With final ballots counted, Tucson Councilman Dahl ekes out win in Democratic primary

With all of the outstanding ballots tabulated, Tucson City Councilman Kevin Dahl has won the Ward 3 Democratic primary over Sadie Shaw by 19 votes.

The margin is close enough to require a recount after the City Council votes to canvass the Aug. 5 election, which was scheduled to happen Tuesday.

Under state law, a recount is necessary if the final tally between the two Democrats is less than one-half of
one percent of the votes cast for them.

Shaw had closed within 19 votes of Dahl in the North Side ward after the Tucson City Clerk tabulated most of the remaining ballots on Friday.

After the last ballots in the race were counted Monday afternoon, the margin remained the same and the final tally stood at 3,296 to 3,277.

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board member had been trailing Dahl by 138 votes Tuesday night after the first (and largest) batch of ballots was counted in the primary election.

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Update, Tuesday, Aug. 12: The City Council approved the formal canvass of the vote in a brief afternoon virtual meeting, declaring the winners of the decided primary races and authorizing city staff to go to court to ask a judge to order a recount. That move is required under Arizona law. Dahl recused himself from voting on the one combined motion.

After a surprise afternoon update Friday, only 71 ballots remained to counted across all three wards in which votes were cast. Those are the ballots determined to be valid following the “curing” period in which voters cleared up signature problems and other issues by 5 p.m. Friday.

When the initial results were released after the polls closed on Election Day, Dahl had 2,993 votes, while Shaw had 2,855.

In the uncontested Republican primary, Janet Wittenbraker had 1,513 votes in the ward. Another 13 votes were cast for unrecognized Libertarian write-in candidates.

After Tuesday, a total of 812 ballots had been left to be reviewed and counted in the Ward 3 contest, according to an update posted Thursday on the Tucson City Clerk’s website.

City officials had repeatedly said throughout the week that no new updates would be released until Monday. But they then posted the update on Friday, without any public notice.

Voters had until 5 p.m. Friday to cure, or fix, any problems with their ballots.

The 71 remaining ballots were not limited to the Ward 3 primary. Most were in the Ward 6 Democratic primary, where there were 40 ballots left, officials said. In Ward 3, they said Friday that there were 13 uncounted ballots in the Democratic primary, and 5 in the uncontested GOP race.

Despite that announcement, the final tally they released Monday added 8 votes to the totals for both Dahl and Shaw — meaning 16 more ballots were counted.

In Ward 6, 37 more ballots were counted in the Democratic primary Monday, rather than the 40 votes that officials had said were left to tally.

City officials didn’t provide an explanation for the discrepancy between Friday’s statement of the remaining ballots, and the ballots that were counted Monday.

The Ward 3 recount will be a re-run of the ballots through tabulating machines, not a hand recount procedure, city officials said.

A recount cannot commence until after the Council votes to approve the canvass. After that, under Arizona law, a judge must order the votes to be recounted.

Dahl claimed ‘victory’ Tuesday night

While the Tucson Sentinel noted the race as “too close to call” on Tuesday, Dahl proclaimed victory on election night.

“This is a victory that needs to be confirmed,” he said. “It’s a close call, but not too close to call.”

Turnout in the Ward 3 race stood at just under 30 percent.

If the recount confirms the result, Dahl will face Wittenbraker, who has previously unsuccessfully run for mayor and county supervisor, in the Nov. 4 general election.

“I remain optimistic,” Dahl told the Sentinel on Monday after the final votes were counted.

Shaw said Monday that she had “received a tremendous show of support and gratitude for the work we accomplished during this campaign.”

“Community members have been reaching out to let me know that this campaign has given them hope,” she said. “The fact that we got the majority of Election Day ballots cast, despite being hugely outspent, proves that a significant portion of Ward 3 voters are not happy with their current leadership.”

Shaw said she was awaiting the results of the recount.

“In the meantime, we are investigating whether the outcome might have been different if the documented errors made by the County Recorder’s Office when issuing ballots had not occurred,” she said. Last Thursday, Shaw iled a complaint with the City Clerk’s Office against Dahl, claiming he reused campaign signage from his previous run and a voter-tracking app without reporting them as in-kind contributions.

The updated results did not change the leaders in the primaries in Wards 5 and 6, where the winners were clear last Tuesday night.

Wittenbraker said the results showed “Tucson is ready for change, especially in Ward 3, where poverty, homelessness and high crime resulted in a competitive race between Shaw and Dahl.”

“While I respect both Sadie and Kevin personally, I disagree with their policy positions, which appear to align with party narratives rather than the pressing needs of our community,” Wittenbraker added. “Since 2011, Tucson has been under Democratic leadership, during which time we have witnessed a troubling decline in our city’s well-being.”

Recounts seldom change outcomes

Previous
recounts in Arizona have not changed more than a handful of votes. In
the 2014 congressional election between U.S. Rep. Ron Barber and GOP
challenger Martha McSally, the Republican tacked on just 6 votes to her winning total after a recount ended the race on Dec. 17. McSally won that race by just 167 votes, out of 219,261 cast.

A recount in the 2022 state attorney general’s race
between Kris Mayes and Abe Hamadeh found ballot-counting errors in
Pinal County that added 507 votes to the tally, but did not change the
declared outcome of the election.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos fended off a challenge by Republican candidate Heather Lappin last year, with a recount in the countywide race adding 14 votes in her favor. Nanos won by 495 votes out of 487,225 cast between the candidates.