The Cochise County Board of Supervisors approved an agreement to reorganize election duties under Recorder David Stevens in a 2-1 partisan vote.  

Last year was a tough one for the election denial movement in Arizona. Its candidates for U.S. Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general all lost. But it's still thriving in rural Cochise County, a vivid example of how paranoia about elections fanned by former President Donald Trump maintains a stubborn grip in rural parts of the country.

David Stevens had never supervised a ballot count. He didn’t know how he would count nearly 50,000 ballots by hand, who would help, or where he would find enough space to do it. But that didn’t dissuade him.

Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby voted today to defy the election certification deadline and delayed their vote to Friday, putting the county in violation of Arizona law and at risk of nullifying their residents’ votes.  

Officials in a southeastern Arizona county were prepared to move ahead with a plan to hand count all ballots in November's election alongside the normal machine count on Tuesday, but at the last minute the county attorney told the board they had no legal authority to do so.