Joe Cobb was a write-in candidate in the Libertarian Party primary for US House, in Arizona’s 7th district, on September 12. No names appeared on that primary ballot for that office. Under the law, Cobb needed write-ins equal to one-half of 1% of the number of registered Libertarians in that district, to be nominated. That requirement works out to eleven write-ins. The primary results were released on September 25, and he is credited with only ten write-ins in the entire district (which includes several counties).
However, he, his girlfriend, and a close friend all voted for him in the same precinct in Maricopa County, and Maricopa County says he only got one write-in in the entire county. Cobb is working to persuade the county to re-examine the Libertarian ballots in his precinct.
UPDATE: As the candidate himself commented, the problem has been solved; Maricopa County found two more ballots.
Arizona law also requires each polling place to display a list of all write-in candidates, who must sign up a month in advance to become a write-in. There was no such list posted in my precinct, and many others reported no such lists elsewhere.
Hopefully this will all be resolved in a day or two.
Maricopa County concedes they failed to count my votes!
The Libertarian Party now has a candidate on the November ballot in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District.
We were able to point them to a specific precinct where we personally knew three votes had been cast, while the “official” results for the entire county had been only one vote for Cobb.
I am curious to know how many other votes were not counted.
This gets to a point of ridiculous after awhile. I believe Ralph Nader had to spend millions of dollars just to get all his votes counted correctly (not a Nader supporter). Anyhow, this is something that should be done right without having to resort to the Courts. Maybe a law needs to be enforced to make the states, cities, and et cetra count the votes properly or face fines and charges.