>> Coming up on Arizona horizon, it's election day and we'll look at a recent survey what shows Arizona say are the issues they care about most and later on break it down,ests, efforts to improve the K12 system.

That's ahead.

It's unlikely all votes cast will be by the end of the evening and it will give a good indication considering it was by way of early ballots to be the first to be tallied and there will be an analysis at 10:00 on Arizona horizon and Brittney Griner is back and she was escorted in the courtroom on handcuffs and placed inside a cage where she held up personal photos and statements are scheduled for Thursday with a verdict and sentencing by Friday and the Russian attorney talked about how Brittney Griner is doing.

>> She's still focused and she's still nervous and she still knows the end is near and of course, she heard the news and she's hoping that sometimes she could be coming home and we hope, too.

>> Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia after Vape canisters after it was found in a Moscow airport.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan amid threats from China to retaliate after the visit and the first time a house speak has visited China in 25 years to show support for Taiwan's democracy.

They said it gravely undermines peace and constant and stability.

>> The Omicron subevent BA.5 is the main cause of infections.

And for an update on the increasing Covid numbers and what they mean, we welcome the emergency medicine physician with valley-wise health and good to see you and thank you for joining us and we appreciate your time.

I keep hearing cases are increasing and are they jumping?

Are they inching up and is it a slow ride and what's happening out there?

>> Thank you for having me and a couple of things happening and cases are going up and as you probably heard, the positivity rate was high repeatly and if the positivetivety rate is that high, there's a lot more cases coming and that being said, I don't want to sound like I'm the bearer of bad news.

Hospitalizations have not been increasing.

It's based on the data and my experience and we are getting patients who are swabbing positive for often didn't and that says a lot about the subvarient and the power of vaccine.

You're getting more cases and milder ones compared to before the vaccines.

>> Doctor, I'm hearing about a subvarient of BA5 starting to show up around the country and maybe a BA4 and I can't keep them straight and what's that about?

>> Well, viruses mutate and we've been seeing that from the beginning and that's it was important to squash it early and once it goes rampant, it keeps mutating and, unfortunately, this is everyday life now, like it was for other diseases, like it was for the flu with different varients every season and Covid is doing that multiple times a year.

Again, with vaccines, we've been lucky enough to say they're not as deadly as they used to be, but there will be new varients and subvarients and, basically, probably for the rest of our lives.

>> With that said and so many people vaccinated and have had some form of Covid, these new subvarients that come and go, will they be less and less dangerous, less and less of a concern?

>> That is the theoretical thought, right?

The thought is as more and more people survive the Coronavirus, then they'll become, for one, stronger and better able to defend themselves and the virus' advantage to mutate that infects the host and doesn't kill the host.

The virus doesn't win if of the host dies and the virus can spread while leaving the host alive to continue to spread it and the virus is an advantage, too.

But in that process, obviously ups and downs and people who do get sick and the idea that just natural selection to take a course and the survival of the fittest take a roll is not the most civilized way of approaching it and I think the virus will get milder and I don't think let it rip is a good strategy.

>> With that in mind, another round of vaccines to address BA565 may be set for the fall or winter to address winter conditions and is that what you're seeing or thinking what will happen?

>> That's the thought, the virus is mutating so quickly, once we come up with a new vaccine, the virus isvirus is mutating and trying to come up with the vaccines that are more relevant for the varient that's available and the company is trying to create varients with a heterogenius profile to get a booster to protects against multiple varients and that would be a game changer.

>> That is encourage.

Are we learning about long Covid and others who get repeatedly infected don't.

>> That is what I was saying about the "let her rip" approach, it might be a family member who ends up with that and it stinks for the people stuck with the symptoms and, you know, I don't know, I wake up every morning coughing and is that because of my reflux or Covid?

We don't know how many people have it and have partnered with the Arizona state university in the Covid projects and tracking people across Arizona to see what long Covid symptoms that have and including whether there are certain people that make it susceptible.

So, yeah, I think there's a lot to be learned, we're working on it and, unfortunately, they're going to be people who suffer from it and doing the best we can to find those people and treat them and it's a new disease and working on it.

>> Doctor, good information and good to have you mere and thank here and thank you for joining us.

