A Superior Court judge is expected to decide today whether to grant an inspection of write-in ballots from last month's primary election after a lawsuit was filed last week alleging the votes were not correctly counted.
The Arizona Libertarian Party filed the suit against the Maricopa County Elections Department when an investigation revealed 70 of the 141 precincts in Maricopa County recorded zero write-in votes for any candidate of any party.
Michael Kielsky, chairman of the AZLP, said the party decided to investigate after discovering at least three write-in candidates in each precinct who did not receive any votes.
"Clear inspection of the ballots from some of the precincts has uncovered additional votes for the plaintiffs," Kielsky said.
The mistake may have prevented several Libertarian candidates from appearing on the November general-election ballot, but the elections department is treating the situation as if it were "no big deal," Kielsky said.
Yvonne Reed, spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Elections Department, issued a brief statement but said the department was waiting for the judge's ruling before commenting further.
"We resolved [the complaint] to the best of our ability, but they weren't satisfied," Reed said.
But Kielsky said the department only examined the write-in votes from one precinct and didn't do enough to look into the other cases.
Besides the AZLP, the other plaintiffs are Libertarian congressional candidate for District 7, Joe Cobb, and Libertarian state-senatorial candidates Dan Poland of District 10 and John Williams of District 15, who narrowly missed the required number of votes to move on to the next election.
Kielsky, a write-in candidate for the Libertarian nomination for West Mesa Justice of the Peace, needed five votes to win the primary, but only four were reported by Maricopa County.
A write-in candidate's name is not on the ballot, but voters can vote for them by filling in their name.
The AZLP launched the in vestigation after they found it odd that Maricopa County reported Cobb received one vote in the primary election, when he needed four.
"Joe knew something was not right because [other than himself] three of his family members voted for him," Kielsky said.
Kielsky said he hopes the lawsuit will force the elections department to go back and recount the write-in votes from the precincts where none were reported.
The lawsuit also issued an injunction that would stop the county from printing more general-election ballots until the primary ballots are reviewed.
The exception is military and overseas ballots, which have already been printed.
"We're okay with them going ahead with the military ballots," Kielsky said. "We're concerned about the bulk of voters."
He said the mistake was probably not intentional, and was likely due to human error.
"The write-in votes are mixed in with the ballots, and no one probably bothered to count them," Kielsky said. "They just failed to do the job right."
Reach the reporter at natalie.i.hayes@asu.edu
