Maricopa County Recorder on the upcoming election

Election officials in Arizona are pushing Governor Katie Hobbs and state lawmakers to hold a special legislative session to correct what they see as a potentially impossible timeline for next year’s Presidential election resulting from new federal and state laws.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer joined Arizona Horizon to discuss the upcoming election and the issues with the timeline for the Presidential election.

Among the potential improvement requests:

• Moving up the primary election date
• Condensing the timeline for counting and recounting ballots
• Changing certification deadlines

“This goes back to two legislative sessions ago in which the legislature changed the recount margin that would automatically trigger a statewide recount,” Richer said. “And as our races get closer in Arizona, we’re more and more concerned that these recount margins, expanded, would be triggered.”

According to Richer, this becomes a problem between the August primary and getting ready for the November general election.

Richer is hopeful all 15 counties will come together and iron out a solution.

“We don’t want Arizona in that position. We don’t want to say all 49 other states get to participate in naming the next President of the United States,” Richer said.

The state law was designed to build confidence in the system in order to capture more races. If there was a relatively low margin, then there would be a recount.

“What they didn’t take into account is just how much of a burden, how many races that would potentially sweep in and how many weeks it would take to recount millions of statewide ballots,” Richer said.

Richer said he isn’t concerned about the next Presidential election. They have been renovating their facilities so they can have more bi-partisan teams of ballot processors.