Hi.

I'm Christopher Conover, the News Director here at AZPM.

On last week's show, we aired extended segments of interviews with gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs.

The interviews were produced by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission with our colleagues at the PBS Station in Phoenix KAET Channel 8 for the Hobbs Interview and AZTV Channel 7 in Phoenix for the Lake interview.

Our goal in airing those interviews was to get the candidates in their own words in front of you.

The voters of Southern Arizona.

Both campaigns were invited to join us at AZPM, but neither was able to join us on our show.

In retrospect, we realize that the interviews from Phoenix were not conducted in an evenhanded manner.

We stand by our decision to let you hear directly from the candidates, but we also acknowledge the disparity in the interviews and the interviewers and admit that we could have and should have handled them differently.

Thanks for watching.

Welcome to Your Vote 2022 AZPM's look at the issues on the midterm ballot, and Liliana Soto.

This week we begin our show with the question that many voters have as they look at their ballots, what to do about voting for judges and Supreme Court justices.

Our Christopher Conover is with a member of the Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Reviews to find out about voting for judges.

So let's start at the top.

When it comes to voting for judges or the retention of judges in Arizona.

Why do we do this?

Not every state does.

Well, back in the early 1970s, there was a constitutional amendment established that put together what we call the merit selection system.

Judges in Pima, Maricopa, Pinal, and Coconino counties are appointed by the governor.

As chairman of the Judicial Performance Review Commission.

Our job is then to evaluate the judges performance after they've been on the bench and report to the voters, whether, in our opinion, they should be retained or not.

And that judgment is based upon a lot of data we gather from lawyers, witnesses, jurors, litigants, people who have been in that judge's courtroom and have interacted with the judge and are in a position to evaluate the judge's performance.

Many states, some of which I've lived in, elect their judges.

Judges have to go out and campaign their signs are on the streets just like everybody else's.

Why doesn't Arizona do?

Former Chief Justice Buck Jones told me one time about a trial that he was in in Phoenix in about 1972, 73.

So before the constitutional... Before the constitutional change came in and the morning of the second day, of the trial, the judge called a short recess and asked both counsil to come into his chambers, whereupon he reminded them that he was up for reelection that year and would very much like a generous contribution from their respective law firms.

We don't have that in the major counties in Arizona anymore.

For very good reasons.

And the Arizona system is generally regarded across the country as one of the finest judiciaries in the country.

Based upon the the merit selection process and the role that a Judicial Performance Review Commission plays in evaluating the judges and recommending to the voters what we believe the judges, whether they should be retained or not.

And our judges when they're on the ballot, aren't even running as partisans.

We don't know if they're Republicans.

That's correct.

That's correct.

And when we do our job we're we're not allowed to evaluate a judge based on any single decision.

Every once in a while, a decision will get very controversial.

We we evaluate a judge based on the entire performance through the entire course of the two or four years that that judge has been on the bench.

And there are a lot of criteria we use a legal judgment, a knowledge, communication, how how good are they at explaining what they've decided and why.

But the one thing that is going to get a judge in trouble with the JPR Commission is how he or she treats people in the courtroom.

We find judges from time to time who are arrogant, who are dismissive, who who are biased, who don't treat people with courtesy and respect in the courtroom.

And that will get a judge in trouble with the commission faster than anything else.

So as a voter sitting at home watching this, maybe they still have their early ballot and they're just going to turn it in on Election Day, or maybe they're going to vote in person, bunch of judges on the ballot.

How do they find that information?

To ways the front section of the voter guide that the secretary of state puts out, carries all of the recommendations from the Judicial Performance Review Commission with respect to how we've evaluated the judges.

And you can also go on the website.

It's www.azjudges.info And that's our website.

And it gives a whole breakdown of how we evaluate a judge on a whole variety of criteria.

How often do judges get voted out or do most people just look and either skip it or just say, yes, retain them?

