The Mohave County Board of Supervisors voted down a proposal to count election ballots by hand rather than using voting machines in 2024.
The board voted 3-2 against adopting the hand count this week with supervisors Ron Gould and Hildy Angius voting in favor and Buster Johnson, Jean Bishop, and Travis Lingenfelter voting in opposition.
According to the Mohave County Republican Central Committee, the proposal’s intent was to restore election integrity.
“The Mohave Board of Supervisors voted down the hand count proposal to restore election integrity in a 3-2 vote. Yes: Ron Gould, Hildy Angius No: Buster Johnson, Jean Bishop, Travis Lingenfelter,” the Mohave County Republican Central Committee announced following the vote.
Prior to the vote, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors directed staff to review and develop a plan for tabulating the 2024 elections by hand. Between June 22nd, 2023, and June 26th, 2023, the Mohave County Elections Department conducted a study to test the feasibility and best practices of carrying out a full-hand tabulation of the 2024 elections.
As part of the study, the Mohave County Elections Department counted 850 ballots with an average of 36 races per ballot with an error rate of 5.4 percent.
The Mohave County Elections Department developed a plan from that study for tabulating the 2024 elections by hand, which it presented at a special Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday to discuss and review the proposition.
The proposed plan detailed that the county would need to allocate approximately $1,108,486 plus a recount cost of $31,360 to conduct the hand counts.
According to Lingenfelter, he couldn’t justify the high expenditures of a hand count due to the anticipated budget shortfall in Mohave County.
“You can’t talk about any other spending when you have an 18 to 20 million dollars deficit. I mean, that’s irresponsible,” Lingenfelter said.
Mohave County began exploring the idea of hand tabulations due to the hard work and advocacy of Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu).
According to Borrelli, Mohave County needs to switch to hand-counting ballots because electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hacking, and the government has no jurisdiction over them.
“Our electronic voting systems, which are made with components from countries considered adversaries to the U.S. puts Arizona as well as the rest of the nation in an extremely vulnerable and dangerous position. This is a national security issue. If we cannot have free and fair elections, we are in trouble,” Borrelli said.
Borrelli introduced Senate Bill (SB) 1074 earlier this year, which aimed to prohibit electronic voting systems in Arizona as the primary method for conducting, counting, tabulating, or verifying federal elections. Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed the legislation in April, claiming that counting ballots by hand takes more time and is less accurate.
Despite Hobbs’ veto, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors voted to consider doing a hand count of the 2024 election last month. The county will ultimately need to approve the hand-count plan. According to the press release, the board may adopt, modify, or reject the proposed plan to count the ballots by hand for the 2024 elections at Tuesday’s special meeting.
The Arizona Sun Times contacted the Mohave County GOP, Borrelli, and Lingenfelter for additional remarks but did not receive a reply before press time.
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Hannah Poling is a lead reporter at The Ohio Star, The Star News Network, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Hannah on Twitter @HannahPoling1. Email tips to [email protected]
