The Daily Agenda: One week until it starts
The only thing worse than election season is post-election season ... True the Vote from jail ... And Finchem gets a helping hand from Elon.
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As we reach the end of a very long election cycle, it’s tempting to think we’ve only got a week left of this madness.
But Election Day isn’t the end — it’s the beginning.
The close of polls is the starting gun on counting the ballots (and, these days, protesting that counting), automatic recounts, hand recounts, legal challenges and appeals and, ultimately, certification, all of which must happen on a truncated timeline in order to ensure the orderly and peaceful transfer of power to new elected officials and administrations on January 2.
In Arizona, it sometimes feels like the 2020 election never really ended. But elections officials worry that this year, the election literally won’t end, at least not by the time the new political leaders are set to be sworn in at the start of the year.
State law outlines rapid deadlines for those post-election procedures to be completed: Counties have just 20 days to certify their own elections, and the state needs to certify the entire election less than four weeks after Election Day.
But a new recount law widening the margin of victory needed to escape an automatic recount, as well as threats by counties to go above and beyond the law with their own recounts, have elections administrators spooked that they may not be able to meet that deadline.
And if the election recounts aren’t finished by the time that a new governor is set to be sworn in, what happens next is anyone’s guess.
“Kari Lake could win by 14,000 votes and it would trigger a recount,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said. “And I think everyone who’s not a conspiracy theorist would say that unless something went wildly wrong, which would be revealed in the original hand count audit of the machine count, then there's no way it's changing by 14,000 votes. But we would still have to do it, I guess, to make it official.”
But if Katie Hobbs wins by 1,000 votes, that recount will be the hot center of election conspiracies that will at very least gum up and drag out the process of certifying the election and installing a new governor.
After the election, counties have to tabulate results, as always, which will take about two weeks to finish1. Then the counties have to do a final logic and accuracy test on the machines and a hand recount of 2% of precincts, as usual. Then county supervisors in all 15 counties have to certify the results of their elections by November 28 — and whether all counties will do that is no longer a given.
At the same time, Cochise County and possibly Pinal County may be conducting their own full hand recounts of five races, a much more time-consuming prospect than a usual recount of 2% of precincts.
Should county supervisors in any of Arizona’s 15 counties not meet their deadline to certify — either for political reasons, as happened in Otero County, New Mexico, or because a county’s rogue recount isn’t yet finished — it would cause a domino effect of blowing deadlines, including potentially the deadline for state officials to certify the election on December 5, Richer said.
An “automatic” machine recount under the new law can’t begin until after the state has certified the election, and courts must sign off on each one. Once there’s a court order for a recount, all 15 counties must do a whole new logic and accuracy test on all their tabulation machines.
It will take counties about a week to do a full machine recount, Richer said.2
The law also calls for political parties to do an additional hand recount on top of that machine recount. Those second hand recounts could drag on well into the new year. And that’s in an ideal scenario where election officials hit every previous deadline.
While any hand recount of ballots cannot proceed without volunteers from both parties, it appears the Democrats are willing to play ball on recounts — assuming they’re not done by the Cyber Ninjas.
Although Cochise County Supervisor Ann English urged her fellow Democrats to boycott the Cochise County audit, Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Morgan Dick told us yesterday that after consulting with the state party and its lawyers, Cochise County Democrats have decided to “work as diligently as possible” to round up enough volunteers to participate and continue to monitor the situation.
Let the recounts commence.
Finally, some consequences?: A second lawsuit against drop box watchers, this one from the League of Women Voters of Arizona, was in court yesterday, again before federal Judge Mike Liburdi, and will have a hearing today as well. The two cases could be consolidated — Liburdi already ruled against an injunction to halt the drop box watching in the other case, which the plaintiffs appealed. The U.S. Department of Justice submitted a filing in the court docket detailing how the case has national interest because federal voting rights laws are at issue. Meanwhile, two leaders of True the Vote, the group behind the bogus claims in “2000 Mules” that spurred the drop box vigilantes, were jailed in Texas for contempt of court, Votebeat’s Jessica Huseman reports.
He is exactly who you think he is, except worse: Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem is barely campaigning and has far less money than his opponent, but still could win by “riding the coattails” of the other Republicans on the ballot, the Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report. After the 2020 election, Finchem tried to get Republican lawmakers to file a complaint with Trump to seek an “outside team of cyber experts to investigate potential hacking and other irregularities,” but others didn’t bite, the story says. And as Finchem attempts to distance himself from the attempted coup on Jan. 6, the Republic reiterates everything we know about his whereabouts and actions leading up to and on that fateful day.