I've been on the commission for I think 14 years, and I can remember one situation in Maricopa County where a judge was voted out.

But what also happens probably four or five times I can remember, and it's happened down here in Pima County where a judge knows he or she is going to get a very bad report from the commission and so resigns instead of standing for election.

So I'd say in the period I've been on the commission, there have been somewhere around eight or ten judges who we felt simply were not doing an appropriate job on the bench, who one way or another are no longer there.

So the system works?

System works.

The system does work.

I'm sure you talk to colleagues, friends around the country.

Why isn't everybody doing this?

Well, inertia, you know, change is hard.

Judges and lawyers have vested interests in doing it the old way.

There are a lot of reasons.

If someone has an interaction with a judge, be they an attorney, be they a party to a case and they want to report to the commission, maybe something good, maybe something bad.

Is there a way for the public to do that?

So as you gather your information.

It's uh... yes and no.

We have to be a little careful about relying too heavily on what may be biased information just because somebody doesn't win a case doesn't mean it's a bad judge.

But if if there's specific information about the conduct of a judge that somebody is aware of, they can share that with the Judicial Performance Review Commission.

And that's you can find us on the court's website.

And you mentioned one of the things you looked at was staying within the law, within their judgments, might not be a popular decision.

But it is the decision that is the correct one for the law as it stands at that point.

That happens.

That happens a lot.

And, you know, that that's why we want the judges to be above politics.

We don't want a judge flipping through his Rolodex to figure out which way he's going to decide on this particular case.

We want him or her applying the law the way it's written.

All right.

Well, thanks for spending a few minutes explaining all of this as I said before we started.

This is a question I get all the time from friends and family and people in the community.

Good to be with you, Chris.

Election day is just a few days away.

And, of course, judges are not the only ones on the ballot, other candidates are doing all they can to convince voters.

And that includes spending money on ads More than $100 million have been donated to candidates running in Arizona's U.S. Senate race, making it one of the most expensive in the nation.

Republicans have been spending plenty on the race, dating back to the competitive primary that saw Blake Masters emerge as the GOP nominee.

Masters has since been trying to tame some of his bolder campaign claims since winning his primary.

Why is he doing that?

Steve Jess, the host of AZPM's Fact Check Arizona podcast has some of the answers.

Edits that were made to Blake Masters campaign website have become a topic in the race for one of Arizona's U.S. Senate seats.

Even turning up as a question in a debate.

Some say that you scrubbed them from your website.

What's going on with that?

I encourage people to go read my website now.

What moderator Ted Simons said in the lead up to his question is true.

Blake Masters has altered four sections of his website since winning the Republican nomination in August.

Updating stances on abortion, election integrity, gun rights and education.

The website changes on education and gun rights were small, one or two sentences and didn't amount to notable policy shifts.

But Masters changes to his positions on elections and abortion were more notable.

Chief among the edits was erasing a sentence claiming that the 2020 election was a rotten mess and that former President Donald Trump won.

This isn't a one off either.

Masters admitted that Joe Biden is rightfully president twice during the debate, though pushing a new conspiracy theory on the second mention.

I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?

Legitimately elect- I'm not trying to trick you.

He's duly sworn and certified.

He's still legitimate president.

He's in the White House.

Was that election stolen?

Was it rigged in any way, shape or form?

Enough to keep Donald Trump out of the White House?

I suspect that if the FBI didn't work with big tech and big media to censor the Hunter Biden or the Hunter Biden crime story.

Yeah, I suspect that changed a lot of people's votes.

Masters stance on abortion also notably changed on his Web site and in person, going from pushing the idea of protecting a fetus from conception to a more moderate ban.

Arizona has said 15 weeks makes sense.

I think that makes sense.

So why would Blake Masters take extreme stances in the lead up to a primary just to have to walk them back for the general?

Chris Weber, who studies political messaging, says it's about winning the primary.