>> Thank you, Ted, stay safe.

>> Up next, a look at election security on this election day.

This is election divide and election security is a persistent concern especially for those that say the 2020 election was compromised and we spoke with the former election security about the secretary of the state.

Ken, thank you for joining us and glad to have you and a lot of questions so hang on.

First of all, are you watching the hearings on January 6th?

>> I am.

>> What do you make of them?

>> They're important and what's happening is, we're writing those chapters of history into the history books through these hearings and there's certain amount of people that are in the wrong side of history in the debate over how the 2020 election went and on right side.

I wonder what my kids and kid's kids will see looking back.

>> Especially here in Arizona and let's talk about the Arizona concerns and the latest conspiracy, 20,000 mail-in ballots after the deadline in Maricopa county and the claim is, the late plots were scanned before verification and first of all, how Val lud is valid is that and how does it work?

>> It's not and I should be careful about speaking to the processes that belong to Maricopa county, the trusted source for that.

In this case, from my knowledge is that those ballots were septs sent to be signature scanned and that is so that they could be signature verified, but they were never opened or counted.

>> So when the claim the votes were illegally counted, that can't happen if they weren't counted.

>> Especially if the envelopes were never opened.

>> Let's talk about 200,000, alleged 200,000 miss matched and this200,000 mismatched andyou know your election business and 200,000 mismatched and the verification process is flawed and does any of that make sense?

>> No, a lot of misinformation.

Look, in the science today, MDM, misinformation, disinformation and mal-information.

Misinformation is like what we get from our sister-in-law and mom and that's what we're spreading around on the Internet or if social media.

It's people not intentionally spreading bad information, but a lot of bad information carrying that way because people believe it.

Disinformation is bad information and spreading it out with the political or financial agenda.

Mal-information is taking data or actual events that have happened and writing a sinister narrative and spreading that around.

We see that probably most in through the audit and when they're saying, they're taking some data points that could be true.

Like if there was a certain amount of ballots that something happened to them and we're going to twist that out of proportion and spread that around.

>> If anything criminal happened, you would think the courts in some way would have addressed this or indictments and nothing has happened.

>> At this point, no Arizona election officials or workers in jail.

And this is because no laws were broken.

>> This is mal-information so the data set could be real and the interpretation is off base and founded in somebody's desire to present a narrative that is twisted and fake and I mean, I relate it to the Blair witchmanhunt and we wanted to believe that was the real thing, but it wasn't.

>> We've heard about dead people voting.

>> There have been isolated cases of a spouse filling out a ballot for their dead spouse and sending it in this every election, there's mainer minor cases of fraud and maybe they didn't realize what they were doing, but never an election, eve I've seen that we don't trust the results.

No wide-spread fraud.

>> Anything that would change anything at all.

Sharpies changing, stealing votes, that has been dedunked and nothing and it pops up and what do you make of that?

>> In that particular case, again, the correct source of information for this would be Maricopa county and they did good work.

>> So did you hear about the types of conspiracy theories, the rumor and things not prosecuted by any way, shape or form and was this always bubbling and why now?

>> I think the problem might start at the top and there's four forces we've identified that drive the big lie today and the first was that it riles up the base and band your sporters up together and the second is fair of retribution or retaliation from the president and third is, the fundraising and they've done amazing numbers in fundraising through this for the audit and filling out the coffers and promoting legislation that they wanted.

And the forces go away, I don't see this.

>> They've been there and why with such gusto this time?

>> I they've, I fear that the political machinery has figured out exactly how to persuade the public, push the buttons to trigger our hone human propensity to conspiracy thinking.

The science of politics is where they know how to play a new psychological game and I don't think we'll see the end of that any time soon.

>> It's difficult, the human nature is difficult to reprogram.

>> Good information and good to have you hear.

>> Thank you.

here.

>> Thank you.

>> They show what Arizona's say that they care about most and education, water and the economy and we spoke to the president and CEO of the future of Arizona.

Thank you for joining us and the center for the future of Arizona, what is that?

>> We're a nonprofit, 501C3 to create a stronger and brighter future for our state.

>> The Arizona voter's agenda seeks to find out from voters what they think are the most important issues in this upcoming election and what they would like candidates to be discussing as they campaign for their votes.

