TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The winner of one of the races for Tucson City Council is still up in the air while candidate Sadie Shaw asks the courts to decide if mistakes by election officials threw such a wrench into results that Shaw may have won the Democratic nomination for Ward 3 instead of incumbent Kevin Dahl.
So far Kevin Dahl leads Sadie Shaw by 19 votes. That’s close enough for an automatic recount. But Shaw asked for a court order to hold off on the recount. She says mistakes by the County Recorder could have affected many more votes than that 19 vote margin.
The election was a primary so Democrats were supposed to get ballots with Democratic candidates and Republicans would get a ballot with Republicans, For the primary, Independents can request a ballot for Democrats or Republicans but not both.
But Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares Kelly admitted a mistake led to 353 voters getting the wrong ballots.
Sadie Shaw says that happened to 123 Democratic and Independent voters in Ward Three, much more than the 19 vote margin that triggered the recount.
She’s asking a judge to set aside the Ward Three election. Her court filing does not flatly ask for a new election but cites other court rulings that recommend a new election as the best way to resolve this sort of dispute.
