroit has to do during elections, “there is a process that also has to go along to ensure accountability and accuracy for all the voters in Detroit and Wayne County.”

A motion was made to accept the ballots, but it was not seconded. The failed motion meant the ballots won’t be included in the official primary results. The board will meet again on Tuesday to certify those results and send them to the state.

However, advocates for the disenfranchised voters could still try to go to court to get the ballots counted.

Last year’s decision not to count the ballots in Hamtramck set off a nine-month legal battle that was largely resolved just last week, when the Michigan Supreme Court opted not to take up an appeal in the case, meaning the state’s Court of Appeals’ decision that the ballots should be counted will stand. That tabulation, which could happen in as soon as a few weeks, could change the results of a tight mayoral election decided by only 11 votes.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

37 Hamtramck ballots could flip mayoral race after Michigan Supreme Court declines appeal

2026-08-14T21:20:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Update, 9:55 p.m.: This story has been updated to include comment from Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi.

A tiny Michigan city must count 37 additional ballots more than nine months after the election in question, potentially flipping an election eight months after the announced winner took office.

The Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the city of Hamtramck, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers and current Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi, leaving in place a March decision from the Michigan Court of Appeals that ordered the ballots counted. The parties could appeal to federal courts, but such a challenge would face significant expenses, not to mention legal hurdles.

These 37 ballots weren’t counted on Election Day after mistakenly being left in their opened envelopes and returned to the clerk’s office. They were later discovered there, but only after outside officials had entered the office — allegedly to address punching bags bearing candidates’ faces that had been left inside — thus breaking the ballots’ chain of custody.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked over whether to include the ballots in the final count because of concerns about the chain of custody, leaving the votes uncounted.

Those 37 ballots could now decide the mayoral race months after Alharbi — who beat his opponent Muhith Mahmood by only 11 votes — took office.

The identities of the 37 voters have not been made public.

“This is a great victory for democracy and for the rights of voters to have their votes counted,” Mark Brewer, Mahmood’s attorney, said in an email Friday afternoon.

He emphasized that counting the ballots will change the final vote totals, but it won’t be clear who the final winner is until after all 37 ballots are counted.

It is not clear when the Wayne County Board of Canvassers may consider the ballots in question. Questions sent to several canvassers weren’t immediately returned Friday.

While such a decision is atypical, there are plenty of examples of election results remaining unresolved for months, Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told Votebeat.

In 2008, for example, the Minnesota Senate race was decided by only a few hundred votes, and Sen. Al Franken wasn’t sworn in until the July following his election after a series of legal challenges.

“It takes time to get it right, and sometimes that means months,” Levitt said. “It’s very unusual, but it’s not unheard of, and frankly, I think the citizens benefit by making sure that these things are closely examined by the courts.”

It’s just the latest in a tumultuous saga in Hamtramck, a city of less than 28,000 people that has been racked by a number of election-related scandals. Last week, Mohammed Hassan, a city councilman who is also the city’s mayor pro tem, was sentenced to a year of probation after he was found guilty of forging someone’s signature on an absentee ballot. Another council member, Muhtasin Sadman, pleaded guilty to election fraud charges earlier this year.

Alharbi said in an email Friday that he wasn’t worried about his seat but rather “the future of our city,” pointing to at least one additional ballot that turned up later.

“The integrity of the process is fundamentally compromised,” he wrote.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel requested an independent prosecutor investigate a number of members of the council last year, alleging that six people “conspired to receive unvoted absentee ballots that had been signed by recently naturalized citizens, and to then fill in the candidates of their choosing” in the city’s 2023 election. No other charges related to that request have been made public.

Rana Faraj, the city’s clerk during last year’s election, was replaced by city officials in part for the envelope mixup, officials said. She sued the city late last year, alleging officials retaliated against her for trying to whistleblow “ongoing election integrity issues.” Court records show a review hearing is scheduled in that case for October.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Trump administration subpoenas 2020 records from Maricopa County amid push to investigate election

2026-03-20T23:50:18+00:00

Update, March 20, 5 p.m. MST: Votebeat obtained a copy of the subpoena served on Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen. The document confirms that a federal grand jury is conducting a criminal investigation, and that the FBI sought forensic images, videos, hard drives and other documents linked to the chamber’s controversial review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.

The name of the assistant U.S. attorney who requested the subpoena was redacted.

Update, March 9, 4 p.m. MST: This story has been updated to include comments from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently subpoenaed records from the Arizona Senate related to the exhaustively reviewed 2020 election in Maricopa County, marking another move by President Donald Trump’s administration to relitigate an election that he lost.

State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, announced Monday on social media that he had received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to the chamber’s controversial review of the county’s election results, which was conducted in 2021. That review ultimately concluded that former President Joe Biden had indeed won in the county.

The news comes several weeks after the FBI searched an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, for records tied to the 2020 election, which Trump has long insisted was stolen from him. Such allegations from Trump and his allies have consistently been rejected by courts, officials in the first Trump administration, election officials, and experts after multiple audits and reviews found Trump lost the election to Biden.

Jason Berry, a spokesperson for Maricopa County, said county supervisors had not received any subpoena related to election records from the FBI, but that they “will cooperate if that were to occur.” Spokesperson Judy Keane of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said her agency hadn’t received a subpoena, either.

That suggests that the FBI obtained records that were largely already public, and did not receive documents from more recent elections. Most documents pertaining to the legislative audit of the 2020 election were turned over to news outlets and advocacy groups that sued for public access to them in the wake of the review, which found no evidence of substantial voter fraud during the election and slightly increased Biden’s margin of victory.

Two former county elected officials — Republicans Bill Gates and Stephen Richer — confirmed to Votebeat that the county, which is the most populous in the state and a key election battleground, didn’t hand over any election records from the 2022 or 2024 elections to the Arizona Legislature, beyond what lawmakers may have individually obtained via public records requests.

Gates, who now works as the executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, said the only non-public materials that could have been turned over to federal officials by the state Senate are those covered by legislative or attorney-client privilege. He added that such privileges likely encompass only a small number of records.

But the records that the county turned over to lawmakers and auditors included data downloaded from hard drives used during the 2020 election. That included ballot images, which the FBI also obtained from Fulton County.

Under state law, the county treasurer must securely store physical ballots, and then destroy them two years after an election, which means Maricopa County no longer possesses the physical ballots from 2020. It’s unclear, though, how that statute applies to ballot images, which are digital records, or how it applies if the holder of such records isn’t the county treasurer.

The records turned over to the FBI may have also contained voter information. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said in a statement that his office was “working to identify legal options to secure personal voter information in the 2020 data that was shared.” He called the FBI’s subpoena an effort to “undermine the legal process,” referring to his ongoing legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over Arizona’s voter rolls.

Kim Quintero, a spokesperson for Petersen, did not respond to a request for comment on whether the Arizona Senate retained the ballot images and if so, whether it had handed them over to the FBI.

She declined to comment in response to an earlier request on exactly what records were sought by the FBI’s subpoena, whether all of those documents still existed and were handed over, and when the subpoena was received and fulfilled.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Top Arizona officials urge counties to withhold voter data as FBI, DHS relitigate state’s elections

2026-03-11T17:01:33+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona’s top law enforcement official and chief election officer are warning county officials not to hand over full, unredacted voter files to the federal government amid probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into the state’s 2020 election.

Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — both Democrats — wrote in a joint letter to county recorders that disclosure of such materials to the U.S Department of Justice would “violate both federal and state law.” They urged the recorders, who control voter registration data, to “fulfill your oath by declining any such illegal demands.” Mayes and Fontes stopped short of promising litigation against anyone who gave voter information to the federal agencies, though they hinted at it.

“Our offices are committed to upholding the sanctity of Arizona’s elections and democratic process,” the letter read. “We will pursue to the fullest extent of the law all possible remedies to ensure the integrity of Arizona’s elections and the privacy rights of its citizens.”

Their letter comes amid moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to relitigate an election he lost, and that was repeatedly upheld after being subjected to unprecedented challenges, reviews, and scrutiny.

It was sent out to counties hours after State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, announced that he had received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to the chamber’s controversial review of Maricopa County’s election results, which was conducted in 2021. That review ultimately concluded that former President Joe Biden had indeed defeated Trump in the state’s most populous county.

Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of DHS that typically focuses on transnational narcotics and trafficking investigations, has also been probing past elections in recent weeks. Records obtained by Votebeat via a public records request show that the agency asked Mayes’ office for records from the 2020 election investigation conducted by her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich. That investigation, similar to lawmakers’ audit, found no indication of widespread fraud or conspiracy. The HSI investigation was first reported by The Atlantic.

In addition, Fontes is currently engaged in a lawsuit with the DOJ over his refusal to provide versions of the state’s voter rolls that contain personally identifying information on voters. Such records include voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information.

So far, there are few indications that federal officials are going directly to counties, and the letter appears to be a precaution. Officials in Pinal and Yavapai Counties — among the state’s most conservative areas — told Votebeat that they had not received any requests for their voter rolls from the DOJ, and were unaware of any such requests submitted to other counties.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, called the letter “preventative” and “a full family reminder.” But she also noted Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s presence at a recent press conference in Scottsdale with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Hours after that event, Heap, a Republican, issued a press release claiming that his office had identified 137 noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls by running a subset of voters affected by a longstanding state error through a digital database maintained by DHS. Experts have long warned that the system that the office used — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — is unreliable, suggesting the number is likely inflated.

Judy Keane, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment on the letter from Mayes and Fontes. She also did not reply to questions about whether the office had been approached by federal officials about providing its full voter rolls, and what Heap would do if that were to happen.

The office has repeatedly refused to answer questions about its use of the SAVE system or how it is handling suspected noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls. Votebeat requested copies of any notices sent to affected voters, but was told on Feb. 23 that no such records existed. The office has yet to respond to Votebeat’s subsequent requests for any notices.

FBI subpoena targets records from Maricopa County

The FBI’s subpoena of the Arizona Senate sought records related to the 2020 election in Maricopa County.

However, the agency has yet to seek records from the county itself.

That suggests that investigators obtained records that were largely already public. Most documents pertaining to the legislative review of the 2020 election were turned over to news outlets and advocacy groups that sued for public access to them in the wake of the review.

But the records that the county turned over to lawmakers and auditors included data downloaded from hard drives used during the 2020 election. Petersen confirmed to Votebeat that the records he gave the FBI contained ballot images.

That gives the agency some records similar to those it obtained when agents searched an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in January. That unprecedented raid also sought records tied to the 2020 election.

The records Petersen turned over to the FBI may have also contained voter information. Fontes said in a statement that his office was “working to identify legal options to secure personal voter information in the 2020 data that was shared.” He called the FBI’s subpoena an effort to “undermine the legal process,” an apparent reference to the ongoing legal battle between his office and the Justice Department, and reiterated similar concerns in the joint letter to county recorders.

“If your office receives a federal grand jury subpoena demanding that you turn over voters’ private data, we urge you to notify our offices immediately,” the letter read. “The grand jury should not serve to circumvent Arizona’s ongoing lawsuit, and our offices will pursue all legal actions available to prevent the Department of Justice from misusing the grand jury process.”

Petersen said that the subpoena he received had indicated that a grand jury was impaneled in Phoenix. He declined to share the subpoena, or answer questions about whether it contained other information about the FBI’s investigation.

The FBI declined to comment on the focus of its investigation or to share a copy of the subpoena.

Lennea Montandon, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, declined to answer questions about exactly what the grand jury was investigating.

“Per policy, we do not comment on grand jury proceedings, any potential investigations or upcoming charges,” she said.

HSI inquiry into 2020 election appears focused on debunked claims

Emails between the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and an HSI investigator suggest that the federal agency’s inquiry could be focused on long-debunked claims about the 2020 election.

Mayes said in a statement that her office provided public records related to its earlier investigation of the 2020 election when it was first approached by local HSI leadership. Records show that state prosecutors provided Matthew Murphy, acting special agent in charge of HSI Arizona, with a summary of the review’s findings on Feb. 20.

“We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves,” Mayes said, adding that the “exhaustive” investigation didn’t find any proof to substantiate allegations that the election had been stolen in Arizona.

A few days later, records show that Murphy followed up asking for any additional reports or findings. He said he was specifically seeking further information regarding disputed claims of late-arriving ballots included in certified election results, questionable ballots from unknown printers, and deletion of election records.

Such allegations have long since been disproven. Claims that early ballots that arrived late were still counted in 2020 originated from documents recording the transfer of ballots to a vendor for scanning. The date on that document didn’t reflect the initial receipt of those ballots by local election officials.

Similarly, small discrepancies between paper ballots sparked conspiracies that ballots produced by an unknown printer had been injected into the vote totals. But county officials used several different types of printers at polling locations in 2020, which accounted for those differences.

Trump and his allies also previously accused county officials of deleting files prior to complying with a subpoena from the Arizona Senate. Later, the founder of one of the firms hired in the chamber’s audit told lawmakers that he was able to recover and view the database, which county officials said auditors had not correctly retrieved from the system.

Records obtained by Votebeat show that prosecutors provided multiple reports in response to Murphy’s request for further information on the claims. He then followed up again, asking additional questions about claims of late ballots and unknown printers.

“Thanks for sharing guys much appreciated,” he wrote. “Couple of quick follow up questions based on my review and in trying to focus on the few areas we are following up on.”

Murphy did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment. Prosecutors don’t appear to have responded further. Mayes called the investigation “unserious.” She said in a statement that the probe was “based on nothing but conspiracy theories and lies,” and noted that the office’s prior investigation never uncovered widespread fraud or malfeasance.

“Those conclusions were true then and they remain true now,” she said. “There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona.

In an email, a spokesperson for DHS declined to answer questions about the investigation, but said that the agency was “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.” The spokesperson, who did not identify themself and did not respond to a request to do so, said HSI had “repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections,” pointing to a handful of arrests of noncitizens for alleged voter fraud. Research has long shown that such instances are extremely rare.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Arizona primary to move up 2 weeks under bipartisan legislation

2026-02-09T17:52:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Update, Feb. 9: Gov. Katie Hobbs signed the bill into law on Feb. 5, permanently moving Arizona’s primary date.

Update, Feb. 5: The Arizona Senate has passed this legislative proposal, sending it to Gov. Katie Hobbs. A spokesperson for her office declined to comment on whether she intends to sign the bill.

Arizona will permanently move up its state primary election date under a new law that will also give voters more time to fix signature problems on early ballots and codify where party observers may watch election activity.

The Arizona House voted unanimously on Feb. 2 to pass the legislation, which will move the primary from the first Tuesday in August to the second-to-last Tuesday in July. That will ensure that election officials can meet federally mandated deadlines to send out general election ballots to military and overseas voters, even if a statewide recount delays the finalization of the primary results.

The legislation passed the Arizona Senate with a similarly bipartisan vote on Thursday, and was signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday. The 2026 primary election date will now move from Aug. 4 to July 21.

This is the second time in recent years that lawmakers have sought to adjust the state’s election timeline on short notice. Arizona faced similar timing challenges in 2024, and after months of fraught negotiations, the state moved that year’s primary election ahead by a week. It also made a number of smaller, temporary changes, such as compressing the period for voters to fix missing and mismatched signatures on early ballots, a process known as ballot curing.

The new law required similar behind-the-scenes dealmaking to gain bipartisan support. Both chambers of the Arizona Legislature are controlled by Republicans, but a two-thirds vote is required to ensure that legislation will take effect immediately if passed. Without this emergency authorization, the law wouldn’t have taken effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which will likely be after the primary has already taken place.

The proposal also had to make it past Hobbs, who has set records throughout her first term with her extensive use of the veto pen.

The legislation passed the House after its sponsor — Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin — offered a floor amendment that would reextend the ballot curing period.

Under the law passed in 2024, voters have five calendar days to cure early ballots. The legislation would change that to five business days starting in 2027. Because Arizona generally holds its elections on Tuesdays, that effectively moves the curing deadline from the Sunday after the election to the Tuesday after the election.

That change got voting access advocates on board. Alex Gulotta, state director for All Voting is Local, told Votebeat that the amendment represented a “significant victory for voters by making sure that the votes of all eligible voters are counted.” His organization had previously opposed the legislation.

Meanwhile, Kolodin framed the changes to observer access as a win for the GOP’s voting integrity efforts. He said the bill “strengthens security by making clear that counties must allow political party observers at every voting location.” Most counties in the state already did so.

The legislation’s changes may not hold for long. Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said the bill permanently addresses timing challenges in non-presidential election years. But it won’t fully fix the issue in 2028, when recounts could still push general election results so late that election officials wouldn’t meet the federal deadline for sending presidential results to the U.S. Congress.

That means state lawmakers will have to address the problem in coming years — for a third time.

“We will have to revisit the cure window conversation,” said Marson, who was one of the chief negotiators on the legislation. “I would prefer to do it in 2027 so the calendar is set and we don’t have this anxious conversation in the year of the election.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Hamtramck’s 37 mishandled ballots shouldn’t be counted, judge rules

2025-12-23T23:14:23+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

A judge ruled Tuesday that 37 untabulated ballots in Hamtramck’s disputed municipal election should not be counted, affirming Adam Alharbi’s controversial and narrow victory in the race for mayor.

However, the decision is likely only the starting gun for a legal race against the clock before the city’s new mayor is sworn in at the beginning of January.

In her written decision Tuesday, Judge Patricia Perez Fresard of the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan said that the Wayne County Board of Canvassers “exercised its discretion” when declining to count the 37 ballots after the city clerk “failed to comply with mandatory requirements imposed to protect the integrity of ballots.”

