Tucson City Council recount delayed by election challenge

A planned recount in a narrow Tucson City Council primary was put on hold Tuesday after one of the candidates filed suit to set aside the results of the Aug. 5 election.

Sadie Shaw, who lost the Ward 3 Democratic primary to incumbent Kevin Dahl by 19 votes, filed an election challenge in Pima County Superior Court on Aug. 15.

“This isn’t about me,” Shaw said in a prepared statement. “It’s about protecting our democracy and ensuring that the voices of Ward 3 residents, especially those in low‐income and historically marginalized communities, are not silenced by administrative mistakes. My campaign has always stood for fairness, transparency and accountability, and this action upholds those values and reinforces voter confidence.”

The results certified last week by the Tucson City Council showed the final tally was 3,296 to 3,277, putting the margin within one-half of 1 percent and triggering a recount under state law.

The City Clerk’s Office had scheduled a recount for this week, with a
plan to unveil the results in Pima County Superior Court on Friday Aug.
22.

But Superior Court Judge Cynthia Kuhn issued an order Tuesday to pause the recount until the election challenge is resolved.

Shaw, who is serving her second term on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, was joined by Ward 3 voter Timothy Hobson as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, Tucson City Clerk Suzanne Mesich and Dahl.

A hearing on the election challenge has been scheduled for Monday, Aug. 25, in Pima County Superior Court.

Shaw’s attorney, James E. Barton of the Tempe-based law firm Barton Mendez Soto, argued that the results of the election should be set aside because at least 76 incorrect ballots were sent to voters in the North Side ward.

“The number of Ward 3 Democratic primary voters who erroneously received incorrect primary ballots, or whose vote was not counted (76) exceeds Contestee’s margin of victory (19),” Barton wrote in the lawsuit. “Defendants’ mistake affected the purity of the August 5, 2025 primary election and deprived Ward 3 voters of the opportunity to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”

The lawsuit asks the court to throw out the election results.

“Since the ‘illegal votes’ or disenfranchisement was sufficient to affect the outcome of the election and is an erroneous count of the final vote, the correct remedy is to set aside the August 5, 2025 election,” Barton said in the legal filing.

The incorrect ballots were sent to voters whose names were on a list of voters provided to the Tucson City Clerk’s Office by the Pima County Recorder’s Office, which blamed the “regrettable error” on the overlapping special Congressional District 7 election. County election officials said they had to manually override a freeze of the voter rolls after the June 18 start of early voting in the July 15 election.

Tucson election officials said on July 29 that it would be reaching out to the 358 voters who received the wrong party ballot, but they have not responded to an Aug. 14 request from the Tucson Sentinel regarding whether any of the incorrect ballots were cast, how many of the voters in question received replacement ballots and how many of them did not vote.

Shaw’s lawsuit also asked for a temporary restraining order to prevent the printing of the general election ballots.

Andy Squire, a city of Tucson spokesman, said the deadline for getting ballots to the printer is Sept. 3 but the city faced an earlier deadline to deliver them to the Pima County Elections Department.

Shaw has also filed a campaign finance complaint against Dahl regarding whether he properly reported his use of campaign signs from a previous campaign and a software program.

The Shaw campaign alleged that the value of those in-kind contributions, combined with the amount of money Dahl and his family gave to his campaign, exceeded the amount of personal contributions he could legally give his campaign under the city’s rules for its publicly funded campaign program.

Dahl gave $3,179 to his campaign and family members gave $530. Overall, he raised $89,873 for his campaign, including $41,306 in public matching funds, and had spent $71,503 as of Aug. 11, according to a campaign finance report filed with the City Clerk’s Office.

Shaw asked Dahl to drop out of the race ahead of the primary based on her allegations, saying he could be disqualified from holding office if they were confirmed.

Dahl said Wednesday that he was not commenting on the election challenge or campaign finance allegations.