Centrist candidates have a really hard time winning primaries in a number of states.

Weber says more extreme candidates tend to do better in primaries which have a smaller pool of voters that are often made up of a political party's diehard supporters.

He says pulling to the middle after a primary tends not to harm candidates.

In fact, I would say that it probably benefits them more than adversely affects them, especially when they can sort of do it under the radar.

And it's not well documented and noticed.

In fact, Blake Masters is not alone in editing his website.

The text of Mark Kelly's website was also edited as part of a redesign going from rather vague statements about policy to more explicit stances in September.

Former Libertarian candidate Marc Victor also added more to his policy section before withdrawing from the race.

Weber says those changes likely came later because Kelly and Victor did not have to face the same primary challenge as Masters For more on this and our other fact checks, be sure to go to our website or subscribe or whatever you get your podcasts.

Questions about ballot counting and those systems still abound.

So Christopher Conover is joined by the head of Pima County elections to try to clear up questions before Election Day.

Thanks, Lily.

Here we are.

It's finally almost Election Day.

You and I talked a few weeks ago and you were still looking for some staffing.

How's staffing going for all these vote centers?

Stabbings actually going great.

I'm happy to say, since we're a week out from the election and we have 128 of our vote centers that completely meet the minimum standards that are required by statute.

And 121 of those that I think you remember when we talked that I said Pima County staffed up on judges, so we added more judges.

And so 121 of those, we have every one that we need in place.

And then the other eight is just like one person we need for each one of those.

So come election day, it sounds like everything will be set.

Yes, we hope so.

We hope so.

But the interesting thing about staffing vote centers is that the dynamic is that it can change every day.

So family emergencies, work schedules, people drop in and they drop out.

So at any given day, we're perfect.

And then the next day, oh, shoot, we need two or three people.

You mentioned judges.

You're not talking about the judges.

On the ballot.

What are the those judges positions?

Sure.

So the judges by statute, we're required to have judges, which is the judge of the same party of the inspector as the inspector, then the judge of the opposite party of the inspector.

So the election board is comprised of an inspector minimum standard is two judges and a marshal.

And as many clerks as we need those judges, the inspector and the marshal need to be of different political parties, the two major political parties in the state, and they should have equal representation in each vote center.

So let's talk about some of the things those judges handle.

We hear a lot in social media and things like that about what are legally called spoiled ballots.

Maybe somebody who votes and say, oh, I didn't mean to vote for that person.

They X it out and vote for somebody else.

Maybe they're voting at home.

They spill a cup of coffee on it and the counting machine kicks it out.

What happens at that point?

Absolutely.

So if we let's separate the two.

So we're talking about early voters and they kind of mess up their ballot before they send it in.

They mail it in.

Then when it gets to our office, when we're separating them, we take a look at them, see if the machine is going to run them through.

Or they get to the counting room and run them through.

If they do not, they're pulled, they're separated out, everything's documented.

And then they go to a duplication team, a board comprised of each political party, Democrat and Republican, and they actually duplicate that person's ballot so that it can be read by the scanner.

Now, on Election Day, if they do it, oops, I didn't mean to vote for that person and they just exit out, then they can go back to the judge at the same party or the judge or the opposite party.

Whoever issued the ballot to them and receive another ballot in that ballot would be spoiled.

So both ballots are spoiled, but in the vote center, they can actually correct it right there.

Whereas if they mail it, it gets duplicated in our office.

And when, it's being duplicated that Republican and Democrat looking at it, they determine what they believe the voter was trying to do.

And obviously they need to have some agreement.

And I'm guessing it's probably usually pretty obvious.

Yes, they do determine voter intent as they're reading through the ballot.

They take a look at it.

So the easy ones are someone they they X out one and then they just bubble in the next one.

That's a very easy one.

You can figure that out.

But if they start circling a couple of them, sometimes it's really difficult to tell and people can overvote their ballot.

That is absolutely legal.

