PHOENIX — Political candidates and their supporters unhappy with the results of an election could demand a recount under a proposal to be considered this coming year by the state Senate.
But they’d have to be willing to put their money where their mouths are.
The proposal by Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, would permit any individual to demand a recount of any race in any county or statewide. The only requirement would be that they provide the money to cover the costs.
Mesnard conceded that even if his Senate Bill 1010 is enacted, it wouldn’t necessarily quell all doubts and complaints about election returns. But he called it an “effective component” of restoring confidence in the electoral system.
Not everyone sees it that way.
“It’s unnecessary and stupid,” said outgoing Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.
He said all Mesnard is doing is catering to the complaints — none of which have been proven in court — that there was something wrong with the results reported in the presidential race.
Fontes also said a hand recount, which is one of the options under Mesnard’s proposal, would take weeks to conduct.
Arizona law now requires a recount only when the difference in votes between the candidates is within a certain margin.
So, for example, in a statewide race the loser would have to come within 200 votes. Ditto in the case of a statewide ballot measure.
That is nowhere near Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote edge over President Trump in the official tally in Arizona.
And for other races, the spread between candidates has to be even smaller: 50 votes for legislative seats and just 10 for local elections.
Under Mesnard’s proposal, a person seeking a recount when it’s not automatic would be required to post a bond with a court “in a form and in an amount as determined by the court to be sufficient to provide for full reimbursement of the costs of conducting the recount.”
He said he wants to be sure “the taxpayers aren’t on the hook.”
The dollar figure could be substantial, depending on the kind of recount sought.
The recounts that now occur automatically under state law are done by putting the ballots into an automated counting machine. That is a relatively simple procedure, one that might take about a week on a statewide basis.
But Mesnard’s legislation would permit the person seeking the recount to request it be done by hand, assuming the person is willing to pay the additional costs involved. Those costs would depend on how many ballots, and how many counties, are involved.
“This is about instilling confidence in the election system, the results in particular in this case,” Mesnard said. “And I’d much rather err on the side of greater counting than not.”
Fontes, a Democrat who lost his own reelection campaign in the Nov. 3 election, said Mesnard’s plan is the wrong cure for the problem.
“There’s better ways to instill confidence,” he said. “For example, getting his people to stop denying the outcome of the (presidential) election.”
There already is a procedure in place for what might be called an automatic mini-recount. It requires having officials from both parties select ballots from 2% of the precincts or voting centers, pick certain races and then have those ballots counted by hand by party workers.
In Maricopa County that involved more than 47,000 ballots. And Fontes said that in each case the results were found to be 100% consistent with the machine count.
Fontes said that hand count took close to a day. Extrapolate that out over more than 2 million ballots in Maricopa County — the kind of count that SB 1010 would permit — and a hand tally would take more than a month, meaning the results would not be known and finalized until after the current date in state law to certify the returns.
“What he’s asking for is injecting more doubt, more uncertainty, take longer to figure these things out instead of standing up to the people who are actually wrong,” Fontes said.
As to whether a recount would satisfy those who continue to insist there were improprieties with the just-conducted election, Mesnard said: “Well, I think we need to do everything we can to try.”
He said this is about more than just a few folks trying to cast doubt on how the vote was conducted and counted.
“I would say hundreds of thousands of people in the state believe something was wrong with the election,” Mesnard said.
Why they believe that — and even the veracity of their beliefs — is irrelevant, he said.
“Whether you agree with them or not or think it’s conspiracy theories or sore loser or legitimate fraud or irregularity is somewhat immaterial,” Mesnard said.
He said the fact remains that, for whatever reason, they don’t trust the results. “And that is an existential threat to the democratic electoral process we must confront,” he said.
“We cannot dismiss it,” Mesnard continued. “It’s irresponsible to dismiss it, even if you think they’re wrong.”
Still, Mesnard conceded, even allowing for a full hand count is unlikely to satisfy all doubters.
“Is it the silver bullet? No,” he said. “Is there a silver bullet? I don’t know. But I think this is an effective component of that.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Arizona is one of only nine states that do not have a process in place to let people request a recount. But even in some of the states that do permit such demanded recounts, there are constraints.
For example, in Georgia a losing candidate may seek a recount only when the results are within 0.5% of the total votes cast for the office.
