The U.S. just completed another series of important federal elections. While the midterms aren’t quite as critical as the presidential cycle, they’ve become increasingly more so. Voter turnout in many states set new records during the 2022 midterms.
Most states produced quick and reliable results. Florida, notorious for issues in the past, gave timely updates and posted expedient results. Florida’s election process helped ensure voters that every vote counted, and the final totals were authentic.
However, that’s not what happened in every state. In fact, some states took nearly a week to provide final results. When it takes that much time to tabulate votes, Americans will rightfully be suspicious.
The longer the time between the actual posting of a ballot and that ballot being counted, clearly allows a window of opportunity to manipulate the final totals. In Georgia, an error with a voting machine memory card flipped one election.
Nevada took days to finalize results in a critical U.S. Senate race. To date, there have been no reported issues, and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt has conceded. But why did it take so long to produce the final tally?
These are just two isolated incidents of unacceptable election protocols. But, just like in the 2020 presidential election fiasco, Maricopa County, Arizona, is at the forefront of election ineptitude.
It took days for Maricopa County to finally give the country its election results. The state had two of the most important elections in the nation. One was for another U.S. Senate seat. The Arizona seat could have shifted the majority in the upcoming session.
It did not. Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly squeaked out a victory over Republican challenger Blake Masters. Or did he? As close as the race for the Arizona U.S. Senate seat was, the race for Arizona governor was even closer.
But the Arizona gubernatorial election had many more questions than most. First, the current Secretary of State was the Democrat Party candidate. It defies logic to allow Katie Hobbs to oversee an election in which she is running.
It’s a blatant example of “conflict of interest.” She refused to recuse herself from having the authority to monitor Arizona’s election. But the problems are even worse. Maricopa County kicked off Election Day with enough screw-ups to cast doubt on the final results.
Like Nevada, Arizona took days to count the votes. How can virtually every other state count their votes and post final results within hours, but it takes states such as Arizona days? But just like during the 2020 presidential election, there’s more to the Arizona story.
There are already questions being raised about the authenticity of the final results. Since Maricopa County is one of the largest vote-producing areas in the nation, secure results are critical. Maricopa County essentially decides Arizona’s elections.
When there is so much suspicion surrounding the authenticity of the final totals, voters become skeptical. One person who’s sincerely skeptical is Republican gubernatorial challenger, Kari Lake. Lake insists that she smells a rat.
Lake pushed back against the notion that Katie Hobbs should have access to election oversight in an election in which she’s a candidate. Many experts agree. There are other issues as well. Hobbs currently leads Lake by a mere 18,000 votes. Lake insists that this count is inaccurate.
She believes that she will eventually be declared the winner. Lake told the Daily Mail that “at the end of the day, this will be turned around.” After receiving a letter from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, Lake proclaims that “she will be governor.”
The Arizona Attorney General’s office is especially concerned about huge problems in Maricopa County. Election Day started with printer problems that created havoc. Thousands of voters had to drop their ballots into cardboard boxes.
That sounds like really solid ballot security. If it weren’t true, it would seem like a big joke. It wasn’t. What could possibly go wrong with tossing important election ballots into a box and then moving them? If you’re planning on cheating, everything could go wrong or right for you.
Most polls indicated that Kari Lake was riding such a wave of momentum that she would easily beat Hobbs. Democrats had to see this as an issue. They were probably going to lose. It appears they may have preemptively taken steps to ensure that this didn’t happen.
What Arizona’s gubernatorial race and U.S. Senate race shows is the need for changes. The majority of these election-related issues revolve around voting machines and the software that powers them. Electronic voting needs to go. The software can be too easily hacked.
These machines are unreliable. Even France has tossed electronic voting machines to the curb. The U.S. needs to follow this example. While early voting and mail-in voting will continue to be debated, voting machines should be banned. It’s just too easy to cheat, and Arizona proves it.