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The Arizona Secretary of State’s office corrected errors in the final primary election results after determining that the Green Party candidates moving forward to the November election had been incorrectly identified.
A spokesman for the office attributed the errors, which affected seven Green Party elections, to an outdated electronic results reporting system that was not programmed to correctly determine winners, and to overworked staff who failed to notice the errors when proofreading the vote count.
“We need more staff and more modern systems, and that requires action from state and federal lawmakers,” the office’s communications director, Aaron Thacker, wrote in a statement.
Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes reconfirmed the election on Friday after correcting the errors.
The first count – the official nationwide compilation of election results – declared the wrong winner of the Green Party’s U.S. Senate primary, omitting candidate Eduardo Quintana, who received the most votes, and not taking into account that seven other candidates from six Green Party primaries who also failed to win the Senate will advance to the general election.
The errors occurred after the office incorrectly accounted for the rules governing the requirements for candidates to be eligible for the general election. These rules set a different threshold for the number of votes a candidate must receive depending on whether their party is new or has a permanent place on the ballot.
The Green Party alerted the state’s election director to the errors after the initial vote count was completed Thursday, Thacker said. The issue was first reported by KJZZ. The Green Party and Quintana did not respond to requests for comment.
The state recognized the Green Party last year, and they don’t yet have a permanent place on the ballot. Under state law, candidates from new parties don’t need a minimum number of votes to win their race or qualify for the November ballot, while candidates from established parties need a minimum number of votes. But the electronic system “doesn’t distinguish those nuances,” Thacker said, and staff didn’t notice. That may be in part because the Green Party doesn’t seem like a new party.
“Nobody noticed this change in status at first because the Greens have been around for so long, unlike a new party like the No Labels Party,” Thacker said.
Thacker said the office’s vote-counting proofreading process involves “multiple layers of checks and balances.” But he also said the same people doing the proofreading had been working “nonstop” to verify a historic number of signatures on November ballot initiative petitions.
Thacker said the office will request more staff and new technology in next year’s budget. The office will also plan for better training and “more redundant systems” to reduce human error, he said.
Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. You can reach Jen at [email protected].
