He Won His Arizona Seat by 21,000 Votes. Now He Wants His Own Race Audited.

Most of the time, the person asking for an election audit is the one who lost. In Arizona this week, it’s the guy who won.

State Rep. Cody Reim, a Republican from Legislative District 3 in the northeast Valley, finished first in his race on Nov. 3. With nearly every ballot counted, he has 72,895 votes. The closest Democrat, Julie Gable, has 51,744. That’s a cushion of more than 21,000 votes in a two-seat race where the top two finishers go to the state House.

Nobody is contesting that result. Reim wants it checked anyway.

On Tuesday he sent a letter to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee. He asked them to run an expanded review of the ballots and records in his own race, and to put the results out in public, before the county certifies the election.

“I will immediately step aside”

The part of the letter people keep quoting is the promise at the end of the second paragraph.

“As the candidate currently leading in the unofficial results, I am in a unique position to ask for this review without any appearance of partisan self-interest,” Reim wrote, according to the letter released by the Arizona House. “I am fully prepared to accept the results of a thorough, transparent audit, even if that review were to show a shift in the final margins. Should a comprehensive review demonstrate that I did not win this race, I will immediately step aside.”

Think about how rare that is. Politicians who win usually want everyone to stop counting and move on. Reim is putting his own seat on the table to make a point about trust.

He’s also careful about what he isn’t saying. The very first paragraph reads: “I am not alleging fraud, misconduct, or illegal activity by your offices or election workers.” He says the request is meant to answer “broader, national concerns regarding election confidence.”

Five things he wants checked

The letter isn’t vague. Reim lists five specific areas he wants the county elections department to review, under the Secretary of State’s oversight:

First, voter eligibility. He wants confirmation that every accepted ballot came from an eligible, active voter, including how the county checks residency, blocks duplicate registrations and makes sure provisional ballots counted only after eligibility was confirmed.

Second, ballot accounting. The number of ballots issued, whether on Election Day, at early voting or by mail, should match the number of voters credited with voting in each LD-3 precinct.

Third, mail ballot signatures. He wants a look at how signatures were verified and whether the steps to fix, or “cure,” a mismatched signature were properly documented.

Fourth, chain of custody. That means seal logs, transfer forms and access logs for every ballot, memory card and tabulator, from the moment it arrived to the final count.

Fifth, tabulation accuracy. He asks for a hand comparison of a “statistically meaningful sample” of paper ballots against the machine totals in his race, plus proof that pre-election logic and accuracy testing was done.

He also asked that bipartisan observers be allowed in the room, and said he is happy to work with the three offices on the scope and timeline.

Separately, Reim said he filed a legislative records request for the cast vote records. Those are the electronic files showing how each ballot was recorded by the tabulators, with no voter names attached.

What Arizona already does, and what it doesn’t

Arizona already runs some checks after every general election. Under state law, each county must hand count ballots from at least 2% of its precincts, chosen at random by the political parties, plus a sample of early ballots equal to 1% or 5,000 ballots, whichever is smaller. The parties draw by lot which races get counted, and one of them is a legislative race.

Those hand counts are designed to test whether the machines are counting right across the whole county. They aren’t designed to dig into one race in one district. They also don’t cover the eligibility, signature and custody questions that make up most of Reim’s list.

That’s the gap he’s trying to fill. Instead of a random sample spread across Maricopa County, he wants a focused look at a single contest, where the results can be put in front of the voters who actually cast those ballots.

Timing is tight. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to canvass the results on Nov. 18, Brophy McGee told KTAR. State law gives counties until Nov. 19, and the statewide canvass, run by Fontes with the governor and the chief justice, follows on Nov. 23. Reim asked for his review to be done “prior to final certification.”

None of the three offices had publicly answered the letter as of Wednesday night.

Why a winner would bother

Maricopa County has spent years as the center of the national fight over how elections are run. Its 2022 Election Day printer and tabulator problems led to long lines, lawsuits and years of distrust that still hasn’t gone away.

This year adds another layer. Heap, a Republican elected recorder in 2024, has openly clashed with the Board of Supervisors over who controls which parts of the election. Brophy McGee told KTAR the two staffs still “worked well together” once early voting gave way to Election Day.

Reim isn’t the only Republican who wants more transparency this month. But most of the louder requests have come from people who lost. His pitch is that nobody can call his request sour grapes.

Not everyone is buying it. Some critics accused him online of feeding fraud talk. Reim pushed back directly.

That’s the honest version of the argument. If the review comes back clean, which is what the county would expect, Reim gets something no losing candidate can offer: a public check of a race where the person asking for it had everything to lose and nothing to gain.

If officials say no, voters in Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Rio Verde Foothills will want to know why a winner’s request to verify his own votes was too much to ask.

Either way, the clock runs out on Nov. 18.