On Nov. 7, two days after the election, Coconino County still had votes to count. The six Page City Council candidates that survived the primaries went on to the general election. Voters chose three out of the six and the margins are thin. It could come down to a single vote for the third opening. Currently Amanda Hammon and Debra Roundtree have comfortable leads, but Tom Preller and John Kocjan are only one vote apart. Wednesday morning, Kocjan led by one vote; later that afternoon, Preller led by one vote. Thursday, Kocjan took the lead again by one vote. Unless additional votes widen the gap by 10, Arizona law requires an automatic recount, a law enacted in 2022 in response to the 2020 presidential race lawsuits.

State law says: “A recount of the vote is required when the canvass of returns in a primary or general election shows that the margin between the two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes for a particular office, or between the number of votes cast for and against initiated or referred measures or proposals to amend the Constitution of Arizona, is less than or equal to one-half of one percent of the number of votes cast for both such candidates or on such measures or proposals.”

Automatic recounts to not apply to elections for precinct committeemen, school district governing boards, community college district governing boards, fire district boards or fire district chiefs or secretary-treasurers or boards of other special districts.

Based on votes counted and reported Nov. 8, a recount is required if a Page City Council candidate beats the next in line by nine or less votes.

The Chronicle also spoke with Page City Clerk Cindy Scott Thursday afternoon. She said not all the votes were in yet. “That will most likely change in the next few days,” said Scott. “When I spoke with the County today, they said, and this is for the county, not for the city, they said there's 9,000 ballots still to be counted.

“I know that there's several that are specific to Page, but also, just because we collected ballots from the ballot box doesn't mean that they are actually Page.”

“A new thing for this election cycle is we are using these Vote Centers,” said Coconino County Elections Director Eslir Musta. “So, the difference of the Vote Center is that anybody, no matter where you are, no matter what your precinct registration is, if you were registered in LeChee, but you work at the hospital, here at the health clinic, here in Page, you don't have to go to LeChee to vote and take a break from your work. During lunch, you can go to the Page City Hall Vote Center. They will let you check in through the regular process and then they issue you a paper ID because we have these ballot on demand printers that allow the voter to print that ballot style that they're assigned to and can vote on. So, it's a more effective way of allowing people to vote where they are or where they do business rather than trying to kind of force them to go to that particular location. So, if you were a Page resident and you were in Flagstaff, at the Flagstaff Medical Center, like visiting family on Election Day, you can go to any of these locations in Flagstaff, show ID, vote, and it would count, and you'd be processed as a regular voter.”

The automatic recount could also affect the recall race between Councilor David Auge and Corey Ekstrand. As of Friday, 4:30 p.m., Nov. 8, Auge led by 21 votes (909 to 888). It’s close, and 12 votes for Ekstrand could trigger an automatic recount. “I'm going to just keep watching it,” said Scott. “And obviously that number is going to change depending on how many votes come in and how many are for each one of those candidates. So, I'm just going to continue watching it, but I probably won't have an idea if there's going to be a recount until next week.”

A recount is triggered after the canvas of votes. “The other two positions would be filled if there's no recount on them, and it would just be that one position that would be held up, and that would just be until the state comes back with the results of the recount,” said Scott.

The canvass of the votes is not going to happen at the Nov. 13 Council meeting as anticipated. “The County won't have the information over to us yet,” said Scott. “So, we have a tentatively scheduled meeting for November 19 for the canvasses.” This is also when new council members and Mayor Elect Steven Kidman will be sworn in.

Update: At 8 p.m. Nov. 8, Tom Preller surged ahead of John Kocjan by 11 votes. If Preller holds the margin, he wins the councilor seat and stops the automatic recount.  Councilor David Auge and Corey Ekstrand are tied at 1,016 votes each in the recall election. Unless there are uncounted outstanding votes a recount will be triggered, causing further delays for at least one of the council seats.