It’s game time

This is how we stay sane … 10,000 cat ladies can’t be wrong … And we laugh because we don’t live in Fountain Hills.

It’s finally Election Day! 

Thankfully, it’s one of only two election days that we’ll have to endure this year.

2024 has already been the weirdest election season in recent memory — one presidential candidate narrowly survived an assassination attempt and the other dropped out with barely 100 days left to go. 

But let’s not spend the day dwelling on the potential collapse of democracy.

Instead, we want to have a little fun. 

So we put together a few Election Day games and challenges for you to enjoy as you watch results roll in. 

Our art intern, ChatGPT, thinks elections would be better if we all just got together and played games instead. We’re inclined to agree.

First up, make your predictions!

Tell us who you think will win in ten hot primary races. 

Anyone who gets a perfect score will be entered into a raffle to win an Agenda swag bag including a hat, mug and a sweet lapel pin.

But you must fill out your predictions before results start trickling in at 8 p.m. 

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Also, Hank is unfortunately not working the polls this year.

So we’re hoping that you would delight us with stories from the voting booths. 

We’ll leave the comments section open to all readers today, and we’ll include our favorite response in tomorrow’s edition. 

Tell us about:

• The vibe at your polling place. What did you see?

• Any run-ins with candidates (or celebrities, for that matter)?

• Were your election workers helpful?

• Any terrible experiences?

• Was it your first time voting? What surprised you?

• And whatever else comes to mind!

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Finally, our paid subscribers will receive a separate email containing our election drinking game. But we’re not sending it out until about 5 p.m. because we don’t want to be your excuse to day drink and get fired from your job. 

Become a paid subscriber now and liven up your election party with shots!

Fun fact: If you’re watching election results, it’s officially an election night party — so it’s fine to play along alone.

Lose the cat ladies, lose the election: In one of the more hilarious data stories we’ve seen, the Republic’s Caitlin McGlade tracked down how many voters in Arizona are women who don’t have children, but do have cats. After GOP vice-presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance criticized “childless cat ladies,” McGlade combed through data from the research company L2 and found at least 10,000 in Arizona, which was the margin between Trump and Biden in 2020. 

Paper problems: Longstanding problems with the paper forms used by political parties and civic groups led to some Arizona voters getting blocked from registering for Tuesday’s primary election, Votebeat Arizona’s Jen Fifield reports. The forms often lead to missing information, like birth dates, addresses or signatures. Lawmakers have known about the problem for more than a decade, but they haven’t agreed on a fix yet. 

Blunting criticism: Vice President Kamala Harris touted endorsements from the mayors of Arizona border towns Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton and San Luis as she tries to deal with conservative criticism of how she and the Biden administration handled the border, the Associated Press reported. She also picked up an endorsement from Mesa Mayor John Giles in an oped he penned for the Republic. In Tucson, Harris’s campaign chief told reporters that Harris would continue the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum claims, CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports. 

“We are in a moment that only happens once every few generations, when we have to defend democracy, and stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights,” Giles wrote. 

Serious pocket change: On paper, Blake Masters appears to be raising far more money than his rivals in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. But 12News’ John Tanet looked closer and found most of that money came from Masters himself. Masters loaned his campaign $3.5 million, which accounts for nearly 90% of the $4 million his campaign has raised overall. 

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Rating bump: As Arizona officials work on shoring up a budget deficit, Arizona’s credit rating went up, KTAR’s Payne Moses reports. Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that Arizona’s credit outlook was upgraded from “AA/stable” to “AA/positive” by S&P Global Ratings. The ratings agency highlighted Arizona’s economic growth, lowered cost of living, increasing personal income, and a gross state product that’s higher than the national average. 

No end in sight: The housing shortage in Tucson may not be solvable in the next few years, the Arizona Daily Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. Despite a big increase this year in new home permits in the Tucson area, the number of homes being built remains historically low, and that’s keeping prices too high. 

That’s a big printer: The Phoenix area will soon be home to the biggest metal 3-D printer in the world, the Phoenix Business Journal's Amy Edelen reports. The printer from Mesa-based Rosotics is designed for aerospace, naval, and defense industries.

Monitors incoming: The U.S. Department of Justice is going to monitor Tuesday’s primary elections in Maricopa County to make sure they comply with federal voting rights laws, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. 

Headline of the day: “Butthole Surfers’ bassist coming to Bisbee with his banjo,” by the Herald Review’s Alan Dale.

A national correspondent for Mother Jones discovered Joe Arpaio is still running for office and flew to Fountain Hills with one question: “Why can’t this old man stop running?”

Tim Murphy got the full Arpaio experience.

The story is so packed with laughs that we had difficulty deciding on just a few to share with you. 

But some of our favorite lines include:

“One of (Arpaio’s) top goals was to breathe new life into a town with an aging Sun Belt population. He thought that it needed ‘more babies,’ although it wasn’t clear how exactly he would bring that about. One suggestion, which was not directly related to the babies idea, was to bring in a nightclub,” Murphy writes.

“‘Even Trump says he thinks I’m 73,’” Arpaio told Murpy. “‘I should show him my birth certificate!’”

“Later, I checked the tape of the Dream City speech. Trump said that Arpaio was 170,” Murphy writes.

“We were interrupted only once, when a man stopped by to donate a bag of freshly picked cherries. It was done in such a matter-of-fact way, no one seemed to question it,” Murphy writes.

“When I mentioned that Arpaio was proposing to ask a tribal casino for more money, (Fountain Hills Mayor Ginny Dickey) sounded like she had just watched a dog attempt to parallel park.”

“‘That’s cute,’ she said.”