Fresard had initially ordered the parties to meet to see if they could come to a resolution. That failed, attorneys said, leading to just over 20 minutes of courtroom debate Tuesday, primarily between lawyers for Alharbi and his opponent in the mayoral race, City Council member Muhith Mahmood, who finished 11 votes behind.

Mark Brewer, representing Mahmood as well as the 37 disenfranchised voters, said that to not count the votes would be to violate a number of election-related constitutional protections. Nabih Ayad, representing Alharbi, argued that there was “absolutely no viable path” to count the ballots, and that doing so would effectively disenfranchise other voters.

“The arguments of both counsel are that the court should protect voter rights,” Fresard said Tuesday morning at the end of the hearing. “In some circumstances, it’s very difficult to protect the rights of every single individual voter.”

The dispute has brought weeks of uncertainty to Hamtramck and its nearly 28,000 residents. It all started when, due to human error, 37 absentee ballots were left in their envelopes and went uncounted on election night. Election officials discovered them a few days later and immediately delivered them to Wayne County officials.

But at some point between the end of election night and when the ballots were discovered, a number of unauthorized city officials had walked into the office where the ballots had been, breaking the chain of custody. That led county officials to question whether they should be counted, and the Wayne County Board of Canvassers ultimately deadlocked on whether to include them in the final tally. That meant that the ballots would not be counted, and Alharbi was certified as the winner by just six votes; a recount later determined his actual winning margin was 11 votes.

Mahmood then sued to have the 37 mishandled ballots counted. Brewer argued Tuesday that, otherwise, the 37 unnamed voters’ constitutional right to vote was being invalidated.

“Plaintiffs have no other remedy, other than to have their votes counted, as is their right,” he told the court. Allowing those voters to cast a new ballot would also be sufficient, he said.

But Fresard disagreed. Michigan law “does not support … that the City had a clear legal duty to tabulate the 37 votes,” she wrote. State law requires absentee votes to be tabulated according to the law, she wrote, but the board has the discretion to not count ballots it has questions about.

Brewer, in an email before the decision came down Tuesday, said he would be appealing “immediately” to the Michigan Court of Appeals “and on to the Michigan Supreme Court if necessary.”

Tuesday evening, he confirmed they had already appealed.

Hamtramck has been embroiled in election-related scandals for much of 2025. City Clerk Rana Faraj was put on leave shortly after the election, which Amer Ghalib, the city’s outgoing mayor, said was partially because her office mishandled the 37 ballots. Earlier this month, Faraj sued the city and several of its officials, alleging she was being retaliated against for reporting election fraud.

Two City Council members were charged in August with forging signatures on absentee ballots during the 2023 council race. Four others, including two other council members and an incoming council member, were named in an April document from Attorney General Dana Nessel seeking a special prosecutor for the case. No one else has been charged.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Losing candidate in Hamtramck mayoral race sues to have 37 untabulated votes counted

2025-12-01T22:12:49+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Despite being certified last week, the election for mayor of Hamtramck may be far from over.

City Council member Muhith Mahmood, the candidate who lost the Nov. 5 mayoral election by just six votes, is suing both the City of Hamtramck and the Wayne County Board of Canvassers to have more than three dozen uncounted votes included in the final total. The case has the potential to reverse the outcome of the election, a victory by engineer Adam Alharbi.

Due to what election officials have said was human error, 37 absentee ballots in Hamtramck were separated from the others and not counted on election night. When the ballots were discovered — opened, but still in their envelopes — in the city clerk’s office the following day, they were immediately sealed and taken to the county elections department.

But Hamtramck Clerk Rana Faraj later said three non-election officials had walked into the clerk’s sealed office on election night before the ballots were discovered, effectively breaking the chain of custody for those ballots and raising questions about their security. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers ultimately deadlocked on whether to count the ballots, resulting in their exclusion from the official results.

Not counting those ballots is “unconstitutional disenfranchisement,” Mahmood’s attorney, Mark Brewer, wrote in the lawsuit filed last week in the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan, arguing that either the ballots should be counted or the 37 voters should be allowed to cast new ballots. The lawsuit is also filed on behalf of the 37 voters, whose names have not been made public.

Michigan election law requires absentee ballots to be tabulated, wrote Brewer, a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party (the Hamtramck mayoral election, however, is nonpartisan). To bolster his other proposed remedy, Brewer cited cases in Hawaii and North Dakota in which judges allowed voters to cast new ballots after their original ballots were challenged. According to Brewer, and Votebeat’s initial review of Michigan case law, it does not appear that Michigan has ever let voters recast ballots after an election.

“The vote margin in the Hamtramck mayor’s election is currently 6, far less than the 37 votes not tabulated,” the lawsuit noted. “Thus, not only are the constitutional rights of those 37 voters affected but those 37 votes could determine the outcome of the mayoral election thereby affecting every resident of Hamtramck.”

The goal, Brewer told Votebeat, is to ensure that all votes are counted — even if that means his client still doesn’t win the election.

“It’s all the principle here,” he said in an interview on Monday. “My client agrees that every vote should be counted, no matter what the ultimate outcome is. We’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

Hamtramck City Attorney Odey Meroueh didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Wayne County canvassers also did not immediately respond to requests. Nabih Ayad, the attorney for Alharbi, Hamtramck’s mayor-elect, did not respond to Votebeat but told the Detroit Free Press he opposed counting the votes.

In its canvassing meeting the week before Thanksgiving, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers debated extensively on whether to count the 37 ballots in question. Republican members Lisa Capatina and Toni Sellars expressed concern over the broken chain of custody, while Democratic members Richard Pruess and Edward Keelean said they felt that the ballots should be counted and that further investigation was warranted.

Because the ballots had not been included in the unofficial tally, at least three of the four canvassers would have needed to vote to count them in order for them to be included.

The lawsuit asks for immediate consideration, but it is not clear when the case will be heard or resolved. Hamtramck’s new mayor is scheduled to take office Jan. 1.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

‘Cured’ ballots push Hamtramck, Michigan, mayoral election to a photo finish

2025-11-18T23:39:37+00:00

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Update, Nov. 21, 2025: Muhith Mahmood, the candidate who lost the Hamtramck mayoral election by six votes, has requested a recount. The Wayne County Clerk’s Office staff will recount the city’s more than 4,600 ballots by hand.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers certified Adam Alharbi as the winner of Hamtramck’s mayoral election, after a turbulent post-election review that included a rejected batch of absentee ballots and an unusually high number of “cured” ballots.

Going into Tuesday’s canvassing meeting, Alharbi led City Council member Muhith Mahmood by 11 votes in unofficial results. After the board added 120 cured ballots to those totals, Alharbi won the official tally by only six votes — raising questions about whether the 37 ballots that were disallowed on Friday due to security concerns could have changed the outcome.

Cured ballots are absentee ballots that weren’t counted originally because either the signature on the envelope was missing or it did not match the signature on file. In these cases, the clerk’s office reaches out to the voter and gives them until the Friday after the election to correct it so their ballot can be counted. The 120 ballots that were cured in Hamtramck in this year’s election was an unusually high number; Detroit, which has more than 20 times the population, had only 72 cured ballots. It’s unclear why Hamtramck had so many cured ballots.

The canvas finalizes yet another controversial election in Hamtramck, a city of roughly 28,000 surrounded primarily by Detroit, but it’s likely not over yet. Recounts can be requested within 48 hours of the end of a canvass. Mahmood declined to comment Tuesday on whether he would request a recount. His attorney, Mark Brewer, said he would need to speak to his client.

Greg Mahar, Wayne County’s director of elections, noted Tuesday during the canvassers meeting that four of the city’s five absentee precincts did not balance, meaning the number of ballots tallied in the initial count did not match the number of ballots recorded on the voter rolls as having been cast. That’s unusual: 99% of early and Election Day ballots outside of Detroit either were balanced or explained, Mahar said.

Lisa Capatina, chair of the board, told the crowded meeting room Tuesday that the attorney general’s and secretary of state’s offices “are aware” of the concerns people had around the election.

Those concerns include the disenfranchisement of 37 absentee voters whose ballots were mistakenly left on a desk in the clerk’s office on election night. Three city officials entered the office late that night while the ballots were sitting out, breaking the chain of custody for those ballots, officials argued. Maintaining the chain of custody is a critical safeguard for a fair election, as it ensures that ballots have not been tampered with.

Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj has also been on leave since Nov. 10, a move she said was for her own safety, although it’s not clear what that meant. Other city officials have not provided additional information. She was not back in her office Tuesday.

Other recent elections in Hamtramck have also been marred by controversy. Six people, including four council members, were named in a petition from Attorney General Dana Nessel as allegedly having assisted in election crimes during the city’s last local election in 2023.

The petition alleged those council members — Mohammed Hassan, Muhtasin Sadman, Mohammed Alsomiri, and Abu Musa — and two others conspired to collect unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens and fill them out with their chosen candidates.

Hassan and Sadman were charged with felonies in August, although Sadman’s felony charges were later dropped after subpoenaed witnesses did not appear in court. Sadman still faces a misdemeanor charge and is set for a pretrial hearing next month; Hassan is set to face a jury in April, according to court records. No one else has been charged.

Musa and Nayeem Choudhury, one of the others named in Nessel’s petition, both won seats on the council in the 2025 election, as confirmed Tuesday by the finalized canvas. Musa’s victory came despite new accusations of wrongdoing. Just before the August primary, footage from surveillance cameras appeared to show Musa allegedly handing a driver bundles of ballots to place into a city drop box. Michigan law allows only family members or those in the same household to return ballots for voters.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Hamtramck batch of absentee ballots won’t be counted, disenfranchising 37 voters

2025-11-14T21:15:42+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

More than three dozen Hamtramck voters have been disenfranchised after three non-election officials walked into the city clerk’s sealed office on election night, compromising the security of absentee ballots that were mistakenly left there.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked Friday on whether to count the 37 ballots, which were discovered in that office the day after Election Day, having been opened but not removed from their envelopes. Because the board didn’t have a majority of votes in favor of counting them, the ballots will not be included in the final tallies of the election.

It’s not clear whether officials at any level are obligated to tell those 37 voters about the fate of their ballots. Greg Mahar, Wayne County’s director of elections, said he wasn’t aware of any requirements around that. State officials said they weren’t aware of any regulations on that either.

Those uncounted ballots could have been pivotal for the result of the closely contested, open-seat mayoral election in the city, which borders Detroit. According to unofficial results, engineer Adam Alharbi currently leads City Council member Muhith Mahmood in the race by only 11 votes.

At issue in the canvassing board’s deliberations was the ballots’ chain of custody, which must be maintained to ensure the results of the election are accurate and legitimate. Clerk’s offices are sealed around the time of elections, meaning only election officials come into and out of places where ballots are stored.

Due to what officials have said was human error by those who were counting absentee ballots on election night, the 37 ballots in question were opened but never counted. Upon noting a discrepancy in the numbers, election officials looked for the ballots, City Clerk Rana Faraj told the canvassers at their meeting Thursday, but did not find them until the next day. Those ballots were then sealed in a secure envelope and brought to the county.

But the clerk and her team later realized that three other city officials, including interim City Manager Alex Lagrou, walked into the office late on election night, Faraj said. That broke the chain of custody of those ballots, casting doubt onto whether they could be counted.

It’s uncertain why Lagrou and the other officials entered the office. Lagrou could not be reached for comment Friday. It’s not clear who the other non-election officials were.

Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County, told the canvassers on Friday that the board had precedent to reject the ballots based on similar cases in the past. She recommended that the ballots be rejected.

The Democrats on the board, Richard Preuss and Edward Keelean, both argued the votes should be counted. Preuss, the board’s vice chair, said he would like to see affidavits or sworn testimony from the officials who entered the office, because “throwing out votes without having evidence is reckless.”

“I haven’t seen any evidence saying there’s any fraud,” he said, “and to say that these 37 don’t count because of an allegation of potential fraud is completely contrary to this board’s sworn duty.”

Lisa Capatina, a Republican and the chair of the board, argued that such an investigation would be outside of the power of the canvassers. The canvassers are ministerial, she said, meaning their primary job is to confirm the election results.

The canvassers ultimately voted along party lines, and the 2-2 deadlock means the ballots will not be counted.

The mayoral election now hinges on 120 cured ballots tabulated during the canvasser’s meeting Thursday. Those will be taken into the count on Tuesday as the board finalizes the canvas.

Mahmood, the currently trailing mayoral candidate, told Votebeat before the meeting that he hoped the canvassers “did the right thing.”

“At the end of the day, those are people’s votes,” he said. He declined to comment further after the meeting.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Ballot custody questions complicate aftermath of Hamtramck election

2025-11-14T00:46:01+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots.

That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race.

Update: Hamtramck batch of absentee ballots won’t be counted, disenfranchising 37 voters

A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals.

The fate of the 37 ballots now rests with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which deadlocked on the decision Thursday and put off a resolution until Friday. City officials’ breach of the ballots’ chain of custody — a core safeguard in election law — has cast new doubt on the city’s election system, which is already under scrutiny amid ongoing criminal investigations and unusually high numbers of corrected absentee ballots.

How the canvassers rule on the 37 ballots could affect who wins the open-seat mayoral election in Hamtramck, a city of about 28,000 that borders Detroit. According to unofficial results, engineer Adam Alharbi currently leads City Council member Muhith Mahmood by only 11 votes.

Ballots discovered after the election

City Clerk Rana Faraj told the board of canvassers on Thursday that her records showed a 37-ballot discrepancy on election night but that no one knew where the ballots were. They were found the next day in the clerk’s office, opened but still in their envelopes. When the discovery was made, the clerk immediately sealed the ballots in a secure envelope and brought them to the county, Faraj said.

The city clerk’s office is normally a secure space, so the discovery did not immediately raise questions about the ballots’ validity. However, Faraj said, her staff later realized several city officials, including interim City Manager Alex Lagrou, had entered the office while the ballots were there.

It’s unusual for non-election officials to go into a clerk’s office around an election, and it is not clear why they did so. Lagrou could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

“This is an issue of election law,” said Lisa A. Capatina, the chair of the canvassers board. Capatina and Toni Sellars, the Republicans on the board, voted against tabulating the ballots, while Democrats Richard Preuss and Edward Keelean voted in favor.

The canvassers ultimately tabled the decision on the advice of Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County. They will reconvene on Friday afternoon. The state deadline for canvassing is Tuesday.

Preuss said he would love to hear from residents before making a decision.

“There seems to be a robust amount of people here at this meeting today that would like to have a chance to speak,” he said.

Those who spoke during public comment at Thursday’s board meeting were split. A number of self-identified Hamtramck residents said it would be wrong to disenfranchise those 37 voters, while others felt those ballots should no longer be considered after the chain of custody was broken.

Investigations into Hamtramck elections

The revelation is yet another blow to election confidence in a city that has been racked by scandal. Several members of the City Council are being investigated for alleged election crimes, and one person who was also under investigation won election to the council last week. There have been accusations of ballot stuffing, intimidation, fraud, and more, including felony charges against council members.

Meanwhile, Faraj confirmed she has been on paid leave since Monday, which she told Votebeat on Thursday during the meeting was “for her safety.” She did not expand on what that meant.

Even if the 37 ballots are eventually counted, the election isn’t over. The city also has 120 “cured” ballots left to include in the final totals, Greg Mahar, the director of Wayne County elections, told the canvassers. That’s a significant number for a city of around 28,000 residents; Detroit, in comparison, had only 72 for a city of nearly 650,000.

It’s unclear why there were so many cured ballots in Hamtramck. Mahar attributed it largely to the open-seat race for mayor, but Detroit — which also had an open mayoral race — did not see the same spike.

“It is a bit unusual,” he told the canvassers.

Correction, Nov. 14: An earlier version of this story misstated the title of Becki Carmargo. She is assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Dearborn, Michigan, election clouded by worker misstep

2025-11-14T00:24:39+00:00

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Wayne County officials say the Dearborn City Clerk’s office may have made the city’s recent election — in which George Darany won another four-year term as clerk — impossible to recount, because workers stored absentee ballots in the wrong container, breaking the chain of custody.

Initial election results last week showed Darany trailing his opponent, Sami Elhady, but overwhelming support from absentee voters helped him win by around 2,400 votes.

Those ballots, however, were placed in “retention bags” instead of certified ballot containers. Certified ballot containers typically have multiple seal points and reinforced sides to ensure security, while retention bags are canvas and not as secure. That decision broke the chain of custody, county officials said Thursday during a Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting.

The improper storage of ballots is potentially a misdemeanor, said Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

County officials spotted the problem after Dearborn officials brought the bags to the county for assistance with tabulation. In 21 of the city’s 33 precincts, the number of absentee ballots tallied in the initial count did not match the number of absentee ballots recorded on the voter rolls as having been cast, Greg Mahar, the county’s election director, confirmed to Votebeat.

The county canvassers split 2-2 along party lines over whether to recount the out-of-balance precincts. The board voted to go into recess until Friday, and could reconsider the matter then.

Darany apologized and said his office “mistakenly” chose the wrong bags to store the ballots “in the wee hours of the morning.” The office of city clerk is nonpartisan. Darany previously served in the state Legislature as a Democrat.

“We understand that they’re not certified bags, but the bags were sealed, and they did have the words ‘ballot bags’ on the side, which is how this happened,” Darany told the canvassers during the meeting Thursday, which he attended via Zoom. He did not immediately respond to a phone message from Votebeat requesting comment.

Darany said at the meeting that it was the first time such a thing had happened in his eight years as clerk. Nearly 27,000 ballots were cast in the Nov. 4 election, and of those, just over 7,700 were absentee, according to unofficial results.

Elhady, Darany’s opponent, told Votebeat that it is “alarming that we have a clerk that is not keeping up with the demands of election law.”

He has not decided whether to challenge the election results, he said, but he was disappointed in how it all played out.

