What’s changed? Arizona isn’t solidly red any more, so high-profile races are closer and people are paying attention more to vote counting
By Caitlin Sievers || Arizona Mirror
Republicans in Arizona and elsewhere have insisted that the days-long tabulation of early ballots, particularly in Maricopa County, is a new phenomenon that is aimed at undercutting faith in the elections and harming GOP candidates.
They’re flat wrong about the history, however: Final election results have never been available on Election Night in any Arizona county.
What’s changed isn’t that late-arriving early ballots are counted after election day, but that Arizona has gone from a ruby red state where Republicans dominated the vast majority of election contests — typically on the strength of early ballot returns — to a deep purple state where races up and down the ballot are close.
Those close races mean candidates, voters, pundits and the national media are focusing intently on Arizona’s post-Election Day tallies.
None of that has stopped Arizona GOP candidates and their allies across the country from crying foul about the process that has existed in the Grand Canyon State since the early 1990s, when Republicans here pioneered no-excuse early mail-in voting and crafted state laws to ensure only legal early ballots are counted and maximize accessibility for Arizona voters.
Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor, insisted on Election Day that Arizonans knew the results of their elections on Election Night until Maricopa County began using voting centers exclusively in 2020. The voting centers model allows registered voters to show up at any polling location instead of being limited to casting a ballot only at their assigned precinct voting site.