>> How was this conducted?

>> We conducted this using high ground public affairs in April of this year and we went to likely voters in Arizona to ask them what they thought were the most important issues and as you mentioned, we found education, environment, jobs in the economy, immigration and water roadwaysrose to the top and we said to get onto the agenda, we had to have 50% of likely Arizona voters would strongly agree with the statement that we would ask them about.

>> And we'll get to the results because a lot more than 50% found agreement.

>> Let's start with the first panel at voters wanting, saying they want to know about key issues and talk to us about that.

>> So we asked them about what they thought were the issues that were being discussed or that they wanted to see discussed.

You know, what's interesting, we hear so much campaign rhetoric during elections about polar decision and division in the electorate and people in agreement on the beneficial issues in Arizona and they find more on the issues and the plans than they do about the political ideology or political party.

>> Did that surprise you?

>> A little bit.

We've been soaked in this atmosphere of polarization and division and we think we're in extreme camps and much more in common and what we care about that is not discussed, in fact.

>> Let's look at the next graphic on so many issues and we'll start with education and 97%.

That's a lot of folks saying the same thing.

>> It is and the top ranked issue or close to the top ranked issue was 97% of Arizona voters want to know how the candidates running for office are going to ensure we have high quality teachers and leaders in schools and they feel education is still underfunded and teachers are underpaid and came out in high numbers.

>> Hopefully they understand there are certain offices where you can affect change with education much more so than others and did it get that deep in there.

>> In terms of what we were asking voters, what they want candidates to address and we didn't get into specific races.

>> Another agreement is on the budget, big budget surplus in Arizona and a lot of folks find agreement there, right?

>> That's right.

When we did the survey, we didn't realize we would be talking about it on air show and we have a four plus billion dollar surplus and asked people in Arizona what they priortize in terms of what should be done with the funds and they prefer that we invested in education, roads and other infrastructure rather than cutting taxes.

So they highly prioritize education in particular.

>> There was agreement on water issues and this is something that we try to get these into the debates and 95% talking about securing water and the future expect long-term term drought and the whole nine yards and water is in the news and growing more and more concerned about the whole nine yards and yet, we're not hearing candidates talk about this at all.

This is super majorities of people in Arizona ha who care about this and Arizona voters want to know what the candidates will do about water and advance their cause if they could put out a plan.

>> People say certain things and make it look could and they think it's the right thing.

Candidates would pick up on that.

If I were running for office X and I knew water was a crucial issue, I would never stop talking about it, but it's as if candidates don't believe the voters.

voters.

>> This is for maybe a longer conversation but this is how elections are structured and we hear that candidates are speaking to their base or this is in the primaries and not going to get to the issues.

And I think there's a lot more structural issues like that we could be looking at about why candidates don't feel incentivized.

>> We'll be releasing environment finding on Wednesday and releasing findings on immigration and election reform later this week and early next weak.

week.

>> Hints on what we'll see?

>> On the environment, Arizona is very concerned about fire and air quality and so, again, it seems to be that we're releasing results in a timely way given what's going on in our state.

For elections, Arizona thinks we have fair elections and can we tweak them and make them more secure?

Overall, they think elections are fairly run and want to maintain access early in-voting and mail-in ballots.

>> Back to fire, I guess you could have one candidate say we need this in the Forest and the other, no, we need to do a better job of what's protecting protecting what's out there and two different viewpoints, but at least you're talking about the same thing.

>> Our survey doesn't tell what the answers are, so what is their plan for Forest fires and there's different approaches, because what is it?

>> Is it enough for candidates see these kind of results and is that enough that we can find find a way to break the tribal splits growing and growing?

>> I think people are tired of The Partisanship and I'm hearing it all around and when we share or results that we have much more in common than divides us, I see a sense of relief and they don't understand why our politics are so divided.

It's a complicated answer and it has to do with how the primary system works.

I know in the past in Arizona, they're trying to reform that.

It incentivize the minority.

We're not as divided as some would believe.

>> It's the Arizona voter's agenda and thank you so much for joining us.

>> Thank you.

>> That interview from earlier this year and that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons and thank you for joining us.

You have a great evening.