Lisa Capatina, chair of the Wayne County canvassers, said she appreciated Darany taking responsibility for the problem. Democrats Edward Keelean and Richard Preuss voted to redo the count, while Republicans Capatina and Toni Sellars voted against it.

“It’s clear to me that there was a loss of the chain of custody,” Sellars said, before voting against retabulation.

Absentee ballots have been a persistent problem for the city in this election. The city had to reprint 10,000 ballots because an extra candidate was left in the City Council portion of the ballot. The reprinting cost more than $3,000, a cost likely to be shouldered by the city.

Ballots are reviewed by several people in the clerk’s office before being printed. Darany also took the blame for that.

Correction, Nov. 14: An earlier version of this story misstated the title of Becki Carmargo. She is assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

As Hamtramck, Michigan, awaits election results, city clerk is told to stay away

2025-11-12T23:39:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

More than a week after Election Day, results from the Wayne County community of Hamtramck remain in limbo because of dozens of ballots that weren’t counted — some of which may never be tallied.

Thirty-seven absentee ballots were not properly tabulated on election night due to what Hamtramck Deputy City Clerk Abe Siblani called “human error at the counting board.” He said the issue would be resolved during the county canvassing meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday. County officials did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday.

The outcome of the city’s mayoral election may depend on what happens.

It is unclear why the ballots weren’t counted. Mismatches between the number of ballots received and counted are rare, and usually stem from simple counting errors that are corrected before results are sent to the county.

Typically, only “cured” ballots — mail ballots with signature mismatches that have been reconciled — are added in during the canvassing process. Officials say there are potentially also a significant number of those, which could also affect the outcome of the mayoral election: The current margin stands at just 11 votes, with Adam Alharbi narrowly leading City Council member Muhith Mahmood.

Meanwhile, City Clerk Rana Faraj has been absent from the office. Siblani said that city officials told her not to come to work Monday and that he has not heard from her since. Faraj could not be reached for comment.

It’s not clear whether Faraj has been suspended in some way, or why she was told not to appear for work. City officials did not return multiple voicemails asking for information. She did, however, tell TV station WDIV that she “respectfully but firmly” disagreed with the city’s decision. Clerks are appointed by the city manager in Hamtramck, according to the city’s charter, and serve at the pleasure of the manager.

Faraj’s absence is the latest election mystery in Hamtramck, a city of about 28,000 people bordering Detroit that has been rocked by allegations that council members were involved in an election fraud scheme. An investigation into those allegations led to felony charges this year.

“We’re used to scandals at this point,” Siblani said.

In March, Faraj wrote a letter to Attorney General Dana Nessel, asking her office to “take action” on alleged election fraud in the city, saying that an unidentified City Council member — whom Faraj later confirmed to be Mohammed Hassan — “acts as though he’s above the law.”

Nessel later requested a special prosecutor to investigate Hassan, council members Abu Musa, Muhtasin Sadman, and Mohammed Alsomiri, as well as two others. The petition alleged they conspired to collect unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens, fill them out, and pay for votes.

In August, Hassan and Sadman were charged with felonies. Felony charges against Sadman were later dropped after two subpoenaed witnesses failed to appear, The Detroit News reported last month, although he still faces a misdemeanor charge. Court records show Hassan is set to have a jury trial in April.

No others have been charged.

Campaign signs for City Council candidates Nayeem Choudhury and Abu A. Musa on Nov. 4, 2025, in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Despite the investigations, Musa and Nayeem Choudhury — who was one of the others named in Nessel’s petition — both won council seats last week, according to unofficial results. Just before the August primary, footage from surveillance cameras appeared to show Musa allegedly handing a driver bundles of ballots to place into a city drop box. Michigan State Police say they are investigating; Michigan law allows only family members or those in the same household to return ballots for voters.

The repeated irregularities have shaken some voters’ confidence in the city’s electoral processes. Several voters told Votebeat on Election Day that they felt charges of election crimes should disqualify a candidate.

Rich Lash, a Hamtramck voter, said he turned up to vote on Election Day despite the scandals because he felt it was his civic duty. He was voting for new people to “shake it up,” he told Votebeat, particularly after hearing from a number of family and friends that his vote wouldn’t matter.

“I’m pessimistically hopeful,” he said just a few hours before polls closed.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin lawyer Michael Gableman faces punishment for conduct of 2020 election inquiry

2025-09-26T18:42:41+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

A formal recommendation of punishment for Michael Gableman, whose career rise and fall set him apart in Wisconsin legal and political history, signals the end of a case that has been humiliating for the former state Supreme Court justice and the court itself.

In a report issued Friday, a referee in a state Office of Lawyer Regulation case against Gableman found that Gableman committed 10 lawyer misconduct violations in his probe of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.

The partisan probe was authorized at the behest of then-citizen Donald Trump, who lost that election to Joe Biden.

The referee, Milwaukee attorney James Winiarski, recommended that the state Supreme Court suspend Gableman’s law license for three years.

Gableman and the Office of Lawyer Regulation, seeking to settle the case, had stipulated to the three-year suspension.

“A high level of discipline is needed to protect the public, the courts and the legal system from repetition” of Gableman’s conduct, by him or other attorneys, the referee wrote.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who was appointed to the court by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, said before the report was issued that Gableman’s behavior in the investigation “was so outrageous and damaging to the image of the Supreme Court.

“But he has been on the outskirts or around ethical violations his whole Supreme Court career.”

Gableman worked for first Trump administration

Gableman, 58, a Waukesha County resident who has largely receded from public view, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The conservative Gableman, a former small-county judge with close ties to the Republican Party, made history by defeating an incumbent justice in the 2008 election. He served one 10-year term before his career began to unravel.

As Wisconsin Watch detailed in April, Gableman attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, in possible violation of the state judicial code, and had to be escorted out of two gatherings there after causing disturbances. After deciding not to seek reelection in 2018, he worked for the first Trump administration before leading the election investigation, a probe that found no fraud but cost taxpayers $2.8 million — four times the budgeted amount.

Gableman now finds himself facing punishment from the very court he served on.

Winiarski has practiced law for more than 40 years and has previously served as referee in lawyer discipline cases. He invoiced the Supreme Court $8,208 for nearly 109 hours on the case at $75.51 per hour. He recommended Gableman be responsible for all costs associated with the disciplinary matter.

The suspension recommendation essentially codifies a stipulation Gableman made in April with the Office of Lawyer Regulation in which he stated he could not successfully mount a legal defense against the misconduct allegations.

The liberal-majority Supreme Court, which began its current session in September, must still approve the punishment.

Geske, who was a justice from 1993 to 1998, said the suspension would be fair punishment in part because Gableman’s conduct in the investigation, including threatening to jail elected officials, helped solidify the public perception that Wisconsin judges have become partisan actors.

“I think people wonder what’s happening in the court and what’s happening with the individual justices,” she said. “So I think he did great harm to the court in engaging in that behavior.”

The Office of Lawyer Regulation case against Gableman alleged that during the election investigation, Gableman violated 10 counts of Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for attorneys. He was accused of making false statements about a judge, an opposing attorney, and two mayors; making false statements to the Office of Lawyer Regulation; disobeying a court order; and violating the state open-records law and confidentiality rules.

A call for tougher penalties for misconduct

University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber, who is affiliated with UW’s law school, said a three-year license suspension verges on lenient because of the seriousness of the misconduct and because Gableman was acting in a public capacity, not as a private attorney.

Wausau attorney Dean Dietrich, a former Wisconsin Bar Association president and expert on lawyers’ professional responsibility, said “it is unfortunate” that a former justice is facing a law license suspension, but that “the actions of one person do not reflect the actions of others.”

Judicial offices in Wisconsin technically are nonpartisan, but state Supreme Court races have drawn heavy participation and money from the Republican and Democratic parties.

Marquette University law professor Chad Oldfather, author of a recent book on the importance of selecting judges with good character, said a three-year suspension would be typical for the type of misconduct alleged against Gableman.

“Ultimately, we want people of the highest character in judicial roles,” Oldfather said. “Somehow we have to find a way to get the legal profession and the broader culture to buy into that as the top priority, which seems like an awfully heavy lift these days.”

There are also calls for tougher action on lawyer misconduct.

Madison lawyer Jeffrey Mandell, head of a law firm that filed a misconduct complaint against Gableman with the Office of Lawyer Regulation, noted that Gableman previously was investigated for ethics violations involving an ad he ran in his Supreme Court campaign and for hearing cases while a justice that involved a law firm that gave him free legal services.

Gableman was not sanctioned in those cases.

Mandell said the state needs to act more quickly and more decisively on lawyer misconduct. He noted Wisconsin lawyers are not subject to permanent disbarment. Those who receive the most severe punishment, a five-year license revocation, can petition after five years to get their license back.

The vast majority of states allow disbarred attorneys to apply for license reinstatement.

“Some conduct is simply beyond the pale, deserving of a permanent ban from the public trust of legal practice,” Mandell said. “It’s past time for Wisconsin to recognize this.”

Wisconsin bill would repeal ‘outdated’ ballot drawdown law and require risk-limiting audits

2025-09-23T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin’s controversial practice of randomly removing ballots to resolve discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of voters would be prohibited under new draft legislation that requires meticulous audits in every county.

The draft proposal, obtained by Votebeat from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, will be formally released this week. Krug said the proposed ban on removing random ballots, known as drawdowns, was inspired largely by a Votebeat investigation highlighting election officials’ reluctance to use the practice and questions about its constitutionality.

“That practice undermines public trust,” Krug said, calling drawdowns “outdated.”

Wisconsin’s law allowing drawdowns is almost as old as the state, and it appears to be used most often in recounts. Other states have had similar laws, but most have repealed them.

Drawdowns occur when records show more ballots cast than the number of voters who cast ballots. These discrepancies usually stem from minor recordkeeping errors or process mistakes.

For example, if poll workers discover an absentee ballot envelope was improperly filled out but had already been separated from its ballot, the ballot still counts, leaving more ballots than valid voters. Because ballots are generally unidentifiable, the law would call for election officials to remove one ballot at random.

Multiple Wisconsin clerks have told Votebeat that they loathe the practice, and national election experts have been flabbergasted that it exists.

A legislative study committee in 2005 questioned the practice’s constitutionality without resolving the issue. Courts have similarly scrutinized its use. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said a drawdown should be reserved as a last resort “when you cannot explain why you have more ballots than voters.”

Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director of the group All Voting Is Local and a former clerk, said he once had to conduct a drawdown. He called it “one of the most gut-wrenching things I think I’ve ever done.”

“Every one of those ballots — it’s an American citizen’s hopes and dreams of the candidate or candidates that they want to represent them,” he said.

Although drawdowns are rare and usually limited to recounts, they’ve drawn national attention.

When President Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, his team invoked the law to seek a drawdown of 220,000 absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties, calling the practice “the only legally available remedy” to account for what it alleged were unlawfully cast ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly rejected the effort.

Other states typically require officials to explain discrepancies rather than resolve them by discarding ballots. Krug’s legislation would require exactly that — for election officials to document the discrepancy and record the number and type of excess ballots.

Proposal would require risk-limiting audits

The bill also requires risk-limiting audits, a kind of post-election review designed to give statistical confidence that votes are accurately tallied.

In these audits, workers review a statistically significant sample of ballots that should mirror the vote totals. If the sample doesn’t align with official results within the allowed margin of error, officials review more ballots until it does. The number of selected ballots varies from election to election, depending on how close a race is and how many ballots were cast.

The math behind risk-limiting audits is complex, but election experts and officials have long supported the practice.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, a consulting firm, said she has long promoted risk-limiting audits because they can include more ballots than other reviews. They can be laborious in close races but less burdensome in lopsided ones.

Morrell said jurisdictions that have implemented risk-limiting audits have become better at accounting for their ballots and reconciling vote totals, knowing that any issues would become obvious during an audit.

Liebert, from All Voting is Local, called risk-limiting audits “an effective way to ensure a correct count and detect any statistical anomalies,” while boosting voter confidence.

Closer races require larger samples, and in very tight contests, such audits may require a full hand count. Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson said that could happen often, as races across the county tend to be quite close.

Krug’s proposal calls for county clerks to perform a risk-limiting audit for the contest garnering the most votes at each general or spring election before they certify the election results. It also calls for an additional audit of a random contest in those elections that the Wisconsin Elections Commission selects.

A pilot program would begin in 2026, with full implementation in 2027.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Arizona tries again to ensure that manual audits of election results get done

2025-06-18T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

In Arizona, where distrust in elections runs high, many people agree that a manual check of election results could help boost confidence. And state law requires counties to do such audits.

Yet they aren’t always happening.

That’s because state law has strict conditions on who appoints the workers, who participates, and when it happens. If those conditions can’t be met, the elections director cancels the audit.

Lawmakers have tried to change state law before to make sure the audits — which examine votes cast on a certain percentage of ballots in a set number of races — actually happen in each county. This year, they are trying again.

Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill last month, House Bill 2129, that tweaks a provision in the law to try to ensure that counties have enough workers for the audit. It was a rare example of Hobbs, a Democrat, signing an election related bill from the Republican-led Legislature, rather than offering a swift veto. The bill was supported by the Secretary of State’s Office and included other small changes to election law.

It’s unclear, though, whether the change will be enough to ensure the audits happen now.

Role of political parties complicates the process

Arizona requires the major political parties to appoint workers to bipartisan teams that must start the audit within 24 hours of polls closing. The audit can proceed only if no more than 75% of the workers who show up are from the same political party. Otherwise, the elections director cancels the audit.

That’s in contrast to many other states, which use county workers to run the audits, with a more lax timeline and no bipartisanship requirement, a Votebeat review of state laws found. Many states do require that political parties and the public be allowed to observe.

The way Arizona involves political parties means that in smaller counties, where it’s generally harder to find political volunteers, the audit sometimes doesn’t happen, even when there’s heightened interest in ensuring the integrity of the results. In the November 2022 midterm election, for example, after Donald Trump’s high-profile 2020 loss in the state, three counties — Apache, Graham, and La Paz, among the state’s least populous — still canceled audits due to a lack of bipartisan team.

That spurred Hobbs to sign Senate Bill 1342 last year, legislation that picked up bipartisan support in the Legislature and was favored by voting rights groups. The law said that if the county political party does not appoint enough workers, the state party chair could do so on their behalf. And if the county and state party both failed to do so, the top elected official in the state from that party could do it.

“Well-designed post-election tabulation audits can provide solid evidence to support the reported election outcome,” representatives from voting organizations Verified Voting and Common Cause Arizona wrote at the time in support of the bill. “We know that the eyes of the nation will once again be on Arizona in November and by enacting this legislation, with every county able to conduct their routine post-election audit, the state will be well positioned to stand up the election results.”

But Gina Swoboda, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, said last year’s legislation didn’t account for what would happen if the party did initially appoint enough people, but then those workers didn’t show up. That’s what happened in La Paz County in November’s presidential election, she said.

And it happened in Apache County, too, according to state records. Again, both counties had to cancel their audits.

Swoboda said she worked on this year’s bill, in her capacity as a legislative consultant to Senate Republicans, after realizing that loophole existed.

The new law says that if the appointed workers do not show up, the county chairperson or state chairperson of each party may select persons from any political party to work, as long as the audit team as a whole has no more than 75% of workers from the same political party.

Some see more room for improvement in audits

It still might be difficult for counties to get the correct number of people, given the tight timeline for when the audit must start. The new law doesn’t change the 24-hour clock.

And while Arizona’s divided government was able to come together for this small tweak on the audit law, many advocates are calling for larger changes to the way the state verifies election results.

The current audits examine a mix of early ballots and Election Day ballots. For early ballots, the audit covers 1% of the ballots, or 5,000 of them. For Election Day ballots, it looks at 2% of the ballots, or ballots from two precincts.

Merissa Hamilton, founder and chairwoman of grassroots election integrity group EZAZ.org said that the state should be auditing a higher percentage of ballots — a number that’s statistically significant.

Likewise, Jenny Guzman, program director of Common Cause Arizona, said her group supports risk-limiting audits, which determine how many ballots to examine based on the winning margin in each race. This, paired with other audits already being conducted, is the most cost-effective and statistically sound way to build confidence, she said.

“What improves voter confidence is audits that are backed by science, and backed by experts,” she said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Maricopa County poised to hire national consulting firm for review of election procedures

2025-05-20T18:10:28+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Update, May 21, 2025: At their May 21 meeting, supervisors moved the vote on this contract to June 29.

Maricopa County supervisors are poised to award a national consulting firm a $400,000 contract for another review of the county’s often-scrutinized election procedures.

County procurement staff is recommending that the supervisors vote Wednesday to award the contract to BerryDunn, an accounting and consulting firm that has examined Maricopa’s election procedures in the past. The yearlong review will cover six main processes, but won’t include a look at past election results.

Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin has repeatedly made a point to differentiate this review from the controversial “audit” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results commissioned by top Republicans in the state Senate. “There will be no Cyber Ninjas here,” Galvin said in January, referring to the company Republican leaders hired for that review, adding, “We are going to look at reputable companies.”

Six other companies also bid for the contract, according to a county spokesperson.

The Republican-led board announced in January that they wanted a contractor to examine how the giant county could improve the way it runs elections for its 2.6 million voters. New supervisors who ran on a platform of “election integrity” said that after years of scrutiny and unproven theories about widespread fraud, they wanted to assure themselves that the county was running secure and efficient elections.

Galvin stressed at the time that he wanted to hire a contractor “who actually has expertise in the field.” He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why BerryDunn was chosen.

BerryDunn has done election consulting work for Maricopa before, in 2018 and 2021, although it appears most of its government contracting work doesn’t involve elections.

