The whole premise behind arguments claiming that American elections are "fixed" or "rigged" or that there was "massive voter fraud" is getting people who are completely ignorant of the processes of voting and counting ballots on board with the claims. That's really the whole thing in a nutshell. I seriously doubt that any candidate running for office believes that their loss was due to a "rigged" or "fixed" election. They know, before they decide to run, that the process is checked, double checked and completely secure, or they'd never run in the first place. When they make those claims, either after they've already lost, or in anticipation that they might, they are counting on those among the electorate who buy into the false conspiracy theories and think that there's someone out there somewhere who is "out to get them."
Arizona was once a reliably Republican state, put population growth over the past four decades, the most rapid anywhere in the country, has changed all of that. There were hints of a growing Democratic party back as far as 1996, when Bill Clinton carried the state's 10 electoral votes at the time. But over the course of the past decade, voters flipped the house delegation, now 9, to a 5-4 Democratic majority and then, in 2020, flipped both Senate seats. The state legislature is on the verge of a complete flip and all of the state executive offices, including governor, flipped to the Democrats this election cycle.
Maricopa County, which is mostly made up of Phoenix and suburbs, is where the difference has been made. Just over 60% of the electorate lives there, a population of over 4.5 million, and the influx of new residents from the upper Midwest, California and the growing Latino population have caused the county to trend to the Democrats. They had some help from some corrupt Republican governors and a notoriously racist county sheriff who helped galvanize a huge Latino voter turnout. It's still close, but as Maricopa goes, so goes Arizona and that's what happened in both 2020, and this year.
How Can This Be?
The Arizona Republican establishment was shocked by the 2020 results, in spite of obvious signs that it was headed that way. The fact that the GOP dominated legislature has made ballot counting a long, drawn out chore by its antiquated, outdated rules, and that those long, long ballot counts are caused by Republicans in charge of the vote counting process hasn't stopped the election deniers from claiming that there's cheating going on, without, of course, a shred of evidence.
Mark Kelly won re-election to the senate by more than a 100,000 vote margin over Blake Masters, which was not a surprise to anyone except a few of the Republicans who believed in the flood of conservative polls that flooded the media prior to the election. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who had carefully guarded the voting and counting process and spoiled the election deniers chances of getting anything by providing solid evidence of a clean, accurate 2020 election won the race for governor, after all ballots were counted, by just north of 17,000 votes over election denier and Trump endorsee Kari Lake.
Even though neither Republican candidate had anything to offer to the voters except the "R" behind their name and their Trump endorsement, which didn't play well in a state he lost in 2020, Lake has embarked on a campaign to spread doubt about the accuracy of the election, specifically in Maricopa county, as election deniers do, without any real evidence. Her ace in the hole is a handful of voting machines in a Maricopa County precinct where the printers weren't working initially creating some long lines and wait times. It hasn't been that long ago that a Maricopa County Republican elections manager caused massive lines during the primaries by consolidating precinct voting locations, and people waited for up to six hours to cast a vote, but that's where Lake has decided to focus her efforts.
Here are the facts. There was difficulty with some machines and printers in a Maricopa County precinct where perhaps 2,000 voters are registered. The precinct is located in a part of the county that has tended to be Republican oriented, though not by a huge percentage, and there is no way that the problem had anything to do with Lake's loss. Nor is it reasonable to demand that the entire county, or perhaps the entire state, take a revote in order to determine a reasonable winner, based on the few complaints generated, manufactured, and prompted by the Lake campaign. But that's what these people do, because they don't think their followers and sycophants are smart enough to figure all of this out.
Even after setting up a website to try and catch people who claimed to have "trouble" casting their ballots, not anywhere near the number of people have come forward that would indicate there was a need to redo the election. The results were pretty clear. Lake lost. And in spite of the glitches, about which the county election board has evidence to indicate those who were inconvenienced still got to cast their ballot and have it count, the election in Arizona was obviously free from any kind of election fraud or corruption. Lake is counting on the ignorance of her supporters to make a big enough stink to get some attention to impress Donald Trump, another loser in an Arizona election.
Lake Had Reason to Think Some Conservative Arizonans Might be Ignorant Enough to Pull This Off
In one of the most boneheaded, wasteful, ridiculous moves ever made by a state legislature, the Arizona Senate, without legal standing or legislative authority, ordered a third "audit" of Maricopa County's ballots following the 2020 election. There had already been two other audits which made it clear the vote count was accurate and that there had been no fraud involved. But the Senate President, Karen Fann, kept pressing for an additional audit, primarily because the first two didn't support Republican claims of fraud. I mean, after all, it was Arizona and it was Maricopa County. A Republican couldn't have lost, could they?
So, logically, instead of hiring a real auditor, they hired the "Cyber Ninjas," made up mainly of a Trump supporting jack-of-all-trades and a rag-tag group of hires who couldn't work the machines or computers, use the data bases or do anything without the continued assistance of the Maricopa election board. It's hard to tell how much that cost the taxpayers, some Trumpies came up with some contributions and put about $6 million into their pockets until they went bankrupt before actually finishing the "audit", though in their report, they claimed that the total was off, in favor of Biden, by several hundred votes. Well, for all that money they had to say something. The state didn't certify their alleged count, or even acknowledge it took place.
But I'm sure the image of the stupid looks on Fann's face, her ridiculous, unsupported, unbelievable statements and the whole concept of a "Cyber Ninja" audit, which included claims of owning a camera that could see "bamboo fibers" in paper, which they claimed proved the ballot came from China, helped Lake conclude that Arizona Republicans are idiots and will believe anything. No bamboo fibers were found and the whole incident, which did cost Karen Fann her senate seat, and any reputation she may have had as an intelligent human being, was a characterization of the whole phony election denier movement.
Why not try it again, it might work this time.
Human Error Means Things are Bound to Happen
No matter how secure or organized a process is, there is always human error. Most issues with elections involve malfunctioning equipment, like the situation with the printers and computers in Maricopa county. But election workers are trained to handle those errors, and to make sure that everyone who wants to cast a ballot gets to cast one. That does include allowances to keep a polling place open until everyone who was in line before closing gets to vote, or to make sure that any prior glitches were handled correctly.
Lake was depending on the ignorance and stupidity of enough Arizonans to carry out a big rally at the state capitol and create a show, to put pressure on the county board and the Secretary of State, in the hopes of changing the inevitable outcome of the election. That's not going to happen. There were, in fact, fewer complaints about ballot issues in Arizona this time around, including those that Lake collected on her website, than in 2020, and even then, not nearly enough to alter the outcome of the election.
Arizonans do know B.S. when they see it, Kari. And apparently plenty of them see it in you.
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