Elections
Election Results: When will Arizona’s ballots be counted by?
The unprecedented surge in absentee and mail-in ballots this election means that we won’t learn the full results likely for weeks after Election Day. But when will we know the full results by? A better question, rather, is when will each of the swing states’ full results be known by.
On Tuesday, I tackled the ballot situation in Pennsylvania, a contentious swing state which prohibits the counting of any ballots before the morning of Election Day. Arizona, on the other end of the policy spectrum, began counting ballots on Tuesday.
Check out this explanation about the difference between mail-in and absentee ballots here by Ben Wilson: The Difference Between Absentee and Mail-In Ballots.
RELATED: Election Results: When will Pennsylvania’s ballots be counted by?
Arizona, once Republican-red like its sunsets, has turned purple in recent years—like the sky at dusk. The Grand Canyon State now finds itself center stage in the most contentious presidential election in recent history, meaning that its results could be critical in deciding the winner of the election, the results of which have an outsized chance of being disputed this year.
Lucky for Arizona, the state has been a trailblazer when it comes to early voting. Due to their impressive system that they’ve built up over the decades, a majority of the state’s votes may be known on the night of November 3, assuming nothing derails the voting and counting process.
During the 2018 midterms, 79% of votes in the state were cast early, and that was before they allowed early ballots to be tallied before Election Day. They enacted that change after 2018 when it had taken a week to tally all the votes.
Along with new ballot-counting machines in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, votes this year are expected to be counted quite speedily. Local officials estimate that most of the results will be known by the end of Election Night, the New York Times reported. And, because the state’s seven million residents are overwhelmingly concentrated around Phoenix, where Maricopa is situated, the county comprises 60% of Arizona’s total population. Second place to Maricopa is Pima County, where Tucson is.
The Arizona Secretary of State will release the unofficial preliminary results at 8pm (Mountain Time), NBC News 12 Phoenix reports, but won’t be published until they’ve been verified.
As of Tuesday, since early voting began on October 7, election officials across the state have already received hundreds of thousands of early ballots, says News 12.
Pima County reports in its ballot turnover receipts that it has counted 156,459 ballots alone so far. Topping Pima, Maricopa has verified the signatures of over 600,000 received ballots, its department of elections tweeted.
At this rate, unless some unexpected political “haboob” strikes, Arizona’s results will be reported far sooner than many other states and sooner than most swing states.
Despite Las Vegas falling just over the border in neighboring Nevada, one could safely bet—relatively speaking—that most of Arizona’s results will be revealed on Election Night.
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a longtime supporter of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is now acknowledging the unintended consequences of the healthcare legislation, particularly its impact on industry consolidation and rising healthcare prices.
Warren, who has been a vocal proponent of Obamacare, has recently had what the Wall Street Journal reported as an “epiphany” regarding the consequences of the healthcare law. In a letter addressed to the Health and Human Services Department inspector general, Warren, along with Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, expressed concerns about vertically-integrated healthcare companies potentially increasing prescription drug costs and evading federal regulations.
According to reports from Fox News, the bipartisan letter highlighted issues with the nation’s largest health insurers allegedly bypassing Obamacare’s medical loss ratio (MLR). According to Warren, these insurers, through vertical integration, have manipulated the system, leading to “sky-high prescription drug costs and excessive corporate profits.”
The senators detailed how conglomerates, like UnitedHealth Group, with ownership across various healthcare sectors, could inflate medical payments to pharmacies and, by realizing those payments on the pharmacy side, appear to comply with MLR requirements while retaining more profits.
Moreover, despite the Democrats’ argument that the MLR would benefit patients, it has incentivized insurers to merge with or acquire pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), retail and specialty pharmacies, and healthcare providers. This, in turn, has made healthcare spending less transparent, as insurers can allegedly shift profits to their affiliates by increasing reimbursements.
Warren, who has consistently voted against Obamacare repeal efforts, notably advocated for a “Medicare for All” proposal during her 2020 presidential campaign. Despite her prior support for the healthcare law, Warren’s recent concerns about its unintended consequences have raised questions about the long-term effects of Obamacare and its impact on the healthcare industry.
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