Arizona election analysis: We've got a major problem if Kari Lake loses

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Arizona Republic
Fri, November 11, 2022 at 11:23 AM
It could take some time to make sense of the 2022 midterm election.

We don’t even have full results yet, with several races shaping up to be nail-biters.

But voters clearly had some messages to send amid the chaos.

Here’s what Arizona Republic opinion writers see as the smoke clears:

We've got a problem if Lake loses
There was no conspiracy to rig the printers or count votes at a snail’s pace in Arizona, but when this is over, we do need to overhaul our election system.

The malfunction with printers that dragged on for some 7-8 hours during the important first waves of voting was a big deal, affecting 30% of Maricopa County voting centers.

Even if that has no impact on outcomes, Republican voters are furious. Nerves were already on edge as they always are Election Day, and the breakdown put a torch on them. Add to that Kari Lake’s foolish declarations that she has already won and we’re looking at a potential crisis:

If she loses, her voters will be incandescent.

The Republicans who run elections in Maricopa County would not purposefully undermine their own voters and candidates. But MAGA voters who don’t trust the election system and carried themselves to the polls on Election Day were inordinately affected.

When this election is over and its managers do the post-mortem, we’re likely to find that Republican lawmakers over years of reforming elections created the log jam.

But that hardly matters.

The system is so slow it increases distrust in it. Across Arizona and the nation and even in Europe, people are asking what is wrong with Maricopa County?

Other states have built election systems that are fast and efficient. We can too.

– Phil Boas, columnist

Help for fire districts is no sure thing
Proposition 310 suffers from a lot of things. Raising revenue to help first responders isn’t one of them.

The measure, which calls for a state sales tax of one-tenth of a percent with the money to be distributed to fire districts across Arizona, is failing by a narrow margin for the moment.

Backers of the proposition lament that local municipalities don’t have the resources to properly support the fire districts. They point out that Arizonans travel and vacation in many of these remote spots and rely on services when there are emergencies such as vehicle crashes.

Still, it’s a questionable reason to slap all Arizonans with a sales tax for 20 years to fund largely local services and for only a fraction of Arizonans.

Scot Mussi of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club went further, highlighting a series of arrests and prosecution of fire-district personnel who misspent and embezzled money in opposing the measure.

It’s difficult to tease out which “against” argument resonated most with voters in Maricopa County, where the tally is just about the difference between Proposition 310 passing and failing.

– Abe Kwok, deputy editorial page editor

We say we support 'Dreamers,' vote otherwise
Turns out the overwhelming support expressed for “Dreamers” was mostly BS – just look at Proposition 308.

For years, Republicans, Democrats and mostly everyone else have consistently said they want to legalize the young immigrants brought to the country as children.

That hasn’t happened.

But you’d think these same people would jump at the chance to at least make it easier for them to get a college education.

Not exactly.

Proposition 308 – which would give “Dreamers” who graduate from an Arizona high school the chance to pay in-state college tuition – isn’t exactly breezing through.

The measure is leading by 33,275 votes. That may seem like a healthy margin, but it’s not really, considering that hundreds of thousands of ballots haven’t been counted. The percent split is 50.91% vs. 49.09%.

Practically speaking, I could care less about the margin of victory. The important thing for these young immigrants is that this proposition passes.

But the fact that too many voters are turning their backs on them tells a greater story of bad polling or people lying when they say they support “Dreamers.”

And that doesn’t bode well for immigrants still hoping Americans help to permanently legalize their immigration status.

– Elvia Díaz, editorial page editor

Did most voters choose a guy who's not running?
Whoever wins the District 22 Senate race may not change the chamber’s balance of power.

But whoever wins will be chosen by a fraction of voters that cast a ballot, and that’s unfortunate.

Democratic state Rep. Diego Espinoza won the primary. But he dropped out of the race and resigned from the House in September after taking a job at Salt River Project.

Nine write-ins – five Democrats, three Republicans and an independent – scrambled to run in his place for the Tolleson-area seat. But only Espinoza’s name was on the ballot.

Folks tried to get the message out: If you vote for Espinoza, your vote won’t count. You’ll need to write in one of the nine correctly.

Yet there are 22,490 undervotes so far, out of more than 31,000 votes cast. That means most voters either left the race blank, or (more likely) voted for Espinoza.

The leading write-in, Democrat Eva Diaz, has received a mere 3,883 votes.

– Joanna Allhands, digital opinions editor

Horne shouldn't declare himself the winner yet
Since when do we declare victory before the contest is over?

That’s exactly what Tom Horne did in the superintendent of public schools race.

The race remains too close to call, though Horne had a slim lead when the latest batch of results was released around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

A big chunk of the votes that have yet to be counted are from Maricopa County, which has been a Democratic stronghold for the last several cycles, meaning incumbent Kathy Hoffman still has hope of taking the election.

Is this the behavior we want from someone tasked with leading public schoolchildren in the state?

Also, since when do we flip-flop on when it suits our needs, rather than sticking to an objective strategy?

But that’s where we are with Horne, who refused to concede the attorney general primary in 2014 after it became clear his loss was imminent.

If you won’t concede until it’s over, why is it OK to call yourself a winner before it’s over? It’s inconsistent, at best. Fair to call it intellectually dishonest?

Again, is this behavior we want to be teaching kids?

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