BerryDunn conducted an audit of Adrian Fontes’ Election Day procedures in 2018, when Fontes was Maricopa County recorder, after technical issues setting up polling places that year caused many locations to open late. In 2021, it reviewed the county’s procurement process for selecting Dominion Voting Systems. In both instances, it recommended procedures to improve the systems.

The supervisors want the new review focused on six areas: chain of custody for ballots and other supplies and documents, physical security, candidate filing compliance, temporary-worker hiring and training, ballot drop boxes, and vote-center selection and setup.

This will include a review of processes that have come under criticism over the last few elections, including the tracking procedures for the county’s paper ballots, background checks for temporary workers, and ballot pick-up, auditing, and tamper prevention at the county’s drop boxes.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

North Carolina Supreme Court race becomes test case for post-election challenges

2025-03-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

With voter confidence reportedly on the rise, it might be tempting to think that the battles over election integrity are over.

But there’s one contest from the November 2024 general election that isn’t settled yet, even though it’s now March. And what’s happening in the North Carolina Supreme Court race is sending a clear signal that losing candidates will continue to contest the rules under which elections are conducted.

Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, lost his bid for election to the court by just 734 votes to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who was appointed to a vacant seat in 2023 and then ran for a full term.

A statewide machine recount and a partial hand-to-eye recount confirmed Riggs' narrow victory. But Griffin is in court challenging more than 65,000 ballots, claiming they should have been ruled ineligible. His challenges have followed a complicated path through the courts, the State Board of Elections, and a Wake County judge, but they have escalated into a high-stakes legal fight with far-reaching consequences that seems destined to land before the same state Supreme Court the candidates are fighting for a seat on and where Riggs continues to serve.

Griffin, currently an appeals court judge, argues that the ballots should be invalidated due to missing voter ID details, such as a driver’s license or Social Security number. Some are ballots from overseas voters who did not submit photo identification, because existing rules did not require it and they were told they didn’t need to.

Election officials and voting rights advocates say these ballots were legally cast by voters who did nothing wrong, and throwing them out now would amount to disenfranchising voters based on what are likely administrative or data entry errors, and changing the rules after the election is conducted.

Riggs and voting rights advocates warn that allowing post-election challenges based on voter eligibility disputes could set a dangerous precedent, enabling losing candidates to ask the courts to erase legally cast votes. Such a shift would undermine trust in the electoral process.

In a recent brief filed with the state’s high court, the Brennan Center for Justice said Griffin’s argument “risks opening the floodgates to similar post-election protests on innumerable issues after every contest.”

“This Court is duty-bound to guard against such chaos and erosion,” the center wrote.

The North Carolina Supreme Court has declined to fast-track the appeal, ensuring the case will drag on, but the stakes are clear: If Griffin succeeds, he could establish a playbook for future losing candidates to overturn elections by contesting ballots long after results are certified.

An added concern is that the Republican-controlled court — Riggs has recused herself from this case — could make a politically motivated ruling. Beyond this single race, the outcome could determine the balance on the court itself, affecting future rulings on voting rights, redistricting, and election laws, issues the court has already swung on in recent years.

As this case unfolds, it will serve as a national test of such election challenges. And the result will tell us a lot.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

How Wisconsin Elections Commission aims to prevent repeat of Madison missing-ballot mess

2025-03-04T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Friday will decide whether to provide key ballot processing guidelines to election officials statewide, a measure aimed at preventing the kinds of mistakes that led Madison officials to lose track of nearly 200 ballots on Election Day.

The commission highlighted the need for such guidance as part of its ongoing investigation into the absentee ballots that went missing and uncounted in two Madison polling places during the November election.

Commission staff will also ask the agency’s six commissioners to authorize continuing the investigation because they are still missing critical information.

Madison clerk’s staff and election workers made a number of errors on Election Day that led the courier bags containing absentee ballots to go unopened and the ballots uncounted at two polling places. Although those unopened bags went back to the clerk’s office afterward, the clerk’s staff didn’t discover the uncounted ballots until somewhere between a week and over a month after the election. They also didn’t inform the state about the ballots until well after the deadline for them to get counted.

The guidance, if the commissioners vote to create it, would include best practices on better equipping polling places to account for absentee ballots received by the clerk’s office, and end-of-night procedures to check the number of ballots counted against the number of ballots the site received. The guidance would also contain instructions on checking election materials at the end of the night for uncounted ballots, entering voter participation data soon after the election to verify that all ballots were processed, and providing adequate materials to canvassing boards so that they could double check that nothing was missed during the counting process.

Beyond that, the instructions would include best practices on how clerks should respond if they discover uncounted ballots after Election Day. In Madison’s case, the clerk’s staff didn’t inform the state about the ballots until mid-December, after the commission certified the November election. The city election staff also kept the news from key city officials: City Attorney Mike Haas learned about the lapse from the commission, not clerk’s office staff, and he informed the mayor’s office.

What we know about the missing Madison ballots

In a summary of the investigation so far, commission staff said the error might have been avoided had each polling place received an itemized list of the courier bags containing absentee ballots and the unique seal numbers on those bags. Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said in January that each polling place would receive such a list in the future.

The commission also found that the problem could have been far less severe had the clerk’s staff checked all of the election materials it received from polling places on Election Day, since the bags containing the missing ballots were among them. Witzel-Behl said her office would adopt that step as well.

But the commission said it has yet to receive information about other key details, specifically, “what exactly happened at these polling places” that led the ballots to go uncounted. Commission staff said that they haven’t learned how the bags containing the missing absentee ballots went unnoticed all day and where in the polling place those bags were on Election Day.

Read more of Votebeat’s related coverage here:

Who knew about Madison’s 200 uncounted ballots? Voters get conflicting accounts. Jan. 27, 2025
Some missing Madison ballots could have been counted, if clerk’s staff had acted in time, Jan. 22, 2025
Wisconsin Elections Commission launches investigation into uncounted Madison ballots, Jan. 2, 2025
Nearly 200 Madison ballots went uncounted. Officials still don’t know exactly how. Dec. 27, 2024

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Who knew about Madison’s 200 uncounted ballots? Voters get conflicting accounts.

2025-01-27T21:17:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Madison voters and state investigators are getting conflicting accounts from city and county officials about what happened after batches of uncounted ballots were discovered in the weeks after Election Day in November.

Madison’s city clerk says her office reported the first ballot discovery promptly to the county. The Dane County clerk says that didn’t happen. And the mayor’s office says it didn’t get word from the city clerk either.

The communication breakdown, wherever it occurred, meant that ballots that still could have been counted after they were found weren’t included in the state’s final tallies. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is investigating.

In a document submitted to the commission last week for that investigation, Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said that one of her staff members told the county about the first batch of uncounted ballots — totaling 68 votes — soon after they were found on Nov. 12, a week after Election Day, and that her staff was willing to help make sure they were counted. That was before another employee discovered a batch of 125 ballots on Dec. 3.

The document doesn’t provide evidence of the interactions, all of which were said to have taken place orally and in person. It does not name any of the employees who she said were involved in conversations with Dane County staff.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell vehemently denied any such communication.

“My office and the Dane County Board of Canvassers had no communication with the Madison City Clerk’s office regarding the discovery of unopened absentee ballots” before the news became public in late December, McDonell told Votebeat in a statement.

“I invite the Wisconsin (Elections) Commission to interview myself and my staff as part of their investigation,” he continued. “If I had been told about 60 or more uncounted ballots, I would have advised that they talk to their city attorney, who is an election expert.”

Statements from the mayor’s office indicate that Witzel-Behl didn’t immediately alert the mayor’s office or City Attorney Mike Haas after the two separate discoveries. Nor did she tell the state about the ballots until Dec. 18, according to timelines provided by the mayor’s office.

Haas, a former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, learned about the ballots from the commission on Dec. 19, the mayor’s office stated. He told the mayor’s office the following day.

Kevin Kennedy, a former state election chief, told Votebeat that the city attorney would have been a good first point of contact for the clerk’s office after such an incident. “The city attorney is going to advise you to tell the mayor and to reach out to the county board of canvassers,” Kennedy said, at which point vote tallies could have been adjusted to reflect the newly discovered ballots.

Disputed claims over interaction after ballot discovery

The investigation and ensuing dispute involve ballots from a polling site in the Regent neighborhood, toward the west side of Madison. Normally in Madison, returned absentee ballots are divided up in the clerk’s office and then routed to local polling places for processing and counting on Election Day. But workers at the Regent site didn’t open a carrier envelope carrying 68 absentee ballots, including one ballot that should have been sent to a different polling place.

Those absentee ballots had arrived at the clerk’s office between Oct. 21 and Oct. 28 and were marked in the state’s ballot-tracking system as having been returned by the voter .

On Nov. 12, a week after Election Day, the clerk’s office told the state, an unidentified “employee A” discovered a security seal on a courier bag carrying a sealed parcel of absentee ballots, indicating that they had not yet been counted.

That day, Witzel-Behl said, another employee, identified as “employee F” in the document, “believes he spoke to the Dane County Clerk in his office but cannot remember what the Dane County Clerk said.”

She didn’t provide documents to support the statement, and told Votebeat through a spokesperson that she had nothing to say on the matter besides what she told the election commission.

After that employee relayed the conversation to other staff, Witzel-Behl’s statement said, Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick and another office staffer were left with “a general sense that the County would not want” the ballots that had been discovered that day.

In the statement to Votebeat, McDonell said he was in the process of certifying the county’s results on that day and “did not have any conversations with City staff on any topic.”

“I find the claim that a conversation took place, without providing details about what was said, difficult to understand,” he said in an interview. Had Witzel-Behl or one of her employees advised the city attorney and county about the missing ballots on Nov. 12, those 68 ballots likely could have counted under a state law allowing the county to change its certified results.

“The frustrating part of this whole situation is that a fix allowing some of the ballots to be counted was pretty simple,” he said. He added that the clerk could have convened the city canvassing board, tallied the ballots, and transmitted the results to the county.

“The new results could have then been transmitted to the state,” he said. “That could have happened right up until the state certified the election results.”

The ballots were ultimately tallied at a Jan. 10 Madison election board meeting, but the votes were not reflected in certified results.

State guidance doesn’t outline procedures for uncounted ballots

At that meeting, Witzel-Behl addressed the lack of city processes that likely contributed to the ballots going missing on Election Day. She didn’t discuss any communication between her office and the county or state after the ballot discoveries.

In her letter to the commission, though, Witzel-Behl said she told two employees on Nov. 12 to contact the election commission about the ballots.

“Unbeknown to the Clerk,” she wrote, the employees didn’t tell the commission until Dec. 18, around the deadline of a process that clerks must follow if there’s a discrepancy at the polls between the number of voters and number of ballots.

In the future, she wrote, the office would include a procedure for this kind of incident, “including who to notify, how to notify everyone, what to document, and what to prioritize.”

“Given the exhaustion clerks experience the week after an election, having processes and procedures already in place would have made a world of difference,” she wrote.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission does not currently have specific guidance outlining what to do when clerks find uncounted ballots, spokesperson Joel DeSpain said.

Having such guidance could prevent clerks around Wisconsin from repeating Witzel-Behl and her team’s oversights, said Jennifer Morrell, a former Colorado election administrator who is now CEO of The Elections Group, a consulting firm.

“When this happens, while it’s unfortunate, usually we see states or state associations then using it as a learning opportunity to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

In Arizona, for example, Morrell said she helped the state come up with a training course for its clerks after one county failed to count properly cast ballots.

For his part, McDonell said he would “work to do whatever I can on my part to help ensure our municipal partners know what to do if a similar situation occurs in the future.”

But he didn’t mince words on the potential effect of Madison’s lapse.

“An error of this size is extremely unfortunate,” he said “and I worry it will make it difficult for voters to trust their ability to cast an absentee ballot in future elections.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Maricopa County’s new leaders pledge another election audit — but not like the last one

2025-01-06T23:10:54+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County’s new leadership will move immediately to commission an independent audit of the county’s election system, incoming supervisors announced at their first meeting Monday, but they promised that it will not be a repeat of the partisan, chaotic review of the county’s 2020 election results.

The announcement came as the county swore in three new Republicans on the five-member board of supervisors. Minutes after being elected chairman, returning Supervisor Thomas Galvin affirmed that supervisors would soon hire what he described as a reputable firm to do a “comprehensive review” of election procedures and recommend improvements.

The decision signals a shift in the board’s perspective on election administration, from staunchly defending the county’s practices to examining and questioning them. The newly elected supervisors campaigned on a platform of election integrity, and one of them, Mark Stewart, ran on the idea that the county’s system needed fixing. They are replacing Republican officials who became known nationally for defending the county’s elections.

The county’s new recorder, Justin Heap, defeated Recorder Stephen Richer after claiming that the county’s elections were a “laughingstock.” It’s unclear whether Heap, or his office, will be involved in the new audit, or help pay for it. Galvin said he has had no discussions with Heap about the audit, and Heap didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Audit is limited to checking processes

Galvin, a Republican, said after the meeting that the county will not reexamine the results of any past elections, or review any cast ballots. The scope of the audit will be limited to examining processes, he said.

But the county has already done such reviews of its election system — at length and at great cost — including two separate independent audits. The supervisors commissioned one in early 2021, of the county’s use of voting machines during the 2020 election. And the other, more notorious review occurred that same year after the state Senate’s Republican leadership handed all 2.1 million ballots cast in the election, and the county’s voting machines, over to Cyber Ninjas, a firm that had been working with allies of Donald Trump to try to overturn his 2020 loss. The reviews both confirmed the 2020 presidential election results showing that Joe Biden won the county.

Officials then spent millions of taxpayer dollars to replace the county’s voting machines that Cyber Ninjas took apart. Asked if the new audit is worth the added expense, Galvin said he thought it would be a “waste of taxpayer dollars not to do anything, to be complacent and to think everything is absolutely perfect.”

Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the five-member board, said after the meeting that he didn’t “know what we are looking for” with the new audit.

“Our elections since 2020 have been audited more than any other election in the history of the state of Arizona, and they continue to find out that our elections are safe, secure and accurate,” Gallardo said.

But, Gallardo said, if the audit makes people feel more comfortable, and it’s aimed at improving processes rather than making life difficult for election officials or voters, he could get on board.

‘There will be no Cyber Ninjas here’

Galvin tried to distance the new election review from the Cyber Ninjas’ work.

That review took months, and was disorganized and inaccurate. While it eventually confirmed Biden’s win, the final report included many misrepresentations of county data that showed the auditors did not understand county procedures.

Galvin even took issue with calling this new review an “audit,” saying the word is associated with the Cyber Ninjas review, and maintaining that “it’s irresponsible to make a comparison of the two.”

“There will be no Cyber Ninjas here,” he said.

This time, Galvin said, the county will look for a company that has expertise in elections to do the review.

Supervisor Debbie Lesko, who left her role as a congresswoman to take the county spot, said that she contacted the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for recommendations.

Votebeat could not immediately obtain the full list provided to Lesko, but it appears the EAC recommended at least two, Pro V&V and SLI Compliance. These are the only two firms in the country accredited to certify U.S. voting machines, and the county paid them more than $100,000 to conduct the 2021 voting machine audit.

Lesko said she wants a more comprehensive look at the county’s entire system, including security and ballot tracking.

Four years ago, Lesko was one of the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes for Biden, even though he carried the state. On Monday, she said she did not want the county’s coming review to rehash past election results.

“My motives are very pure,” she said. “I want to make sure that everything is run right.”

Galvin has stood by his position that the county’s past elections were fair, and he reiterated on Monday that claiming widespread fraud or stolen elections was “destructive and irresponsible.”

But he said, “I think there are ways we can do better, and I think no one can argue with that.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission launches investigation into uncounted Madison ballots

2025-01-02T18:43:23+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously authorized an investigation Thursday into Madison’s mishandling of nearly 200 absentee ballots from the November 2024 election that were never counted.

It’s the first such investigation that the bipartisan commission has authorized since becoming an agency in 2016. The review will allow the agency to probe whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated the law or abused her discretion.

Ahead of the vote, Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs told Votebeat that her priority wasn’t “punishment” but to figure out “what on earth went wrong here.”

“Our lack of knowledge, information that wasn’t given to us in a timely fashion, I think we need to do something more formal,” Jacobs said at the meeting.

The late discovery that 193 absentee ballots from voters in the state capital weren’t counted appears to have resulted from mistakes at two separate polling locations and the lack of a comprehensive system for poll workers to track whether they’ve counted every absentee ballot.

At a polling site in Ward 56, just west of downtown, Witzel-Behl said election workers didn’t open two large carrier envelopes — used to transport absentee ballots from city offices to neighborhood polling places for counting — that contained a total of 125 ballots. At another site in the Regent neighborhood, poll workers at Ward 65 didn’t open an envelope carrying 68 absentee ballots, including one ballot that should have instead been sent to a different polling place for counting.

It’s unclear whether the uncounted ballots were checked in when they were sorted at the Madison clerk’s office. If they had been, a discrepancy between the number of recorded voters and ballots would likely have been apparent on Election Day.

The city’s election results were certified without any acknowledgment of the 193 missing ballots. Some of the missing ballots were discovered on Nov. 12, as the county canvass was still going on, though most weren’t found until nearly a month after Election Day.

When the initial batch was discovered on Nov. 12, Witzel-Behl told Votebeat, “Staff was under the impression that it was too late for these ballots to be counted, unless we had a recount.”

The oversight wasn’t reported to the commission until Dec. 18, about six weeks after the Nov. 5 election and after the commission had already certified the results. Madison officials outside the clerk’s office, including the city attorney and mayor’s office, didn’t know about the error until the commission told City Attorney Mike Haas about it on Dec. 19.

“There’s been zero transparency on this,” Jacobs said.