They can overvote their ballot.

But yeah, they do.

They make that determination.

They discuss it as they duplicate it.

So one actually reads the information off of the ballot.

The other person is creating another ballot with that information then it actually goes to another team to review their work.

So lots of checks before that ballot is officially counted.

People especially outside of Arizona, I hear from my East Coast family.

Why does it take you all so long to count?

Walk us through, if you can, maybe there are some new voters who are watching this new to Arizona that don't understand our system.

About 8:00 on election night, you will send out most of the counties will send out that first big number of ballots.

What is that number?

That first big number that everyone sees are the early ballots that we've been processing all along.

So those are early ballots.

Those are not election day ballots.

You can imagine the polls close at 7:00.

The closing process is not complete by 8:00.

So we're not actually counting Election Day ballots until sometime after 8:00.

So that first big number they see are early ballots.

And places like Ajo and Pima County.

That's way out west in the county.

Those have to be driven in.

They don't get counted on sight at the voting centers.

That is absolutely correct.

They get driven into our office.

We have central receiving where all of the ballots come into our office.

And then there is a central count where we count all the ballots in the central count.

So there is no counting tabulating in the vote centers at all.

If somebody wants to watch that, it used to be on closed circuit or it used to be on the Internet.

You had cameras.

It's still the case.

Yes.

We still have those cameras up where you can watch.

You can watch now as they're processing ballots, but you can watch that.

But we also have a public viewing area where a lot of the media comes in on Election Day and they view through the windows, they look through the windows.

But the public it's open to the public as well.

So they can come in and view as well.

Nothing done behind closed doors, it sounds like behind glass, but.

But not behind closed doors.

Yes, that's absolute correct.

And this sounds like any time someone is handling a ballot, it's a Republican and a Democrat both right there.

There are observers from both parties watching on behalf of all of us who maybe don't have the time to come down and sit and watch ourselves.

That is absolutely correct.

And there is even a two person rule as far as entering passwords into the server to log in to upload results into our server, which is not connected to the Internet.

It's it's not connected to anything outside that room.

But we do have a server where we back up the results every night.

Yeah.

So there are always two people, always two different parties, minimum, two people.

Let's just say that in every transaction.

We've heard a lot out of Maricopa County about people sitting outside the early ballot boxes.

We haven't heard that out of Pima County.

A judge has now said that people can't do that.

Explain if you can, the 75 foot limit that the media knows all about, but maybe other people don't know about at polling places.

Yes.

So the 75 foot limit I call it the prohibited area limit where anything inside that 75 foot limit is controlled by the the election board where voters can come in they can stand in line, signs are posted.

There's no electioneering.

None of that can go on inside that 75 foot limit.

But when you get outside that 75 foot limit that's where we have we could call them poll watchers who are outside maybe handing out campaign literature individuals may be taking polls, the media may be out there those types of things but that cannot occur inside that 75 foot limit.

So it is a protected zone so voters feel safe and they feel like they're secure in casting their ballot.

Right only poll workers or voters allowed in there as you said even the media we can't go in and shoot video in there.

That's it.

We're all on that.

75 foot level.

Yes.

But we the political parties can have authorized representatives inside that 75 foot limit and inside the vote center actually.

So the observers, they come in, they watch, they listen to everything that's going on inside the vote center and they're allowed to be there at open when they're setting up at closing, when they're closing out counting ballots.

And they can also be with them as they transport that if ballots and materials to the central receiving station.

Last thing, let's talk about vote centers.

Only the second time we've used them in Pima County.

First time was in August during the primary.

That's a little different.

I don't have to go to the school or church down the street from my house.

I can go anywhere now and have the correct ballot printed out and handed to me.

That is correct.

So vote centers are convenient.

Very convenient.

You're exactly right.

If they're dropping off their children at school, they can go to a vote center that's near them.

If they're out shopping groceries during the day, they can go to a vote centers near them.

