brennan center for justice

February2008September2004November2008ES&SModel 100ES&SOptech IV-CES&SModel 650ArizonaArizonaArkansasfor a recount of all counties and questioned thelegitimacy of the election until he finally concededtwo weeks later. 294Cochise County, AZThe Douglas Dispatch reported that, in CochiseCounty, during the 2008 primary presidential race,“a computer glitch that kept counting five pollingplaces over and over again⎯for five times⎯caused[a] reporting error” of the election’s results. CountyElection officials reportedly discovered and fixed the“computer error” well after midnight on election dayand only after they had sent their final report to theArizona Secretary of State’s Office. Consequently, theerror resulted in Mitt Romney erroneously beingdeclared winner of Cochise County over JohnMcCain in news reports on the day after the election.Cochise County Election Officer, Tom Schellingstated that “‘[i]t was a cumulative (computer) errorthat just kept adding the results for five polling placesevery time new figures were added.’” Moreover, “theerror got worse when the cumulative error wentthrough five updates. It was then realized that thetotal number of ballots cast according to the wrongreport was more than the people registered in thecounty, Schelling said.” This realization “led to ascramble to correct the problem and change theofficial count to 100 percent of the 18 polling placeshaving reported to the state, [Schelling] said. Bythen, the newspaper was being run.” 295Maricopa County, AZAccording to the Arizona Republic, the original totalsin the Republican primary for State House in District20 showed that one candidate led his closestcompetitor by only four votes. The small margin ledelection officials to conduct a recount. 296 TheRepublic reported that the optical scan recount foundnearly 500 additional votes for the five candidates inthe race, and the initial second place candidate wonthe election by 13 votes. 297Carroll County, ARAccording to the Carroll County News, in the 2008general election, the inked black block on the upperleft hand corner of some of the ballots did notcontain enough ink to be processed by the countingmachine. After receiving advice from ES&S, theBrennan Center for Justice | 47