Witzel-Behl said she was largely out of the office on vacation during that period, and “was not aware of the magnitude of this situation.”

Last week, Witzel-Behl told Votebeat that she still doesn’t know why the three carrier envelopes containing 193 absentee ballots were overlooked on Election Day.

“My issue is not with the magnitude,” GOP Commissioner Don Millis said. “While the magnitude is significant, the issue is why was this not determined or caught by the time of either the local canvass or county canvass.”

“My assumption,” he continued, “is either there was a failure to follow procedures, or our procedures aren’t good and we have to correct them.”

Marge Bostelmann, a Republican commissioner and former clerk, said the WEC can provide guidance to prevent similar mistakes, but she said, “unless we find out how it happened, I don’t know that we can give that guidance.”

Jacobs pointed out the spring primary elections are scheduled for Feb. 18, adding urgency to the investigation.

“We have about six weeks until our next election, so the more information we can learn about what went wrong — even if we’re only able to send out a quickie clerks memo saying, ‘Hey, there’s a step here. Don’t forget about it’ as we work on more formal guidance — I think we want to do that,” Jacobs said.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

How the recount in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race will work

2024-11-13T22:43:56+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

The race for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania is officially heading to a recount.

On Wednesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt ordered Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to conduct a recount under a provision of the state election code that requires one when the margin of a statewide race is within 0.5%.

With Republican Dave McCormick receiving 3,380,310 votes to incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s 3,350,972 votes as of noon Wednesday, the two candidates were separated by just 0.43%.

The Associated Press has already called the race for McCormick, who has declared victory, but Casey has yet to concede, as he holds on to hope that outstanding provisional and overseas votes will help him close the gap.

Counties had until Tuesday to submit their unofficial results to the Pennsylvania Department of State. These results include nearly all votes cast by mail or in person on Election Day, but may still be missing some provisional ballots and overseas votes that are still being adjudicated.

According to a tally by Decision Desk HQ, roughly 72,000 ballots still need to be adjudicated, though not all may count due to voter errors on envelopes or issues with the voter’s eligibility.

Casey could have declined to move ahead with the recount before noon Wednesday, but he did not do so.

The state and counties pay for the effort. Counties will recount all ballots either by hand or using different tabulation machines than they initially used to conduct the election.

The recount must begin by the third Wednesday following the election, which is Nov. 20, and results must be submitted to the secretary by the following Wednesday, Nov. 27.

Can a recount change election results?

Recounts that change the outcome of a race are extremely rare, according to a study of statewide recounts by Fair Vote, a national nonprofit focused on ranked-choice voting.

The group analyzed nearly 7,000 statewide races between 2000 and 2023, and found 36 recounts in that time. Only three of these resulted in a change of outcome.

“All three reversals occurred when the initial margin was less than 0.06% of all votes cast for the top two candidates,” according to the report.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, the automatic statewide recount has been triggered seven times since the 0.5% rule went into effect in 2004. Trailing candidates in three of those races waived the recount, and the four recounts that did move forward did not change the outcome.

The most recent was in the 2022 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, which also featured McCormick — that time, as the trailing candidate.

In that race, Mehmet Oz beat McCormick by 902 votes — a margin of 0.07%. McCormick conceded before the recount was complete, but the count ultimately shifted the margin by only 49 votes, in Oz’s favor.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Pinal County’s $150,000 audit confirms that its primary election was accurate and secure

2024-10-10T18:12:49+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Pinal County spent at least $150,000 on an independent audit of its primary election after a losing candidate claimed fraud, a county spokesperson said Thursday, and the audit came back completely clean.

The county’s supervisors, all Republicans, commissioned the audit in August to prove that the election was fair after one of them, Kevin Cavanaugh, blamed his loss in the sheriff’s race on malfeasance and voted to certify the results “under duress.”

Brett Johnson of Snell & Wilmer, the law firm hired to lead the audit, presented the findings at a public meeting Wednesday afternoon, saying that the firm and the three technical experts hired to conduct the audit found no evidence of fraud or data manipulation.

The auditors “express confidence to the citizens of Pinal County that their vote is secure and the results of the 2024 primary election are accurate,” Johnson said.

Supervisor Mike Goodman, who has been outspoken about his disdain for Cavanaugh and what he has called his “half-truths and bold-faced lies,” said he hopes the results help restore the public’s confidence in the county’s elections. But he also indicated he believed the weekslong audit was a waste of time.

The county has spent staff time and money in recent years “for stuff like this, that is, I’m sorry, quite honestly, ridiculous,” Goodman said, alluding to past incidents and investigations related to Cavanaugh.

As of Thursday morning, the cost of the audit was not yet final, but county spokesperson James Daniels said it was at least $150,000. That is enough money to pay nearly all the county’s Election Day poll workers, County Recorder Dana Lewis said.

Before the audit results were made public, Cavanaugh’s office sent out a news release criticizing the auditors, saying they did not interview him during their investigation and failed to contact “important witnesses.”

Cavanaugh “is not certain that the public can have confidence in its findings,” the release said.

Cavanaugh lost his race for sheriff by a 2-1 margin. Arizona law allows candidates to challenge the results of their election in court within five days of the results being certified, but Cavanaugh did not do that. Instead, he said he filed a complaint to the state Attorney General’s Office and other law enforcement agencies.

Among Cavanaugh’s claims: that his own analysis had found an implausible pattern in the results in his race and five others, in which candidates received nearly the exact same percentage of early votes as they did election day votes.

Johnson said the statistician who reviewed Cavanaugh’s findings found that they were riddled with “basic math errors” and that the analysis was done incorrectly. Cavanaugh’s claims on this, Johnson said, were “completely unsupported.”

One of Cavanaugh’s main claims was that someone had inserted incorrect results, raising concerns about the county’s laptops used for programming election devices, USB drives used to transfer election results, and a tabulator that was outside the tabulation room.

To investigate that claim, technical experts examined the software and logs on the laptops, USB drives, election management system, and tabulators, Johnson explained.

They found nothing.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Elections 101: How recounts work in Pennsylvania

2024-06-13T09:00:00+00:00

This story is made possible through Votebeat’s collaboration with Spotlight PA and its Elections 101 series, protecting you against election misinformation and empowering you to make informed decisions.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s campaign paid $3 million so Wisconsin would recount votes in two counties.

The result: Joe Biden’s lead grew by 87 votes.

Such a recount would not be possible in Pennsylvania. Here, a recount is automatically ordered if a statewide race falls within a certain margin. Voters can also initiate recounts in their own precincts.

With another highly contentious rematch between the two on the table for this November, an automatic recount cannot be ruled out. In recent years, supporters of losing candidates have also initiated precinct-level recounts that have little chance of changing a race’s outcome but can be used to disrupt the election process.

Here is what you need to know about how recounts work in Pennsylvania:

Why do recounts happen in Pennsylvania?

There are at least two ways a recount can be initiated in Pennsylvania.

Under Pennsylvania law, a recount is automatically triggered for a statewide race if the margin of victory lies within half a percent, and the state and counties pay for the effort. This last happened in the 2022 primary race for the Republican U.S. Senate nominee.

Three voters in a precinct can also request a recount based on their belief that fraud or error occurred. Such a recount only affects ballots cast in the voters’ precinct, which is the smallest voting district, usually just a few hundred voters and sometimes no larger than a city block.

The fee to request such a recount is $50, a price set in 1927 with an equivalent value of $900 today. Critics of Pennsylvania’s nearly 100-year-old election law say this provision makes the state vulnerable to weaponized precinct-level recounts that can delay certification, and argue it should be updated to reflect inflation. Such petitions delayed the certification of the 2022 election.

In 2016, supporters of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed such requests. In court, Stein requested a full recount, arguing the contest had been marred by voting machines susceptible to hacking. She eventually dropped the recount effort after a judge ordered her to post a $1 million bond to cover the cost.

Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia-based attorney who regularly works with Democratic candidates, said he has used precinct-level recount requests before for local races for township supervisor or school board.

In 2023, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that for a recount to be granted, the petitions either need to be filed in all of the precincts where a race takes place or present some kind of evidence of fraud or error. That ruling set a precedent for the whole state.

That barrier is low for races like township supervisor, which may have just a handful of precincts. But for statewide races that would mean filing petitions in all of the state’s more than 9,000 precincts.

How does Pennsylvania recount votes?

Counties must submit their unofficial results to the Pennsylvania Department of State by the first Tuesday following the election, which is Nov. 12 this year. If unofficial results show the margin lies within half a percent for a statewide race like those for president or U.S. Senate, the secretary of the commonwealth will order a recount by Nov. 14, according to a Department of State directive. A losing candidate has until Nov. 13 to request a recount not take place.

Counties will then recount all ballots either by hand or using different tabulation machines than the election was initially conducted with.

The recount must begin by the third Wednesday following the election, which this fall will be Nov. 20, and results must be submitted to the secretary by the following Wednesday, Nov. 27.

In the case of precinct-level recount petitions, requesters must file their petition with the local Court of Common Pleas. A judge will then determine if it meets the legal requirements to take place.

Can a recount change election results?

Recounts that change the outcome of a race are extremely rare, according to a study of statewide recounts by Fair Vote, a nonprofit focused on ranked-choice voting.

The group analyzed nearly 7,000 statewide races between 2000 and 2023, and found only 36 recounts in that time, only three of which resulted in a change of outcome.

“All three reversals occurred when the initial margin was less than 0.06% of all votes cast for the top two candidates,” according to the report.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, there have been seven statewide recounts since the 0.5% rule went into effect in 2004, and none of them changed the outcome of the race.

The most recent was in the 2022 Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

In that race, Mehmet Oz beat Dave McCormick by 902 votes — a margin of 0.07% — triggering the recount. McCormick conceded before the recount was complete, but the count ultimately shifted the margin by only 49 votes, in Oz’s favor.

Voter-initiated precinct-level recounts are even less likely to affect the outcome of a race than those ordered by the secretary.

In 2022, when supporters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano requested recounts around the state, they did not substantially shift the margin in areas where the requests were granted.

Recounts in four Westmoreland County precincts resulted in only a three-vote difference from the original tally. Columbia County also recounted votes in some precincts, and results changed by only one or two votes, officials said at the time.

Could there be a recount this year?

Whether there is an automatic recount of a statewide race this year depends on the margins of victory this November. Current polling indicates the presidential race may be close in Pennsylvania.

If the margin is within half a percent, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt must order a recount by Nov. 14, according to a calendar of this year’s election. Counties would need to submit the results of that recount to the secretary by Nov. 27.

It’s likely at least some voters will request precinct-level recounts, which could negatively affect the state’s certification process. This year, there is a hard deadline for Pennsylvania to provide its certified slate of presidential electors to Congress.

If precinct-level recount petitions delay certification as they did in 2022, the state could run up against that deadline and the courts may be forced to intervene.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

With lawsuits and recount petitions rising, some Texas elections seem to go on forever

2024-05-02T09:55:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

It has been 15 months since Democrat DaSean Jones was sworn in as a Harris County criminal district court judge. He’s presided over hundreds of cases since then. And he’ll be on the ballot again in November, this time for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court.

But there’s an asterisk on his 2022 election win: His opponent, Republican Tami Pierce, is still challenging the outcome in court, arguing that there were “improper or illegal votes that shouldn’t have been counted” and that the election was “plagued with mistakes.” Her case is awaiting a ruling from a Bexar County visiting judge.

It’s another example of a pattern officials and experts say they’re seeing around Texas in recent years: elections that just won’t end.

The November 2020 general election was easily the most litigious in recent history. But post-election legal challenges and recount petitions have been mounting ever since, experts say. And while there are no hard numbers, they say these challenges are becoming more common in lower-ballot elections around the state.

Some level of scrutiny is expected after elections. Texas law requires automatic recounts in some circumstances, including a tie, and it allows for challenges in very close elections.

But the challenges election officials are noticing lately are different. Many are coming from right-wing activists challenging specific aspects of how the election was conducted, and “throwing the kitchen sink” into their complaints, said Mimi Marziani, a political science and election law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“They’re not actually trying to have a different person elected,” Marziani said. “They’re trying to set some sort of precedent to destabilize free and fair elections.”

What if the result changes after a candidate takes office?

With the 2024 election just months away, Texas courts are still working through election challenges brought as far back as 2021. Winning candidates like Jones, meanwhile, have taken office but must contend with the uncertainty surrounding their authority, which experts say could diminish voters’ confidence.

Nearly all of these challenges have been dismissed, but as long as some are pending, they leave open the prospect that a court could replace the winning candidate, even well into the term of office.

Lawyers say such instances are rare, but that if that were to happen, the official actions taken by the original incumbent, such as rulings by an elected judge, should stand.

Candidates contesting the results of an election must meet a high evidentiary bar to succeed. A court will take a close look at the vote margin, and challengers must prove that there are illegal votes included in the vote tally, said Chad Dunn, a Texas attorney and election law expert — and enough of them to have shifted the outcome.

“You can’t say that ‘that kind of ballot is not lawful, this kind of ballot is not lawful,’” Dunn said. “The test is whether or not the person who voted was eligible to vote, and they were the person who voted.”

Challenges from past Texas elections linger

Pierce, who lost the 180th District Court judicial race in Harris County by fewer than 500 votes, declined to comment through her attorney, and Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Pierce is among 21 losing Republican candidates in Harris County who challenged the results of the 2022 general election there. A judge overseeing those cases found that Harris County made errors, but there wasn’t enough evidence to order a new election, and he upheld the election results. Three of the candidates who challenged their results dropped their lawsuits before his ruling.

In Pierce’s case, which has the closest margin of votes according to published results, there was a two-day trial in Harris County last month, and a decision is pending.

Meanwhile, in separate proceedings, the outcome of a November 2021 election is still being disputed in court over the description of a proposed constitutional amendment that was on the ballot. Proposition 2, which voters approved, would allow counties to issue bonds to raise funds for transportation and infrastructure in underdeveloped areas.

Conservative groups, including Grassroots of America, claimed that the description of the proposal on the ballot was misleading to voters. A Travis County District Court ruled in favor of the groups, and after an appeal by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the 7th Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling. The state has yet to respond to that decision. The measure is on hold pending a resolution of the case.

In another category of challenges, far-right voting fraud activists have filed a slew of lawsuits against counties, falsely claiming that the voting equipment they use is not properly certified. The Texas Supreme Court and lower Texas courts have dismissed some of the claims, but activists continue to bring them.

One lawsuit challenging the results of the November 2023 constitutional amendment election threatened to halt property tax cuts and increased pensions for retired teachers that Republicans championed during last year’s legislative session. Gov. Greg Abbott certified the results of the election on Dec. 4, allowing the constitutional amendments approved by voters to go into effect. In court filings, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the governor was not prevented from certifying the results because the election challenges were procedurally flawed. A Travis County district judge hearing the challenge has yet to rule.

Recounts add more work

A rise in recount petitions is also creating new strains for election officials.

This year, after the March 5 primary election, losing Republican candidates in Dallas and Tarrant counties requested recounts. One of them, Barry Wernick, lost his bid to represent Texas House District 108 in Dallas County to incumbent state Rep. Morgan Meyer by more than 500 votes out of around 26,000 votes cast in the race. The recount found a difference of 15 votes in the race, not enough to change the outcome.

In Tarrant County, a recount in the Republican primary for constable in Precinct 1 found the results were accurate.

More recounts make it harder for election officials racing to meet state-mandated deadlines for certification. Depending on the race and jurisdiction size, a recount can take weeks to complete.

In many situations, the candidate who requests the recount must pay for it, unless the results of the recount change the outcome, which rarely happens. But election officials must provide space, time, and personnel to aid the recount, even if they’re in the midst of planning for the next election. In the first half of 2024, some election officials in the state are running five elections, one after another.

And if the results stand after the recount, “the individuals who called for the recount or paid for the recount or brought the court challenge are still not satisfied,” said Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “And so it doesn’t really resolve the issue.”

Marziani says this year’s flood of election-related litigation and calls for recounts this year is only a fraction of what’s to come after the November presidential election.

“I do think that there are actors out there who are thinking about how to lay the foundation for election sabotage, and for overturning election results,” she said.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania court offers conflicting opinions on requirements for fraud evidence in recount petitions

2023-02-28T20:50:36+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Two Pennsylvania appellate judges have offered conflicting rulings on whether evidence of fraud is needed to request a recount.

Such recount petitions have become an increasingly common tool for those seeking to question election results, leading to delays in certification and fresh doubts about the integrity of the elections.

In the past month, one Commonwealth Court judge ruled that petitioners must either provide evidence of election malfeasance or file recount requests in every precinct where an election occurred, while another judge ruled in a separate case that recount petitioners do not need evidence.

The confusion stems from two seemingly contradictory sections of the state law. Election officials and petitioners hope that the state Supreme Court will take up the issue to provide clarity.

After the midterm election, voters — many of them organized and encouraged by groups that have promoted conspiracy theories about elections — filed petitions in more than two dozen counties around the state seeking recounts of the votes in their precinct, mostly in the statewide governor and U.S. Senate races.

The petitions were filed under a portion of the election code dating back to 1927 that says petitioners only need to state it is their “belief” that fraud or error occurred, and do not need to present evidence.

The petitions caused a delay in some counties certifying their results, leading to the latest state certification in recent years, Dec. 22.

In dismissing several recount petitions, some county judges relied upon a separate provision in the election code, this one passed in 2004. That provision states that if petitioners are going to use the 1927 provision, they have to present at least some evidence or file the petitions in every precinct where the election took place.

For petitions seeking recounts in November’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, that would require filing the requests in every precinct in the entire state, a difficult endeavor.

On Feb. 10, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican, overturned a December ruling making this argument from Chester County Judge Jeffrey Sommer, also a Republican.

