Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has threatened legal action against an Arizona county that announced it's considering a full hand count of ballots for the upcoming midterm election.
This has been an ongoing debate over the last several weeks, and it started when a conservative group went to the board of supervisors wanting a hand count for the midterm election. says the hand count would be in addition to the machine count, and according to County Recorder David Stevens, they already have 140 GOP volunteers to count the ballot. The volunteers will be supervised by the county's Elections Director, and Stevens said that is enough people to get the work done.
"Cochise County plans to vote to hand count every single race on every single ballot—w/ Election Day just 18 days away & early voting already started. That’s illegal & risks the integrity & accuracy of the election.
"They were looking to tabulate the 2022 General Election by hand, during the election, that has now migrated to, machine tabulate now, and then we are required by law to do an audit hand count after we've done the machine tabulation," Stevens said. "They want to increase that 2% hand count to 100%."