CD 2 Barber-McSally race will go down to the wire

barber mcsallyThe Arizona Secretary of State reported at 4:18 AM this morning that the CD 2 congressional race was only a 34 vote difference between Congressman Ron Barber and Republican Martha McSally. Cochise County has not reported, and Pima County still has thousands of ballots to verify and count.

Congressional Dist 2

Ron Barber (D)            78,749   49.78%

Martha McSally (R)   78,785   49.80%

As has become disturbingly regular, the Cochise County Elections Department has demonstrated it is incapable of managing an election.  The Sierra Vista Herald reports, Election problems, again:

Once again, Cochise County is behind in tabulating the results of the General Election due to a human error that occurred prior to the start of counting early ballots.

Interim Elections Office Director Jim Vlahovich said Tuesday night that a staff member of ES&S Products, which makes election equipment used by the county, had tested the 650 Tabulator a few days ago. The employee inserted a data card and ran through some test ballots. He removed the data card, but the machine has its own memory storage. It kept the the number of test ballots in that memory.

As elections staff began running 18,595 early ballots through the 650 Tabulator, the end result was a difference of 85 ballots between the counted early ballots and the total the machine recorded.

“We don’t know which 85 ballots to pull from the count, so we’re sending all the early ballots to Graham County,” said Vlahovich, whose face reflected the agony of yet another election problem. “(The Graham County) machine is faster and is able to handle the larger ballots.”

Graham County helped Cochise County during the Primary Election and re-tabulated all of Cochise County’s ballots. Staff there is willing to help the county again, though this will be the last time it can be done.

“Graham County is upgrading their system and it won’t be compatible with ours,” said Vlahovich. “We’ll have no choice but to upgrade our system.”

There was more trouble than the 85 extra ballots, though.
The size of the early ballots — 19 inches — and the folds in the early ballots due to mailing, also caused problems. They had to be run through one at a time, Vlahovich added.

Our sad small town newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star (“All the news that Jim Click decides is fit to print”), engaged in speculation this morning rather than objective news reporting. Cochise County vote-count delay favors McSally:

Technical problems with voting machines in Cochise County have delayed results in the region’s most-watched race, but it could bode well for GOP challenger Martha McSally.

She and Democrat Ron Barber, the incumbent, were separated by only 36 votes, according to the latest totals this morning.

However, Cochise County tallies are missing and McSally was expected to have another strong showing in the county she won in 2012 by 59 percent to 41 percent.

Well, geniuses, there are even more ballots to be counted in Pima County. Here is a press release from Pima County this morning:

Here are the morning numbers from the Pima County Recorder and Elections Department of ballots remaining to verify and count.

Elections Department:
Ballots currently in its possession to be counted: 14,200

Recorder’s Office:
Early Ballots to be verified: 22,528
Provisional Ballots to be verified: 9,856
Conditional Provisional ballots: 275

The Elections Department has begun counting the verified ballots in its possession and the Recorder’s Office has begun verifying the ballots it has. As ballots are verified today, they will be turned over to Elections for counting. Provisional Ballots will be verified after all of the early ballots have been verified and turned over to Elections. It can take up to 10 days to verify provisional ballots.

Both Elections and the Recorder’s Office will be updating their databases and the results page at various times today.
I will send out another alert at the end of today with updated numbers and will do so each evening until all the ballots are verified and counted.

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5 thoughts on “CD 2 Barber-McSally race will go down to the wire”

  1. As of tonight Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Congressman Barber is losing by 1293 votes. I’ve updated my General Election 2014 results post, and will continue to watch this race as the provisional ballots are counted.

  2. As of tonight Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Congressman Barber is losing by 1293 votes. I’ve updated my General Election 2014 results post, and will continue to watch this race as the provisional ballots are counted.

  3. If this is a continuing problem, why hasn’t the County changed out it’s machines before now? Are there any plans to do so in the future?

  4. “Well, geniuses, there are even more ballots to be counted in Pima County.”

    Actually, I think the Star may have it right. If the spread in Cochise favors McSally by a far greater margin than the spread in Pima favors Barber, she wins. If the outstanding ballots in Cochise really do go for McSally by 18 points, Barber would have to best McSally by about 12 points in the ballots remaining in Pima to offset that advantage.

  5. Yes, this is reminiscent of the same race two years ago. It took over a week to finally determine that Congressman Barber had won by 2454 votes. Wait & see again.

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