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.
Elections
Biden’s Poor Polling and Harris’ Low Electability Rating Could Have Democrats Considering ‘Nuclear Option’
Behind-the-scenes discussion of how Democrats could arrive at a third option for the next election is underway
With polls consistently showing a poor approval rating for President Joe Biden at below 40 percent, and a recent poll put Kamala Harris’ electability at only 28 percent, Democrats are in full panic mode.
“Behind-the-scenes discussion of how Democrats could arrive at a third option for the next election is underway. Operatives are preparing for the possibility of a contested presidential primary in which other would-be nominees take on Ms. Harris, but that could be damaging for the party” reports the Telegraph.
Therefore, Democrats are allegedly whispering about a potential “nuclear option” that would call for current Vice President Harris to be nominated to the Supreme Court. The Telegraph writes that “while the scenario is highly improbable, and perhaps a reflection of a Washington rumor mill in overdrive, the fact it has come up at all shows the depths of the predicament the Biden administration currently finds itself in, amid rising inflation, a stalled domestic agenda, and foreign policy disasters.”
The theory in question would call for President Biden to nominate Harris to the Supreme Court in the event a seat opens in the next three years during his administration. Biden could then use “Section 2 of the 25thAmendment to nominate a more popular vice president”, adds the Telegraph.
Under Section 1 of the 25th Amendment, that new vice president could assume the presidency if Biden were to step down while president. They would then become the Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election. That same individual could also be the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024 if Biden chooses not to run for re-election.
One piece of information that is wetting Democrats’ whistle is that current Supreme Court Justice Breyer has said he does not “want to stay on the Supreme Court until I die.”
The Telegraph notes that “the discussion over potential successors to Mr. Biden is highly unusual less than a year into an administration.”
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