BISBEE, Ariz. (KGUN) — Election suspense continues in Cochise County.
The county is defying the state requirement to certify the November 8th vote. It goes back to suspicions that voting machines lead to dishonest election results.
Normally Nov. 28 would be the deadline to certify votes and forward the results to Arizona’s Secretary of State, but Cochise County Supervisors voted two-to-one to delay at least until Friday.
The issue hinges on whether Cochise County’s voting systems are certified accurate. The Secretary of State and Cochise County’s elections director say they are.
Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd question that, and say the election’s invalid if they’re not certified.
Now Crosby and Judd have voted to delay certifying Cochise County’s vote certification until they hear from a group Crosby describes as experts in voting systems.
Michael Schafer will be one of them. He says it’s been years since Cochise County’s machines have been properly checked.
KGUN 9 reporter Craig Smith asked: “So should the votes here be thrown out? Redone? What's the solution?
Michael Schafer: “It’s a two-step process. One would be to be doing a full hand count on this election to compare the results with what the machines produced. Because there's a lot of people that are concerned that the machines can be changing the results of the elections.“
Supervisor Ann English says supervisors would only be hearing from the same people they’ve heard from before.
Cochise County voter Lisa Glenn sees the decision to delay as an extension of the claim the 2020 election was stolen.
“We've never had a problem in Cochise County. We've had 100% match...from the voting machines to the hand count, the mandated hand count, and yet we have two supervisors who keep pushing the underlying fallacy that there is something wrong with our election system.”
Voter Inga McCord says she’s very pleased with the delay.
“I was a programmer for 30 years working with software and hardware, and I know it can be full of bugs. And I believe, perhaps that's why they are resisting so much certifying these machines. Why haven't they been certified many, many years ago.”
The Cochise County Attorney already said his office would not represent the Supervisors because they’d be breaking state law if they pushed a plan for a full hand count. A court order forced them to scrap that count. Now there's a question of whether Cochise County taxpayers will pay for outside attorneys.
——-
Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
YOUR VOICE YOUR VOTE
Get more results from the2022 General Election. Results will display after 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 8 and will continuously update as new data is released.