“(A petition) need not either be filed in every election district for a particular election or, in the alternative, allege specific fraud or error,” Fizzano Cannon wrote, adding, “the Trial Court erred by so finding.”

Fizzano Cannon did rule that Sommer was correct in his rejection of the petitions’ request that the recounts be done by hand. (At least one county, Delaware County, reached an agreement with petitioners there to perform the recount by hand, though it was not ordered by the court.)

Rebecca Brain, a spokesperson for Chester County government, said the ruling was “disappointing,” particularly in light of a decision in a Berks County case.

In Berks County, the county GOP committee filed several recount petitions that were rejected by a local judge. The party then appealed the ruling to Commonwealth Court, and Judge Stacy Wallace issued an opinion on Jan. 31 siding with the Berks County judge.

“The Court concludes that Petitioners needed to (1) file their petitions as to each election district in which ballots were cast for the offices in question or (2) plead and offer prima facie evidence that a particular act of fraud or error occurred,” Wallace, a Republican, wrote.

Wallace wrote in a footnote that if the petitioners did not like how the law was written, they should “speak with their legislators,” but that the authors of the election code had been deliberate in creating avenues for requesting recounts due to suspected fraud while still protecting the system from abuse.

“Just imagine the chaos if the threshold to allege fraud were much lower,” she wrote.

Wallace also pointed to a statement by former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who said upon signing the 2004 bill that “in order to ensure that all people have their vote counted equally, a candidate will have to seek a recount of all votes cast unless the candidate can claim that a particular act of fraud or a mistake occurred.”

Both the Berks County Republican Committee and the Chester County Board of Elections are asking the state Supreme Court to hear their appeals. Berks County GOP chairman Clay Breece did not respond to a request for comment.

The 2004 recount provision at issue was part of an amendment to an election bill offered by then-House Majority Leader Samuel Smith (R-Jefferson). While the House’s legislative journal — a written record of the floor debates and activities of the chamber — contains lengthy debate over other portions of Smith’s amendment, this particular provision was not discussed.

Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Ada Nestor helped organize recount petitions in Chester County with a local group, ChescoUnited, that has ties to state and national groups that have promoted conspiracy theories about elections. She said the idea of filing a petition in every precinct where an election occurred is not physically feasible, since a petitioner must be a qualified voter in that precinct. The goal for her and the other petitioners, she said, was to “spot check” the operation in their area without burdening the whole county or state.

As for the court’s conflicting opinions, she said they do add another layer of confusion.

“Because we thought, ‘OK, we had some finality with our decision,’ but then there’s this other decision,” she said.

The contradictory opinions leave the issue without clarity heading into future elections. Both Fizzano Cannon’s and Wallace’s rulings were “not reported” opinions, meaning that they don’t carry the weight of legal precedent, according to the rules governing Pennsylvania’s courts. That means the question remains unsettled.

Elizabeth Grossman is a senior regulatory counsel at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit focused on the vote-counting process that has been tracking the recount petition issue. She said that Fizzano Cannon interpreted the two provisions to mean the rules of the 2004 provision applied to the 1927 provision only if the petitioners wanted to pursue additional recount petitions after the initial recount. Grossman called that an incorrect interpretation of the statute and said Wallace’s interpretation that the 2004 restrictions were to apply from the beginning of the petition process was the proper reading.

“Further, Judge Wallace’s analysis of the ‘chaos’ that would ensue were Judge Cannon’s interpretation to be the correct one is spot on,” Grossman said. “This is what these petitioners are after — chaos and uncertainty about election results.”

She noted that the standard for alleging fraud in federal cases is much higher.

“I think election deniers are looking for any opportunity to disrupt the democratic process,” she said. “It is a real threat and something we should all be paying attention to.”

While some judges, advocates, and even some lawmakers have said it may be time to update the law to increase the $50 filing fee or add an evidentiary standard, no such bill has yet been filed in the legislature.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org .

No significant changes found in hand recount of 2020 presidential election in Lycoming County

2023-01-12T23:53:05+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Dig deeper into how our democracy works with Votebeat’s free newsletters.

A recount of the 2020 presidential race conducted this week in a Pennsylvania county did not find any major discrepancies from the original results.

Lycoming County employees spent nearly three days hand-counting more than 59,000 ballots after a year’s worth of pressure from local elections skeptics resulted in the county commissioners voting along party lines to recount the 2020 presidential and state auditor general’s race.

The recount was completed more quickly than expected. After counting from 8:30 a.m. to roughly 5 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, the ballots remaining Wednesday were counted in less than two hours, an overall average pace of 55.5 ballots per minute.

Lycoming County Elections Director Forrest Lehman hardly left the room, as he was eager to complete the process before his wife was scheduled to give birth next week.

Lycoming’s original results, tabulated by machines, showed 59,397 votes cast in the presidential contest, with 41,462 going to former President Donald Trump and 16,971 going to President Joe Biden. The hand recount resulted in a total of 59,374 votes in the presidential race, with Trump receiving 7 fewer votes and Biden receiving 15 fewer votes compared with the original tally.

In the auditor general’s race, the original tally was 58,627 votes cast, though the hand recount only found 58,615. Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s winning vote total dropped by 10, and Democratic challenger Nina Ahmad’s total increased by 11.

Lehman said the county is still reviewing the hand count and plans to have a more expansive version of the report explaining the small changes later this month.

How was the recount performed?

Roughly 20 employees, working in teams of one reader and one recorder, counted 183 batches of ballots which had been organized by type: in-person, mail, and provisional.

The count was performed on an empty office floor in a county building in Williamsport. Three rows of white folding tables were set up, and workers spaced themselves at least one table apart.

Except for the low hum of the building’s heating unit and the sound of workers turning ballots and reading the votes, the room was mostly quiet.

Lehman sat at a table at one end of the room near a storage closet with the batches of ballots. Workers came to his table to sign batches in and out, and ask questions.

Each team had a slightly different approach. Some wore disposable rubber finger page turners, while others simply licked their fingers to make sure two ballots weren’t stuck together.

And while some teams counted both the presidential and auditor general’s race at once, others tallied one race completely before starting the same ballots over to capture the second race.

Human error impacts accuracy of process

Lehman repeatedly cautioned before and during the hand count that results would be less accurate due to the potential for human error, something that does not exist when ballots are counted by machine.

Many of the issues he highlighted were on display throughout the week.

The total number of ballots counted in roughly 18 batches this week did not match the previously recorded result, so with extra time at their disposal, workers counted those batches again. In all but five or six cases, Lehman said, employees discovered that mismatches were due to human error in the recount process — not the original count from poll workers on election night.

For example, a worker counting a batch from Jersey Shore, a borough in the county, originally counted three or four fewer ballots in the batch, although poll workers on election night had reported 363 ballots. A recount of the batch also showed 363 ballots.

Lehman said that these mismatches, known as “ballot inventory errors,” are generally due to poll workers writing the wrong numbers down on their inventory sheets on election night.

For their part, counters also occasionally became distracted and had to restart, miscounted ballots, or wrote the wrong numbers down on their vote tally sheets.

For example, one team of ballot counters turned in a tally sheet with 41 tally marks for a candidate, but wrote 44 in the “total” line, a mistake that was later caught and corrected.

Workers occasionally got off track. A black Labrador also roamed the room looking for leftover food from the catered lunches, and workers gave him affectionate pets as he passed under their tables.

“The machines don’t get tired, get distracted,” Lehman said while relaying an instance of a counter being so burnt out that, despite recounting a batch multiple times, they kept coming up with different numbers.

Another team counted 408 ballots in its batch, though the original count indicated the number should be 412. A county worker then discovered three ballots were stuck to the bottom of the box and the team recounted the whole batch, ultimately arriving at 412.

Will the results change any opinions?

Lehman noted that the goal of the exercise was not 100% accuracy, what he would be seeking if these were being used as the official results. Rather, it was to prove the accuracy of the machine tabulation system.

Karen DiSalvo, a volunteer with Audit the Vote PA, agreed in a statement before the count that this was the goal, as did Don Peters, chair of the county GOP committee, in an interview on the first day of the count.

“Our interest with this is in ensuring voters, not just our voters but all Lycoming voters, that this portion of the system functions,” he said. “I think there’s this idea that we want to find some issues. We don’t.”

But others think there is no outcome that would satisfy those who have spent the last two years questioning the results.

“They are using this as a vehicle to shout about their grievances,” said Morgan Allyn, the former chair of the county’s Democratic party.

Allyn was there as an observer for the party, and thinks that when the results disappoint recount backers again, they will move the goalpost.

There’s been some sign of this already. Lycoming Patriots, one of the conservative groups who pushed for the recount, sued the county last month for not fully implementing a series of election changes the group had sought in addition to the recount.

And DiSalvo has already sought to cast doubt on the results of the recount. She questioned the accuracy of the results even before they were posted, saying that because Lehman was the one counting the vote tally sheets, the results would be suspect because he had a “vested interest.”

DiSalvo complained about not having access to the tally sheets, but said if the results are accurate, “it confirms our position that hand counts can be done quickly and economically and should be a part of every election going forward.”

Peters said he thinks it will give people more confidence in the system.

“I think there was a total of maybe 37 discrepancies, so yeah that’s not a deal breaker,” he said. “But you get to half a percent, I think maybe there’s something to worry about.”

He said that it was “a win for democracy” to see the system was working correctly and have that question answered for constituents. The only complaint he had was the same as DiSalvo’s, that voter services tallied the final results.

“I have no issue with Forrest Lehman, but transparency requires someone outside to do that.”

Lycoming County is unique, not just because it was the only county to recount its 2020 election by hand, but also because of Lehman himself.

While many elections directors left in the wake of 2020’s threats against election workers, and others have declined to speak out against claims of fraud, Lehman has consistently pushed back against misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Asked if he is ever concerned that his outspokenness will compromise his safety or job security, he said “no,” and added that he felt it was his civic duty to correct misinformation.

“Because I’m an Eagle Scout, I believe in being true to yourself and leaving every campsite better than you found it,” Lehman said. “Whether that’s an actual campsite or your community.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Arizona recount uncovers several ballot-counting errors in Pinal County

2022-12-29T23:29:41+00:00

The final recount results released Thursday in the Arizona attorney general’s race — which shrank to a razor-thin margin of 280 votes and confirmed Democrat Kris Mayes’ victory — show that ballot-counting errors in Pinal County were largely responsible for the shift.

Pinal County, which has been plagued with election problems for the past year, included 507 more votes in its recount total than in its original canvass. Of those, 392 were cast for Republican Abe Hamadeh and 115 were cast for Mayes. Nearly all inconsistencies were the result of mistakes made by election officials: misfiled provisional ballots, poorly trained poll workers, and improper tabulation were to blame, according to a report from the county.

Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT who studies elections, said that while it is normal for counties to see small changes in the results (“ones and twos”) because “people make different judgements than machines,” Pinal’s results suggest a larger problem. “When you get numbers in the dozens or hundreds, that tells me there was something wrong with the management of the original election, for sure.”

Pinal County has experienced tremendous turnover of its election staff in the past year. This summer, the elections director was fired after only a few months on the job for botching the county’s primary. As a result, the county hired outgoing Recorder Virginia Ross, who’d previously managed elections in the county, to oversee the general election. They paid her $200,000 for the job, which ended in early December, after the original canvass but before the start of the recount.

The office is now run by Geraldine Roll, previously deputy county attorney in Pinal, who has not responded to requests for an interview. Roll worked closely with the state during the recount process, realizing early on that there were multiple and varied errors in precincts across the county. All errors, as described in an eight-page summary released by the county, appear to be related to insufficient poll worker and employee training and management.

“We conclude that human error was the cause of our election day miscounts,” the report said, offering multiple examples of poll workers failing to follow correct procedures during both voting and tabulation, leading to uncounted or miscounted votes. For instance, “It seems clear that a stack of ballots from Precinct 68 was not scanned. Again, human error.”

In another, the report explains that 63 Election Day ballots with unclear markings by voters were overlooked. Because of an incorrect tabulator setting, they were scanned but not set aside to be adjudicated — examined to determine the voter’s intent. When officials discovered the ballots during the recount, a bipartisan board adjudicated them, copied votes onto new ballots, and correctly counted them. “The result was that even in precincts where there were no differences in Election Day ballots cast and recount ballots cast, candidates did pick up votes,” the report explained.

Pinal’s recount results come at a time when counties across the country, and especially Arizona, are facing pressure from conservative activists calling for officials to reject election results due to vague — and often false — claims of malfeasance. Election offices across Arizona have been bombarded with public records requests by hundreds of activists, overrunning their staff with tedious and often pointless work.

In Pinal County, voters have pelted local officials with a slew of conspiracy-laden accusations. The county’s sheriff, Mark Lamb, has been among the nation’s most vocal proponents of law enforcement officers involving themselves in election administration. And, of course, Pinal County was operating with brand-new staff and a director who’d publicly said she would not remain in office past early December.

A similar situation played out in 2020 in Coffee County, Georgia, which stumbled through a recount process while management faltered. Ultimately, the Georgia Secretary of State opened an investigation into the county and the director resigned to avoid being fired.

Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs of the Election Center at the National Association of Election Officials, formerly ran elections in Maricopa County. In counties that experience such election management problems, poll workers and tabulators may “create their own solution to a problem, election professionals might be rushed in their work, contingency plans might not be followed,” she said. “These concerns might impact the margin of victory, but rarely impact the outcome of the election and ultimate victor.”

In the last two decades, recounts have overturned results from only three races out of 6,000 statewide elections, though the margin between Hamadeh and Mayes is among the closest races in the state’s history.

Recount results in two other counties — Apache and La Paz — also contributed to the shrinking margin, though both counties found far smaller changes in vote totals than Pinal did. Of the 72 votes added to Apache’s total, 13 went to Hamadeh and 59 went to Mayes. Of 18 votes added to the total in La Paz, 13 went for Hamadeh and 5 to Mayes.

Deb Otis, research director at FairVote — a nonprofit that advocates for electoral reforms — said that it is normal for counties to have around a 0.1% vote increase from the original tally during the recount. Using county-level data released by the state, Votebeat determined Pinal’s increase in the attorney general’s race was 0.36%, La Paz’s was 0.33%, and Apache’s was 0.27%.

The discrepancies in all other Arizona counties, as a percentage of their total votes, were nearly zero percent. Maricopa County, with its 1.5 million votes cast in the race, found a discrepancy of five votes for each candidate, for a net change of zero in the margin.

FairVote’s research shows that around only 14 percent of statewide recounts performed nationally vary by 0.27% or more.

Neither La Paz nor Apache county responded to interview requests, though all counties submitted variance reports to the secretary of state explaining the inconsistencies between the recount and the original canvas.

In an interview with Votebeat, State Elections Director Kori Lorick said La Paz County’s 17-vote disparity was a result of the failure to save the results of a batch of ballots counted during the initial tabulation. In Apache County, 72 ballots across two batches were not scanned. As in Pinal, all were human errors, though both represented less extensive failures of election administration than the list of missteps described in Pinal County’s report.

This is Lorick’s last week in her position before the new secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, arrives with his own staff. She said her recommendation will be to better train officials around the state in how to perform reconciliation, a process that checks each precinct’s results to ensure that all ballots are accounted for properly. While state guidelines recommend the practice, it is not required in Arizona. Large counties, like Maricopa, perform reconciliation as a matter of course, while smaller counties have inconsistent procedures, resulting in the types of errors uncovered by the recount.

“That’s the learning lesson. We need to make certain that reconciliation procedures are solidified across all of the counties,” Lorick said. While the state provides training on reconciliation best practices, the secretary of state’s office does not have the authority to require counties to take it.

Regardless, Lorick said, Arizona’s heavy turnover of election workers makes it clear that the state needs to “beef up” its current one-day training session. “La Paz’s director was new. Pinal’s entire team is new. We have a lot of turnover, and the smartest move going forward is to make sure they have those procedures in place.”

Pinal County was the last county to submit recount results to the state, forcing the secretary of state’s office to delay presenting final numbers by a week as the county toiled through reconciliation procedures to complete the recount under a brand-new elections director.

Before the recount, Roll was publicly optimistic, predicting the recount would take only “a couple of days” and that little was likely to change. One early December headline that didn’t hold up: “Pinal officials say recount should be quick and smooth.”

Votebeat Arizona reporter Jen Fifield and story editor Carrie Levine contributed to this report.

Century-old law let voters file baseless recount petitions and delay Pa.’s election certification

2022-12-29T17:36:05+00:00

Good-government advocates and voting experts say Pennsylvania should change a recount law that was weaponized by activists and delayed the state’s certification by several weeks.

A Votebeat and Spotlight PA review of historical legislative records and news articles found that the 1927 provision has not been substantially updated in the near-century since its passage, and was designed to combat a type of fraud now easily detected by modern improvements to election administration.

The recount petition fee, for example, has never been updated from the $50 amount set in 1927. Adjusted for inflation, the modern equivalent is $860.

By design, the authors of the law specifically didn’t require citizens submitting recount petitions to include proof of fraud. That means almost none of the petitions submitted this year offered actual evidence of malfeasance.

“Having an outlet for a citizen who sees something is important,” Commissioner Josh Maxwell, chair of the Chester County elections board, said. Instead, “there was no fraudulent behavior and [the statute is] being abused and used possibly to delay the certification of elections.”

Roughly 150 petitions were filed across the state in November, most targeting the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. The petitions held up certification in several counties as judges considered them and, in the counties where recounts moved forward, election administrators fed the ballots back through high-speed scanners. None of the outcomes were altered by the recounts, which found almost no errors.

