Here’s what we know about Democratic primary recount in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District

PHOENIX – The final result of the Democratic primary election for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District remains up in the air, and the recount can’t start before late next week.

State law mandates an automatic recount in races where the margin between the votes cast for the top finishers is under 0.5%.

In the CD3 race, Yassamin Ansari led Raquel Terán by a mere 42 votes after the Maricopa County Elections Department finished counting ballots on Monday, a difference of about 0.1%.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be the heavy favorite to defeat Republican nominee Jeff Zink for the seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Senate. CD3 — which spans most of south, west and downtown Phoenix along with a section of Glendale — leans more Democratic than any other district in the state.

When will Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District primary recount begin?

However, the recount process can’t start until the Arizona Secretary of State Office completes its canvass of the primary election results. The deadline for that is Aug. 15, three days after the county canvass deadline.

After the state canvass, a court order will be issued to authorize any automatic recounts. It’s not clear when the court order will be issued or how long after that the counting will start.

Tabulation machines must pass logic and accuracy testing before the recount, which for CD3 will be conducted by the Maricopa County Elections Department. Next, election workers will run all the paper ballots from the race through the machines.

Election officials are not allowed to provide updates while the ballots are being counted. Once the tabulation is finished, the sealed results will be submitted to a judge, who will reveal them in court.

How long did recounts take in last election?

The recounts after the 2022 general election in Arizona took more than three weeks to complete, but it shouldn’t be that long for this year’s primary.

The court order to conduct recounts of three general election contests in 2022, including the neck-and-neck attorney general race between Democrat Kris Mayes and Republican Abe Hamadeh, was issued Dec. 5. A judge announced the results on Dec. 29.

However, more than 2.5 million ballots were cast statewide in that election, while there are only about 44,000 ballots to recount for the Democratic primary race in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

Does Raquel Terán have a chance to surpass Yassamin Ansari?

While it’s rare for recounts to result in significant changes in the tally, Terán certainly is close enough to think she still has a chance.

In fact, Hamadeh gained more than 200 votes during the 2022 recount, although it still wasn’t enough to flip the race.

Mayes led by 511 votes in the original count, but the official final margin after the recount was just 280 votes.

The recount added 623 votes to the race’s total, 427 for Hamadeh and 196 for Mayes.

Most of the extra votes, about 500, came from the Republican stronghold of Pinal County, which attributed the initial undercount to human error.

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