The recount in the Congressional District 2 race begins today.
Republican Martha McSally has a lead of 161 votes over Democratic incumbent Ron Barber. Because the vote difference between them is less than one-tenth of 1 percent, a recount is required.
Here’s how the two-week process works.
1 Testing. Pima County’s computers were tested Wednesday to ensure an accurate count. Testers included Arizona secretary of state officials, county elections department officials and political party representatives.
2 Machine counting. Seven tabulation machines will count up to 30,000 ballots a day, starting today. About 252,000 regular ballots, early ballots and provisional ballots will be recounted — more than the number of votes cast in the district, because the county doesn’t have a way to separate only the early ballots from District 2. Other computers are counting even more ballots in Cochise County.
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3 Hand counting. Once the machine counting is done, political party representatives will randomly select 5 percent of the CD2 precincts for a time-consuming hand count. That will probably happen Dec. 13.
4 Results. There may be a daily public update on the status of the vote count. Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said Dec. 16 is the deadline for the recount to be completed. The results won’t be made public until Bennett turns them over to a Maricopa County Superior Court judge and the judge certifies the results.
5 Oath of office. The new Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3.