No longer are voters or electors restricted to one location to vote on Election Day.

They have the option to go into multiple locations, and that is beneficial as well because if there is a line, if there was a line in a precinct and someone was in a hurry to get to work, then they maybe would have to leave and possibly get back to their precinct at the end of the day.

Right?

You have to do that now.

So if there's a line, you can go to another vote center and most of them are within three miles of each other.

And so they can just go down the street and cast a ballot.

Last thing on election practicality, if you will, polls close at 7:00, but if you're in line you can stay, correct?

That is absolutely correct.

So at 7:00, if you're in line, you get to cast your ballot.

All right.

Well, thanks for spending some time with us and good luck on election night.

You're so welcome.

Thank you for having me.

After Election Day, recounts and audits of the votes can and will take place this year, there are changes to the law governing how those are handled.

Since Election Day is next week, we thought we will return to a conversation we previously air about that topic.

Andrew, we are used to hearing about audits and recounts and things like that, especially the last two years in Arizona.

Some changes in election law this year, we can probably expect more recounts.

That's right.

And I should be clear, we're talking about recounts, not audits.

The things that are standard practice in counties after each election recounts in Arizona, we don't tend to have a lot of because Arizona law is very particular about when a recount is triggered.

It depends on the race.

But in a race for legislature, for example, under old laws, there would only be a recount triggered if two candidates are within 50 votes.

When you consider how many votes can be cast in a race like this, that's not many.

That's a really close margin.

So the legislature passed a law this year that changes that margin to say that a recount is triggered if two candidates are within half of one percentage point.

Which obviously is more than 50 votes.

So we're probably going to get more recounts as a result.

What was the legislature's thinking in making this change?

This was sponsored by Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who is a Republican from Scottsdale.

And she argued that this would really help improve voter confidence ensuring that there was a second look at races that are closer, especially this being a swing state where you do see a lot of really high stakes and hard fought races that do get very close.

Counties, though, have raised concerns about this.

It's not necessarily a cut and dry matter.

Election officials are concerned that by changing this margin, having more recounts, it's going to put a lot more work on counties, on election officials, departments that aren't necessarily well resourced to begin with.

It could also mean that we actually have to wait longer before we have a resolution to elections.

I was going to ask you about that.

Those of us who watch elections in Arizona, we're used to not necessarily knowing the results on election night.

It takes time.

This sounds like this could really stretch things out.

What's the timetable for a recount?

We haven't had a statewide recount since.

I think it was about 2010.

Right?

I think there was an initiative measure that went back that was recounted and granted that was statewide, but it took between a week or two.

And like I said, it was costly.

Counties are concerned that they have to do more of this work.

It could add to the logistics of putting on an election in the first place.

Now, you mentioned when we started this, we're talking about recounts, not audits, just so people understand audits are already in the law.

And we're not necessarily talking about the audit that the State Senate ordered for the last election.

But walk us through a little bit some of the audit laws that already exist.

Sure.

So after an election, county officials will get together with representatives from the different parties and do a sort of sampling of the ballots, an audit where they take a selection of the ballots cast and actually go over them by hand.

With the recounts that I'm talking about, these automatically triggered recounts.

This would not be by hand.

This would be done generally, not by hand.

This would mostly be done by putting the ballots back to machines, not a sample, but rerunning the ballots.

That's one of the big differences here.

You said it was sponsored by Republican Michelle Ugenti-Rita.

Was this bipartisan when it passed or was this one of those election bills that was strictly on party lines?

There was some bipartisan support.

But like I said, you also heard a lot from election administrators that pointed out that this could put a lot of extra work on a county departments that are not particularly well resourced at the moment.

All right.

Well, thanks for explaining what we will probably all be dealing with here very, very shortly.

Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Information about candidates and ballot questions are on our website, news.azpm.org.

We'll be back with coverage of election results on Tuesday.

And Liliana Soto, thanks for watching.