This year, “I think the scope and the motivations [behind the recount petitions] are pretty novel,” said Forrest Lehman, elections director in Lycoming County. He noted that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein did use the provision in a “scattered” way, relying as well on other parts of Pennsylvania election law. This year, he said, “you had people filing dozens” of petitions.

Adam Bonin is a Philadelphia-based attorney who regularly works with Democratic candidates and said he has used the statute in local races, such as school board or township supervisor races, when the margin is close and a recount may be justified.

The low fee of $50, originally “meant to be cost-prohibitive,” has now made it too easy to file such requests due to inflation, Bonin suggested, describing the amount as now equivalent to “a rounding error.”

Lehman and Bonin said the statute should at least be adjusted for inflation.

But Elizabeth Grossman, a senior regulatory counsel at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit focused on the vote-counting process, has been researching the law’s origin and said simply upping the cost may not be the right solution. While cost provisions and evidence standards might lessen the number of petitions, motivated parties who refuse to accept the results will climb whatever barriers are placed before them. Instead, she said, the state should consider whether the 1927 provision is still needed at all.

“I think this is more about ‘what is this for,’” she said. “If the purpose is to check if there is an error, we don’t need it. This is an old bill. We have recounts when the margin is slim, and we have audits in Pennsylvania.”

Provision dates back to 1927

The provision was championed by the newly elected Republican Gov. John Fisher as part of a package of election reform proposals Fisher had offered during his 1926 campaign. It had been a cause championed by his predecessor, Gov. Gifford Pinchot, also a Republican.

Fisher and Pinchot were attempting to push back against what they saw as the corruption of elections by machine politics, which, Pinchot said in a 1926 address to the state Legislature, was on display when attorneys in Philadelphia sought to block the opening of ballot boxes in the 1925 election. Those later showed “undisputed evidence of fraud,” he said.

According to coverage at the time from The Philadelphia Inquirer, “glaring debauchery” was committed against Benjamin H. Renshaw, who’d received zero votes out of more than 20,000 that were cast in his race for judge. Renshaw’s campaign petitioned for recounts in 25 precincts, submitting sworn statements from voters who had voted for him or who said they saw ballot boxes being stuffed. He was aided by the Committee of Seventy, an influential Philadelphia-based nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for good government measures aimed at improving democracy, such as informing voters and combating corruption.

In one incident, a judge of elections told a watcher for Renshaw’s campaign that he would only credit Renshaw with 50 votes — and the watcher was told to “take that or nothing.”

But despite what many considered extensive evidence of election malfeasance, not all the petitions were granted. As a result, Pinchot formed a “committee of 76” prominent men from around the state to consider necessary election reforms. According to newspaper coverage at the time, one of the committee’s recommendations was to take away judicial discretion when it came to recount petitions.

Fisher’s bill did that, mandating that the ballot box be opened if three voters in a precinct posted $50 and submitted a petition stating it was their “belief” that fraud had occurred in a race. The money would only be returned if fraud was found. The law also said, as it still does today, that the petitioners did not have to provide evidence of their claims. The logic behind this was articulated in a March 1927 editorial in The Inquirer.

“Since whatever evidence of fraud or error is locked up in the box, the petitioners are not required to prove corruption in advance,” the editorial read.

But that’s no longer how elections operate, said Al Schmidt, current president of the Committee of Seventy.

“No doubt Philly had a problem with voter fraud a long time ago, as did every other major American city, but there are safeguards now that exist that didn’t then,” said Schmidt, pointing to modern updates such as voter ID requirements for mailed ballots and banning party committee members from collecting ballots.

‘Unsupported’ petitions cause delay, spark calls for change

The Department of State said there was a “significant increase” in the number of counties receiving “unsupported” petitions filed this year. In 2016, Stein’s petitions targeted 15 counties and were heavily concentrated in Allegheny and Philadelphia, according to the Department of State. The petitions this year were spread out across at least 27 counties, according to a spokesperson for the state’s court system.

The agency told counties they could delay their certification past the statutory Nov. 28 deadline if they received valid petitions. Many did, leading to the latest date for full state certification, Dec. 22, in at least the past three years.

Some petitions are still pending in Bucks County, but most were dismissed. Judges were particularly incensed by petitions filed by judges of elections, who filed recount petitions in their own jurisdictions despite previously certifying the results.

One Republican judge on the Court of Common Pleas, Jeffrey Sommer of Chester County, released a scathing opinion castigating the petitioners for embarking on what he called a “fishing expedition.”

Some judges, relying upon a separate part of election code which says if voters are going to use the 1927 provision they have to have at least some evidence or submit petitions in every voting district, dismissed petitions for lacking evidence.

Others, confounded by both the vagueness of the law and apparent contradictions within state statutes, urged the Legislature to amend the 1927 provision.

“A sustained failure to address this deficiency will continue to burden the courts, elections bureaus, elections boards, county executive branches and the voting public by allowing manufactured challenges without a scintilla of evidentiary support to any and possibly all election certification processes in future elections,” Harry Judge Smail Jr., a Republican judge in Westmoreland County, wrote.

Election law experts say the lack of clarity around an evidentiary requirement should be addressed by the Legislature.

Lycoming’s Lehman said the Legislature should consider an evidentiary standard, a sentiment echoed by state Sen. Ryan Aument (R., Lancaster), whose race was the subject of such petitions, and by Schmidt, who was targeted by former president Donald Trump after speaking out against false claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia while serving as a commissioner there.

“I think it is a matter of having to put forward some evidence that an impartial juror could consider when considering where to examine that election,” said Schmidt. “That mechanism is in the code for some reason and the solution isn’t to get rid of it because some people are abusing it; it is to require evidence. The great thing is that the courts can be a ‘put-up-or-shut-up’ moment when it comes to election lies.”

The delayed certification may not have had reverberating impacts in 2022, but Grossman said she is worried about the potential for chaos in a presidential election year when the state must submit certified results for the Electoral College in early December. Schmidt, as well, said he is worried about future elections without legislative intervention.

“You could say, ‘What is the harm of having them certify a few days later,’” Schmidt said. “2020 showed they are trying to prevent certification. Just because someone isn’t trying what they did in 2020 doesn’t mean they aren’t testing vulnerabilities to the system.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Michigan state canvassers certify recounts after hearing challenges to dozens of ballots

2022-12-22T00:15:20+00:00

Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers on Wednesday unanimously certified the results of the partial recount of the November election, leading to slight changes in vote tallies for two ballot proposals and confirming the original successful passage of both.

The two-week recount, requested by conservative activists, required officials in 43 counties to review votes for Proposal 2, which will implement a series of election reforms; and Proposal 3, which creates a constitutional right to an abortion. The recount added 14 yes votes and 20 no votes to the totals for Prop 2; and 116 yes votes and 7 no votes to the totals for Prop 3, according to preliminary figures the state released Tuesday.

Wednesday’s hearing in Lansing lasted nearly seven hours and was mostly tranquil compared with the canvassers’ two other meetings following the November election. The four board members discussed 119 challenges to votes cast, determining almost all of them were valid. Some of the complaints ranged from pen marks that bled through the opposite side of ballots in Genesee County and elsewhere to “green ink” on a ballot in Muskegon County to a challenge involving a “crumpled” ballot in Livonia.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s elections director, told board members that 94 percent of the more than 500 precincts targeted for recounts were recountable, meaning they had no problems such as broken security seals or discrepancies in their ballot counts.

Brater said officials encountered problems with some challengers wanting to inspect the front and back of the ballots, which was not allowed since the petition only involved Proposal 2 and Proposal 3 of the ballot. That led to some minor disturbances, including challengers touching ballots and election materials they shouldn’t have or stepping into areas they weren’t allowed.

“We had folks raising their voice or threatening to file criminal charges or to file police reports,” said Brater. “That did slow things down in some places.”

The recount was requested by Jerome Jay Allen, a member of the Troy-based conservative group Election Integrity Fund and Force. Allen’s petition incorrectly alleged that voting tabulators were connected to the internet and that voting equipment in Michigan was not legally certified. EIF recruited and trained challengers to monitor recount sites during the process that ran from Dec. 7 to 16.

The recount fees were funded by the America Project, a national Trump-aligned group headed by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Proposals 2 and 3 won by large margins among Michigan voters. Proposal 2 was approved by 57 percent of the vote while Proposal 3 received 60 percent approval.

Canvassing board members Wednesday painstakingly listened to lengthy arguments from Daniel Hartman, an attorney representing EIF members, that stretched way past his allotted three minutes for comment. Hartman called for an investigation about alleged missing envelopes for absentee ballots in Oakland County as well as complaining that a challenger had not been able to look at both sides of the ballot, a common refrain by the EIF challengers.

Board of State Canvassers Chairman Tony Daunt, a Republican, warned Hartman to not go into complaints or challenges “beyond the scope” of the original recount petition.

The Board of State Canvassers originally certified the election results on Nov. 28, but the certification was put on hold after Allen requested the recounts, and the board voted 3–0 on Dec. 5 to grant them. At the time, Daunt said, “This is unnecessary, frivolous and ridiculous. … This is a fishing expedition.”

Metro Detroit attorney Mark Brewer, general counsel for Promote the Vote — which pushed for Prop 2 — argued at Wednesday’s hearing that Hartman and his group have “abused” the recount process and are “election deniers” who have used the recount process to “advance their own organizational agenda.”

“It’s clear that Michigan voters trust the elections process,” said Brewer, who called for the Michigan Legislature to change state law involving election recounts to prevent a baseless request that stands no chance of changing the outcomes of an election.

Micheal Davis, the executive director of Promote The Vote agreed.

“These recounts were initiated by election deniers who are still seeking to overturn an election that took place more than two years ago,” said Davis in a statement Wednesday. “They are not interested in improving elections in Michigan.”

Hartman told Daunt at the conclusion of the meeting Wednesday that “the idea [of the recount] was not to change the outcome. This was an educational and informational process that needed to happen.”

Oralandar Brand-Williams is a senior reporter for Votebeat. Contact Oralandar at obrand-williams@votebeat.org.

This article is made possible through a partnership with Bridge Michigan, Michigan’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit news publication.

Clerks tackle Michigan recount of Prop 2 and Prop 3 amid challengers looking for errors

2022-12-09T19:34:38+00:00

On the first day of a recount in 47 counties around Michigan on Wednesday, the auditorium of the Troy Community Center in Oakland County was filled with the sound of shuffling papers and restrained chatter. The county clerk, wearing a bright yellow safety vest, paced through rows of tables, checking on her election workers as they were inspecting and counting ballots.

From Detroit to the Upper Peninsula city of Marquette, election workers this week and next week are re-tallying the votes cast on two proposals that were on the November ballot: Prop 2, a set of voting reforms, and Prop 3, which ensures a constitutional right to an abortion.

The recounts are being conducted in more than 500 precincts at the request of a petitioner for the Election Integrity Fund and Force, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group based in Oakland County that recruits poll challengers and says it seeks “transparent and trusted” elections.

The group invoked a little-used provision in state law to trigger the recount, even though the two ballot proposals were approved by a margin that makes changing the outcome a near-impossibility, and is paying with money from prominent boosters of election conspiracy theories. Election skeptics are making similar requests in other hotly contested states, slowing the process of finalizing election results and prompting calls from advocates to change laws they say are being abused in ways lawmakers didn’t anticipate.

An Oakland County election worker carries in a precinct ballot box for Wednesday’s recount at the Troy Community Center.

In Troy, workers from the Oakland County Clerk’s office brought in storage containers, resembling suitcases, full of ballots from 95 precincts to start the recount at 8 a.m. “Recountable,” workers announced from some of the 100 counting tables as they checked the security of a ballot container and matched the ID numbers on its security seal with the number written in the poll book on Election Day, all part of the measures to ensure a precinct is eligible for the recount. Officials determined five precincts were ineligible for recount for such reasons — not enough to change the outcomes of Oakland’s final count, according to Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown.

Elsewhere, the process appears to have been less placid. By Wednesday night, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced there had been “reports of threatening behavior and interference” at some of the recount sites, without specifying where the incidents had happened or who was involved.

In an interview Friday, Sandy Kiesel, the executive director of EIF, said her volunteer challengers filed a police report in Jackson County and in other areas doing recounts when challengers were rebuffed on their requested access to ballots. Challengers, she said, are looking for errors on ballots and ballot boxes and reasons that precincts would be ineligible for recount. Kiesel said challengers had reported concerns, but she wasn’t able to detail their evidence.

The group also released a statement Wednesday night claiming without evidence that the first day of the recount revealed “evidence of ballot box tampering.” The group didn’t provide any specific details on those allegations.

“What are we doing it for?”

On Wednesday inside the Troy Community Center, there were about 15 challengers among the 50 election workers. Troy resident Kathleen O’Laughlin was among those who answered EIF’s call to act as a challenger, because, she said, she didn’t like the outcome of the election.

O’Laughlin sat at one of the tables as a pair of election workers fastidiously looked for irregularities or mistakes on the ballots. Workers had found none as of early Wednesday.

“So far, it’s going like how I would do it,” said O’Laughlin about the recounting process and the diligence the workers demonstrated.

But O’Laughlin also wondered why there weren’t more challengers and whether the recount truly makes sense.

“If it’s not going to overturn the election, then what are we doing it for?” O’Laughlin said.

On Tuesday, EIF held an online “training session” to recruit and prepare challengers to observe the process and look for ballots that they say would raise suspicion of fraud.

Volunteer challengers watched a video, produced by the Oakland County Clerk’s office, instructing challengers on their role during recounts. Election Integrity Fund and Force leaders also told volunteer challengers to look at the entire ballot, front and back, and inspect it for smears and other marks that would provide a reason to file a complaint and potentially invalidate the vote.

But at the recount in Troy, state and county election officials instructed challengers and election workers to look only at the part of the ballot dealing with the partial recount — the votes on Prop 2 or Prop 3.

Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown (center, in yellow vest) talks with election workers and residents during the recount at the Troy Community Center.

Jerome Jay Allen, an EIF member, filed the recount petition. His filing based the request on suspicion of fraud, voting machines allegedly not being certified or recertified by the federal government, and tabulators being connected to the internet, all claims that have been debunked by election and law experts. Nonetheless, the petition met the requirements set by state law and Allen was willing to put up the required funds, so officials had to approve it.

Before approving the recount requests, the chairman of the Michigan Board of Canvassers, Tony Daunt, called Allen’s effort “frivolous” and a “fishing expedition.” Mathematically, the recount stands no chance of changing the outcome of the proposals’ passage. Prop 2 passed by more than 860,000 votes and Prop 3 by more than 580,000 votes.

Costs will exceed group’s recount fees

The cost of the recount filing is being financed by the America Project, a group run by Patrick Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who believe the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump and have financed other efforts to find weaknesses in the election system.

County clerks across the state say that although Allen paid a fee for costs of the recount — $125 per precinct, according to the secretary of state’s office, which adds up to $62,000 to $75,000 — taxpayers will still end up picking up some of the tab.

Brown, the Oakland County clerk, said the recount “is not the best use of taxpayers’ money if you ask me.” Brown is still working with the state to calculate what Oakland’s final cost will be.

Brown says the recount is “frustrating” because it adds to the “misinformation and disinformation” around Michigan’s elections. “It makes people not trust our process,” Brown said, arguing the recount organizers’ accusations about voting equipment glitches changing the outcome is “wrong” and “inaccurate.”

In Ingham County, Clerk Barb Byrum wrapped up her recount Thursday of 86,000 ballots, which will cost taxpayers $8,200.

“This was not my first recount, but I’ve never done one for such a large margin [of the vote],” Byrum said Thursday.

Byrum said she had to hire 42 additional election workers and use the Ingham County Fair’s Community Building in Mason to work through the ballots from 38 precincts.

Byrum took to Twitter Wednesday and explained the recount procedure, warning challengers to keep their hands to themselves and not touch anything when they come in to observe the recounting.

Byrum said Thursday’s recount went smoothly.

Challengers “were on their best behavior,” said Byrum. “No one was allowed to touch anything.”

Ed Golembiewski, the Washtenaw County deputy clerk and election director, also said taxpayers will have to foot the costs of the extra staff he’s bringing in to help. He estimated the county will need to pay $6,000 to $10,000 on top of the $11,000 reimbursement it will receive from the recount filing.

Golembiewski will oversee 60 temporary election workers for the recount of 88 precincts, running Monday through Wednesday at the Washtenaw County Learning Resource Center in Pittsfield Township.

While the recount will come at a financial price to many counties, election officials like Golembiewski and Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said there is no way around it.

“We are legally obligated to do it,” said Golembiewski. “We will of course oblige and do our job. But it is next to impossible that the recount will overturn the election.”

“It’s going to cost. I don’t know what that number is, but it’s our job to get the job done,” said Forlini. “If they want a recount, that’s their right.”

Macomb County is hiring 40 additional workers to help Forlini’s four-person staff with the recount, which will take place Monday, and possibly Tuesday, at the south campus of the Macomb County Community College. All recounts must be complete by Dec. 18.

Election workers will examine 19,000 ballots, said Forlini, who doesn’t expect any errors to be found.

“I believe in my heart and soul and would be surprised if there would be changes in over 10 votes,” said Forlini. “I just want a good, accurate and efficient recount.”

Responding to criticism that the recount is a waste of money, Kiesel of the EIF said, “this is a pretty good use of taxpayers’ money. The question should be why was this election certified.”

Michigan State University law professor John Pirich said the granting of the recount request points to a need for the Legislature to change the laws that allowed it to proceed. Activist groups are misusing legitimate election laws intended to verify accurate results in closely contested elections to instead “satisfy these theories and conspiracy ideas that people are throwing around without any facts or any basis whatsoever,” said Pirich.

“This is just a folly,” he said, “and the legislature needs to step up quickly to address these kinds of abuses of the election code.”

