Originally published at: While Kari Lake moans about slow vote counting, Katie Hobbs slowly inches ahead | Boing Boing
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She’s setting the stage for denying the final result if it doesn’t go her way, of course. It doesn’t take a political genius to see that.
It’s really a shame that things are so close. From what I’ve read, Hobbs was not as dynamic and aggressive a candidate as the situation called for. All Dems should know by now that complacency is not helpful when their opponents are fascists.
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I’d say AZ is just trying to get it right, so they don’t have to fork out a few million taxpayer dollars for a recount “audit” like they did in 2020.
Not that conservatives care about spending, really. They’ll gladly do another months long audit, inspecting paper ballots for the bamboo fibers and mystery watermarks they heard about from a thread on Breitbart.
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Tim Ryan – boringest candidate ever?
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Florida was embarrassed by the hanging chad of 2020, so they did something about it. Maybe one good thing will come from Lake’s grumbling, voting reform in Arizona. Heck even California could use some updating.
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She telegraphed that weeks ago. And TBH, I knew this was going to happen, because a) she was a local TV reporter so the name is familiar; b) she knows how to have a stage presence from her career as a TV reporter; and c) there’s large portions of this state that are dyed-in-the-wool, hardcore to the bone republicans that have drank all the Flav-Or-Aide that the GQP has been pushing the past 6 years and that despite all the evidence prior to the start of Drumpf’s political run that he is their god-emperor and can do no wrong.
Yup, but it’ll happen again anyway, because that is the world we live in.
:: wanders off to find some whiskey ::
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It still wouldn’t make sense, though. She was behind Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and now Thursday night. Even if she could freeze the count at any point, she’d still lose.
TBH, I get tired of this kind of criticism. The problem isn’t with policy wonk Dems - the problem is with our voting system. We need to join the rest of the world and limit the duration and spending of elections. 6 month maximum prior to Election Day and everyone gets the same amount of election funds, based on the size of the electorate voting for that seat. No attack ads, no 3rd-party ads. Tell voters why they should vote for you, not why they should vote against your opponent. Then, maybe, we can get voters to pay attention to policy rather than performance.
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This isn’t about policy wonk Dems, it’s about campaigning approach. People from her own party were saying that Hobbs in particular was running too subdued and non-confrontational a campaign. You’re absolutely correct about all the things that need to be changed and improved in the U.S.'s broken-by-design election system. However, until those things change (and it won’t be before 2024) all Dems – not just progressive ones like Ocasio-Cortez – need to understand that it’s not 1992 and they have to bloody fight. Otherwise, you get fascists like JD Vance and (perhaps) Kari Lake squeaking into office and making sure that the election system will remain broken or get worse.
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I live in Arizona.
I have read criticisms regarding Hobbs campaign. I cannot comment on many aspects of them but I do want to defend her wisdom of no debating Lake.
Lake is a TV creature. Any televised debate would have allowed her to use the one strength she has. In addition, denying that platform sucks the air out of her ability to simply tell lies and make outrageous claims that cannot be rebutted on real time. Even if Hobbs loses, I am totally on board with this decision.
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I agree about her decision not to debate Lake. That would have been a no-win situation. Overall, though, we’re still seeing the same passivity in the face of fascist opponents in Arizona (and Ohio) now that we saw in the presidential race of 2016.
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I get that, but Dems, especially women, have to be careful about “bloody fighting.” Unfortunately, assertive women still get labeled as “shrill” or “pushy” by way too many voters. AOC gets labeled as such, but she overcomes it with charisma. A less charismatic candidate can’t get away with it.
(The above also means Tim Ryan has no excuse…)
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I’d argue that those voters wouldn’t vote for those candidates anyhow. On the other hand, an assertive woman candidate can inspire voters who don’t normally show up at the polls.
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Except that there is nothing wrong with the election system in Arizona. The “grumbling” is just to create a false narrative of election fraud in order to enact “voting reform.” To the Republican-majority Arizona Legislature, “voting reform” means increasing the number and types of ID needed to vote, reducing the number of polling places, and automatically dropping voter off the early voting lists. “Voting reform” under the current regime will not be about making it easier for people to vote and select their own representatives.
The paranoid delusions about Dominion voting machines has led to various proposals to require hand counting of more than a million ballots, which would entirely destroy the ability to conduct timely and orderly elections, not to mention being less accurate than machine counting. One outlying county even declared they were going to do hand counting, until a judge slapped them down. Personally I think they should have been allowed to conduct that experiment since they only have about 40,000 voters and they would see that, even with that small sample size, hand counting is a disaster.
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Part of the slow pace is because they are taking more time in the signature verification phase.
I find it amusing that Lake was calling for 100% “hand counting” of ballots but still wants to have results by the end of election day.
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AZ’s “slow” count is a product of rules and procedures established by Republicans. Karma, Keri.
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the problem is parallelism. if everybody just counted their own vote, they’d be done already 
it is interesting that an exclusively mail-in state like oregon can turn around the count so quickly. though i guess it partly depends on if ballots are counted if post marked by election day, and if signatures can be matched before tabulation starts
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Is there any outcome where this doesn’t get recounted and litigated well into next year?
California has updated our elections. Now we can early vote in person, mail in our ballot, drop off our ballots, or vote in person on election day. Since 2016, formerally incarcerated people may vote as long as they are no longer on parole. These changes may slow down tabulation, but it’s now easier and more accessible for everyone who is legally allowed to vote in CA.
FL has seven days of early voting and cuts off early voting three days before the election. They have actively worked to disenfranchise voting rights of formerally incarcerated people by constructing a complicated set of rules and then setting the burden of qualifying (under threat of jail) on the individual rather than the state or county. It also allows vote by mail, but only by request.
I guess it depends if you are focused upon speed or enfranchising all citizens who can legally vote. 
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DMAI, Kari.
I don’t really know what’s going on in Arizona. When they hired cyber ninjas I knew it was kind of messed up. I just want to shut these election conspiracy nuts down, getting quicker counts (even if they are preliminary) would help. I’m giving Florida some credit as about half their ballots are mail in. Worth looking into how they count them so fast. Also they have added more polling places. Some places like I think Georgia and maybe Texas made less of them, especially in Democratic strong holds.
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