Kari is still up: A new poll from OH Predictive Insights puts the Republicans behind in the races for Arizona attorney general and secretary of state, the first major poll to do so, at least that we’ve seen. All the races are within the margin of error.
Behind closed doors: Former Republican lawmaker Heather Carter, now an independent, responds to a column from the Republic’s Phil Boas by saying Republicans are extreme on abortion issues, not Democrats. She writes that trying to address the complex fallout from anti-abortion legislation was a constant struggle, and other Republicans wouldn’t touch the issue for fear of primary challengers.
Make Polio Great Again: More than half of kindergarten classes in Arizona saw declines in students receiving routine vaccines for diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting’s Shaena Montanari reports. The steep drops come after many kids missed doctor’s visits for routine care during the pandemic, but also come after years of declines as more parents opted out of vaccines for “personal beliefs.”
Hates the mail, loves the mail: Despite suing to try to end the practice and repeatedly attacking it, the Arizona Republican Party has been calling voters urging them to send their ballots in by mail, CNN reports. Another robocall read by GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake supporting Prop 309, the voter ID measure, urges people to vote by mail or in person.
What happens in Vegas: Navajo Nation Council Speaker Seth Damon could be placed on indefinite unpaid leave if a bill to institute the leave passes, the Republic’s Arlyssa Becenti reports. Damon was “photographed slumped in a chair in front of a gambling machine” while on a family vacation in Las Vegas.
Not strictly partisans: Three Republicans featured in a “Republicans for Katie Hobbs” ad have donated on multiple occasions to Democratic candidates besides Hobbs, either directly or through the fundraising platform ActBlue, Fox News reports.
MAGAville USA: The Republic’s Ron Hansen and Kunle Falayi dive into GOP primary election results in precincts that most heavily backed Donald Trump’s America First slate and finds that New River is the “beating heart of the MAGA movement in Maricopa County.”
Cleaning house: A 2015 law signed by Gov. Doug Ducey gives a future governor the ability to fire board and commission appointees before their terms expire, though the Ducey administration doesn’t believe the law applies to the Arizona Board of Regents, the overseers of the three public universities, Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda reports.
Send your ballots back today: About 4.8 million Arizonans are registered to vote and eligible for the general election, with Republicans claiming the largest number of registered voters, followed by independents and then Democrats, the latest voter registration report from the Secretary of State’s Office says. Elections officials recommend dropping your ballot in the mail by today to make sure it arrives in time. If you wait longer, you should drop it off at a drop box or polling place.
Make sure it’s not bamboo: Cochise County will receive a $1 million grant from the state to test out “anti-fraud” ballot paper that includes things like watermarks, the Herald/Review’s Shar Porier reports. The state budget included the option for counties to apply for the funding, and Cochise Recorder David Stevens was the only one who did.
Don’t disrupt the bachelorettes: The City of Scottsdale adopted new rules for short-term rentals that were watered down a bit from a staff proposal, including new licenses and penalties for violations like loud parties, the Republic’s Sam Kmack reports.
Every kid wants a road sign: Your school could win one of the Arizona Centennial road signs if a student writes the best essay on the five Cs. One school per county will win a sign in the essay contest, conducted by the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, a vehement election denier, was briefly locked out of his Twitter account yesterday. He posted several times about it on Facebook, using it as an opportunity to fundraise for his campaign and trying to appeal directly to new Twitter owner Elon Musk.
“Tag Elon Musk and tell him to unban me right now,” Finchem wrote.
Musk tweeted that he was “looking into it.”
And just like that, Finchem was back in action on the platform, tweeting his thanks to Musk for “stopping the commie who suspended me from Twitter a week before the election.”
Election-denying Arizona House GOP candidate Christian Lamar also got suspended from Twitter yesterday. As of our deadline, he had not yet been able to muster the kind of attention from influential supporters that helped get Finchem reinstated.
This is standard. The reason we can predict the outcomes of most races on election night is because they aren’t close, so press organizations like the Associated Press will “call” races based on a mathematical formula showing a candidate is unlikely to make a comeback as vote counting continues.
Correction: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that the machine recounts would run consecutively, rather than simultaneously.
Did my research, marked my ballot and mailed on the 31st. Now I track it through the text app developed by Maricopa County and wait for the results. Many thanks to both of you for the information about various candidates and the cheat sheets developed, and the reporting. Praying for my State and my County.
Counties doing full hand recounts = working harder, not smarter. And all this to appease some asshole in West Palm Beach, Florida. What a joke.