David Goldman, regulatory counsel for the organization Informing Democracy, agreed, explaining that the organizers were able to use a little-known provision of the Michigan election code that permits a voter, rather than a candidate, to seek a recount.

“I don’t believe this portion of the [election] code has been used before in recent cycles,” said Goldman, who has studied Michigan’s election system and laws. “Going forward, one thing we would like to suggest … is that the legislature or election officials revisit this part of the code and make sure that there are specific thresholds to meet going forward.”

This article is made possible through a partnership with Bridge Michigan, Michigan’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit news publication.

Oralandar Brand-Williams is a senior reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Bridge Michigan. Contact Oralandar at obrand-williams@votebeat.org.

Unprecedented number of recount requests delay certification in at least three Pa. counties

2022-12-01T16:15:00+00:00

Recount petitions, claiming without evidence that fraud occurred during Pennsylvania’s 2022 election, are now delaying the state’s certification of results.

An obscure section of state law allows such petitions to be easily filed, and right-wing groups appear to be exploiting that provision to an unprecedented degree this year, gumming up the works.

According to a spokeswoman for the state’s court system, 147 petitions were filed in 27 counties as of Thursday morning.*

The requests reviewed by Votebeat and Spotlight PA primarily target the races for governor and U.S. Senate, which were won by Democrats Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman.

The petitions, first reported by The Inquirer, are causing certification delays in at least three counties — Berks, Bucks, and Columbia — which in turn are delaying the state from certifying its overall results. Counties were required by the Pennsylvania Department of State to certify by Monday.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it at the level we’re seeing this year,” said Jeff Greenburg, Mercer County’s former longtime elections director. “They’ve been around, but never to this level, and what stands out to me this year is they are filing them simply based on a distrust of the [tabulation] machines.”

A provision of the Pennsylvania election code allows three voters in any precinct to request a recount if they believe “fraud or error” occurred in the election. The statute specifically says that they do not need to provide evidence for their claim.

The Department of State has advised counties that the only reason they should delay certification is due to “legally valid and properly filed” recount petitions, but they should certify other races not subject to recount petitions, according to a Wednesday afternoon statement.

Jim O’Malley, deputy director of communications for Bucks County, said that the county was waiting for a judge’s order on 22 separate petitions before it moves forward with certification.

At least 56 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties — including Chester, Allegheny, and Westmoreland, which received recount petitions — had certified their results as of Wednesday. Columbia County plans to certify on Monday.

The petitions appear to have a cascading effect on the Pennsylvania Department of State, which needs to move forward with its statewide certification. On Wednesday, Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman was scheduled to be part of a panel on threats to elections in Washington, D.C., but was “held back in Pennsylvania due to the certification process,” organizers said. A spokeswoman for her office said Thursday the absence was due to a “scheduling conflict.”

Many of the petitions ask to have the recounts performed by hand, pointing to a portion of state law that says a judge will direct “persons designated by such court or judge” to perform the recount. However, in a case earlier this year regarding a Lancaster County recount petition, the state’s Commonwealth Court upheld a lower ruling that found the law does not require such a hand recount; the judge did grant the request for the recount, which was ultimately performed by machine.

Judges have so far rejected these hand-count requests, some citing this ruling, while still allowing the recounts to move forward, though a review of 101 petitions by Votebeat and SpotlightPA show that most are still pending judges’ rulings.

Notably, a Court of Common Pleas judge in Butler County dismissed three petitions because the petitioners were inspectors of elections in the precinct where they were claiming fraud or error had occurred, but had nonetheless certified their precinct’s results. The judge said those workers had an opportunity to address any errors before certifying the results and couldn’t raise allegations after the fact.

In other counties, including Columbia and Westmoreland, the petitions moved forward and judges have ordered recounts.

There has also been some disagreement among county judges as to whether the petitions need to show evidence of “fraud or error” in order to be valid. Some judges have pointed to another statute and dismissed petitions for lack of evidence.

“The dismissals are mostly procedural,” said Elizabeth Grossman, senior regulatory counsel at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit focused on the vote-counting process that has been tracking the petitions.

The primary statute does not instruct courts to gauge the merits of a petition, but rather determine whether it was submitted by qualified electors in a timely manner.

“The fact that these recounts are going forward doesn’t mean there is any merit,” Grossman said.

The Pennsylvania Department of State declined to comment Thursday on whether the statue required the count to be done by hand or if it should be amended to include an evidentiary burden.

Westmoreland County did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the results of its recounts. Columbia County said that it conducted its recount earlier this week, via machines not used in the election, and found only very small discrepancies that failed to shift any outcome.

“I believe it was only off by one or two [votes],” Thea Karas, assistant director of elections, said of the five precincts that were recounted. “It was very, very minuscule.”

Karas said the petitioners submitted no evidence showing fraud or error to support the allegations. The county plans to certify on Monday, she said.

The statute cited in the petitions says that evidence is not required for the petition to be valid, but some requesters have cited specific issues, such as improperly calibrated ballot marking devices, during court hearings.

Greenburg said something like this can be a legitimate issue that would make voters want to recount the results in a specific precinct, but he worries that these petitions are being used for “frivolous” reasons without evidence, which could lead to a “boy who cried wolf” situation when there are real problems.

The petition drive appears to be an effort of Audit the Vote PA and other groups that have promoted baseless conspiracy theories about elections, The Inquirer first reported last week. Audit the Vote’s Toni Shuppe was closely allied with Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, a major booster of unfounded election fraud claims who soundly lost the race for governor.

Audit the Vote PA first encouraged the tactic after the May primary when Mike Miller, its preferred candidate for a Lancaster County state Senate seat who had run the group’s canvassing effort there, lost his bid to unseat Republican Ryan Aument. Petitions in that case were dismissed on technical grounds, but one filed against state House Speaker Bryan Cutler did move forward to a machine recount.

In a statement Wednesday, Aument said the races targeted by recounts were won by large margins, and no one has presented evidence showing fraud or procedural issues. He added that unfounded efforts only undermine meaningful attempts at election integrity reform.

“If the law continues to be abused this way, I think we need a legislative change to safeguard taxpayer dollars and ensure election workers aren’t wasting their time administering hand recounts of elections for which there is no evidence that any malfeasance occurred,” he said. “I think we need some kind of evidentiary standard or burden of proof before unfounded accusations can be made and taxpayer dollars can be used to order costly recounts.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org .

Correction, Dec. 30, 2022: This article originally misstated the number of counties where recount petitions were filed. Updated information shows it was 27 counties, not 41 counties.

Arizona would likely see recounts after every election under new law

2022-05-23T18:10:26+00:00

Update May 23, 11 a.m. MST: Gov. Doug Ducey signed the bill into law Friday after the Arizona House voted 50-1-9 on May 17 to pass it.

Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, would likely be required to recount all ballots cast in every election moving forward if a proposed change to state law passes.

The bill, awaiting a final vote as early as today in the Arizona Legislature after garnering bipartisan support, would vastly widen the margin of votes between candidates that triggers an automatic recount in primary and general elections, for almost every type of race. The change would prompt more frequent recounts in large and small counties alike. In the 2020 general election, it would have triggered two statewide recounts and two countywide recounts in Maricopa County, including the presidential race which Joe Biden won narrowly in the state.

The stated goal is to build voter confidence in election outcomes in a battleground state where margins are often tight and recounts are currently rarely allowed. State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, who introduced Senate Bill 1008, says it would still only require recounts on races that are very close.

“Here is an opportunity to help reinforce the process,” Ugenti-Rita said. “To give the voters confidence that, when races are razor tight, we make sure they were counted accurately.”

But national election consultants with expertise in recounts, along with associations representing officials in Arizona counties, warn the proposal may lead to a burdensome number of recounts, add to election costs, delay election results, and make it difficult to meet deadlines between the primary and general elections. They argue that those are heavy tradeoffs considering that recounts almost never change the outcome of elections.

“The bill will increase costs to run elections because counties will be required to hire additional employees, it will create additional wear and tear on machines, and increased potential for delays in canvassing results,” Robin Hillyard of the County Supervisors Association of Arizona wrote to House Minority Leader Rep. Reginald Bolding in March, urging him to vote no on the bill in committee. Both that association and the Arizona Association of Counties oppose the bill. Bolding voted yes.

The last statewide recount, for a proposition in 2010, examined about 1.8 million ballots. It took between one and two weeks, and was “like having a second election,” according to former Secretary of State Ken Bennett. It cost counties a total of $66,237, according to the secretary of state’s office, which estimates that recounts today would cost much more, considering 3.4 million Arizonans cast ballots in 2020.

Ugenti-Rita said the counties’ opposition shows how unwilling they are to make any changes to elections, even those that have bipartisan support and “make the current law better.”

“This is an important bill, and a reasonable bill, and yet they are picking it apart,” she said. “This is exactly why people don’t give a crap about what counties say anymore because they aren’t willing to make adjustments.”

Historically, across the country, statewide recounts have rarely led to a reversal of results.

In 31 statewide recounts from 2000 to 2019 in the United States, races were reversed three times, according to research from national nonprofit FairVote. Those races all had tiny margins – and all would have already qualified for recounts in Arizona under the current law.

For this reason, the nonprofit recommends Arizona’s existing 0.1 percent margin as a best practice for states, said Deb Otis, senior research analyst.

“It’s already capturing all of the races in which a recount could be consequential,” she said, adding that states with a 0.5 percent trigger can lead to “paying for unnecessary recounts.”

Some national consultants said that while the increased number of recounts may be burdensome for counties, it may also be the right thing to do to improve voter confidence.

“For Arizona it is a matter of balancing the impact as far as the workload for election officials by increasing the election trigger, balance that with increasing public confidence and transparency and the examination of more ballots,” said Mark Halvorson of Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota.

The bill is one of more than 100 election-related proposals in the statehouse this year, and represents a broader attempt nationally by Republicans to change election laws following the challenges to the 2020 election.

Some Democratic lawmakers oppose the proposal, saying they see it as another misdirected attempt at changing election law to appease the Stop the Steal crowd when current law is working fine.

Democratic state Sen. Martín Quezada said in a hearing in February that the bill was furthering the narrative that voters can’t have confidence in the election results, and “that’s irresponsible of us as policy makers to continue to further that narrative.”

But unlike most other proposals in the state, this bill has momentum. It was one of less than a dozen election bills to make it through the Senate, passing with all Republicans and one Democrat —Sen. Sean Bowie — voting for it. Then, it flew through the House Government and Elections Committee with a unanimous bipartisan yes vote, including from Bolding.

The bill is scheduled to be heard before the House on Tuesday. Lawmakers could decide to vote on the bill shortly after. If it passes without any changes, it would head to the governor’s desk.

This is Ugenti-Rita’s second time proposing the bill. Last year, the bill saw broad support but never made it to a final vote.

Gov. Doug Ducey, who would need to sign the bill for it to become law, indicated his support in a tweet last year, stating that it was one of the election-related reforms he wanted to make this year.

How automatic recounts would be triggered under new law

Under the proposal, automatic recounts would be triggered if the difference in votes between the winner of the election and the runner-up was less than 0.5 percent of the total votes cast for the two candidates.

Currently, automatic recounts are triggered when the margin between the candidates is the lesser of the following: Either 0.1 percent of the total votes cast for the two candidates, or a set number of votes somewhere between 10 and 200, depending on the race.

For statewide races of more than 25,000 votes or statewide ballot measures, the margin threshold is 200; for statewide races of 25,000 votes or less, the number is 50; for state legislative seats, the number is 50; for county, city, or town positions, the number is 10. These set numbers are often the lesser number, and therefore the determinant in whether the recount happens. They would be eliminated under the proposal.

The law would require the same type of recounts as the current law does: A full machine recount of the race along with, in some state and federal races, a 5 percent hand count of randomly selected ballots.

As an example, under the proposal, if the top two candidates in a state senate race together got 100,000 votes and the winner won by 500 votes or less, the race would be automatically recounted, when the law now says that margin would need to be 50 votes or less.

The proposed margin is still “very, very close,” Ugenti-Rita said.

In the 2020 general election, the presidential race – which Biden won by 10,457 out of about 3.3 million votes cast for him or Trump – had about a 0.3 percent margin and would have been recounted statewide automatically under the proposal.

But so would have the state senate race won by Democrat Sen. Christine Marsh (with a 497-vote margin), and many local races. In Maricopa County, that includes the race won by Republican Recorder Stephen Richer (4,599 vote margin) and Republican Supervisor Jack Sellers (403 vote margin).

Ugenti-Rita said the bill is not aimed at reversing election results. But she did say that Biden’s close margin in Arizona, the closest for the presidential race in the country, “highlighted that there is a lot on the line and when these races are close, it’s a good idea to make sure they are counted accurately.”

Questions about Biden’s win led the Republican leaders of the Senate to order the partisan audit of Maricopa County’s election in which the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast were recounted by hand.

That recount, while criticized for being poorly executed and hyper-partisan, again found that Biden won, and did not change the minds of many voters who still believe the election was stolen from Trump.

Margin would “very likely” trigger recounts every election

There have been five Arizona recounts on state races since 2000, including the one statewide recount of Proposition 112 in 2010, according to the secretary of state’s office.

If the bill passes, a preliminary review by Maricopa County found it “is very likely that multiple local and statewide contests would trigger a recount after every primary and general election,” said Megan Gilbertson, Elections Department spokesperson.

The law applies to all races but those for “precinct committeemen, school district governing boards, community college district governing boards, fire district boards or fire district chiefs or secretary-treasurers or boards of other special districts.”

Even if a recount was triggered only for a small city election — say, El Mirage’s ballot question that saw 17,136 ballots cast in 2020 — the county would need to recount all 2 million or so ballots cast, because ballots are not cast or sorted by precinct or city, and so election workers would have to look at all ballots to find those with the municipal question on them. Most ballots are cast in the mail or at vote centers, which allow voters to vote anywhere in the county.

Maricopa County is still working on cost estimates for the potentially increased number of recounts. The county supervisors association also does not have cost estimates from counties, but Hillyard said “it is expected the bill will increase costs to run elections and additional resources to help cover those costs would be helpful.”

Bolding, the Democratic leader supporting the bill, said he plans to introduce an amendment that would require the state to pay counties for the cost of conducting the recounts. Ugenti-Rita said Monday she had not seen the language, so she could not say whether she would support it.

But she did say she believes it’s unnecessary for the state to appropriate funding for the measure, saying the counties “have plenty of money.”

Arizona would be the new Florida for recounts

Ugenti-Rita pointed out that her proposed trigger for an automatic recount is the same as other states.

Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania all have similar triggers, although some vary based on race or have other qualifiers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Florida, local recounts have been common since the trigger was put in place in 2001, but statewide recounts have been rare, with just three.

Leon County, Florida, which includes Tallahassee, has done between a half dozen to 10 in that timeframe, said Mark Earley, the county’s supervisor of elections.

In November 2018, it took Leon County four days to conduct a machine recount of the 141,111 ballots cast in three races and two days to conduct a hand recount for two races. The overtime pay cost $13,491 for the machine recount and $15,840 for the hand recount.

The hand count takes time, is stressful, opens the ballots to being mishandled or damaged, opens the process to politics, and always has the potential for fraud, Earley said.

“Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar when elections are most fragile,” he said. “That is not the way to do it.”

But also, he said, he doesn’t see a reason to re-run all ballots through the same machines used the first time.

Florida’s law requires a full machine recount of ballots. It only sometimes requires a hand count to go along with that, if the margin was less than 0.25 percent and if there were enough undervotes or overvotes in the race to change the outcome of the election.

The hand count then only looks at the undervotes and overvotes in the race to determine voter intent. Earley said it makes sense to focus in this way, since you want to catch the ballots that the machines may not have read properly.

He helped the state find what he considers a better way to do audits and recounts, which he said makes sense elsewhere, too. Instead of re-running the ballots through the same machines, Leon County uses Clear Ballot machines, which produce electronic copies of the ballots for later analysis, to scan and read ballots immediately after the election.

Those results can then be compared with the original results under the required audit the county must do, and the images are already available for the recount and to quickly find overvotes and undervotes that need to be evaluated for the hand count.

Bennett, the former secretary of state who was also the liaison to last year’s Senate review of Maricopa County’s election, said he thinks using Clear Ballot, or some other electronic ballot review system, would be smart in Arizona if recounts are going to become more common.

Bennett said that he sees the need to create a standard percentage threshold that determines the trigger, rather than have a number such as 10 to 200. But he would be wary of a law that would require frequent recounts.

In 2010, the recounted ballot measure had passed by 126 votes, Bennett recalled, and after recounting all the ballots by machine, the results changed by only 12 votes.

Other ways to strengthen audits and recounts to improve voter trust

Election consultants say that there are other ways of increasing voter confidence that aren’t as burdensome or costly for local election officials, such as strengthening post-election audits or focusing recounts on looking more closely at voter intent.

Halvorson in Minnesota and others recommend hand counts for recounts instead of simply running the ballots through the same machines again.

Jennifer Morrell of The Elections Group, a national elections consulting firm, said Arizona’s recount bill should be considered hand-in-hand with its existing audit law.

Arizona’s audit law is strong in that it requires a hand count of a certain number of ballots, Morrell said, and then if mistakes are found, more ballots are examined, which could eventually lead to a full hand recount.

Morrell said she understands the concerns counties have about doing recounts more frequently, especially the hand-count part. In Colorado, she said, a hand recount of 500 ballots took three days.

“The only way to get it right is to be slow and methodical,” she said.

But, she said, she also understands the desire to increase the threshold for recounts in Arizona, since it may help assure candidates with tight margins that there were no irregularities in counting votes.

“With the growing chorus of candidates not wanting to concede their loss, this has the potential to help with that.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.