And welcome to your vote.

2022 AZPM with a look at this year's elections.

I'm Liliana Soto.

This week we look back at the midterm elections.

It's Veterans Day.

But for election officials, it's another day of counting ballots.

As we taped this show Friday, many of the races are still too close to call.

Christopher Conover begins our coverage tonight with the look at what election officials still have in front of them.

There are all kinds of different ballots that we're hearing about So as we come into Friday and the weekend, what ballots are still left out there?

And what do all these phrases like late Earlies and Ben three that we hear actually mean?

That's a great question.

And what we have left differs depending on the county in Arizona, but Maricopa is mainly looking at the early ballots, the ones that were sent to people in their mailboxes, that people then dropped off at polling places or in drop boxes And that's the substantial amount that we still have to count today, over the weekend.

Then there's provisional ballots, people that weren't able to verify their address or their their the fact that they were registered to vote at the polling place.

They cast a provisional ballot.

That's a sliver of it, though.

And with those early ballots that we're still counting.

Again, just to explain to people, it's something you and I know because we've been dealing with it for years, or at least the last week or month.

Part of the slow down is all those signatures have to be verified.

You can't just rip open the envelope and put it through the machine.

That's a big part of it.

Yeah.

They have a robust signature verification process with a bipartisan team that looks at the signature and compares it to previous election signatures.

Also, what you have on record with your driver's license, any other formal documents the state has and if it doesn't match, you have five days to then cure it under state law after the election.

So we're waiting on those signatures to be cured as well.

OK, let's get into this election.

On Election Day, we heard there were problems in Maricopa County with tabulator.

Carry like the Republican running for governor has started to make a little hay about this.

Back us up because many of our viewers are here in southern Arizona.

Didn't have the problems here.

What happened and what is the end result on this from the beginning of Election Day?

It was clear that there is a widespread problem and it was spreading.

First, it was 10% of locations having issues, then 20%.

Then it ended up being more than 30% of our vote centers here were having problems.

They didn't know at first, but figured it out there.

They were having problems printing the ballots where the ink was not dark enough for the ballot scanner to then read it and tabulate the votes.

So they were having people place those ballots into a separate drawer to be counted down at the county's election headquarters later.

That didn't sit well with many voters that wanted to see them go into the machines.

So as you said, Republicans started to theorize that this was a way that people were trying to disenfranchize their vote just like sharpies in 20, 20.

And now they've assured people these votes will be counted.

And in fact, they started counting them last night.

These are about 17,000 people had to cast ballots this way.

So we're going to see those results come in probably tonight.

And I understand a judge got involved to deal with hours of voting.

And if you cast one of those votes, that was a problem.

Where are we?

Are there still legal challenges to this or should we just expect them to come later?

We're just seeing them a little bit later.

Those would have been counted already in the Election Day.

Results that came up at eight.

8 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Election Day.

Now they're being counted now.

The challenge was to keep the polling places open until ten and have those results not come until 11 from Election Day.

But the judge shut that down just before polls closed at seven.

So let's talk about the rest of the state.

We didn't hear about a lot of problems here in southern Arizona, but how about up north in some of the northern counties or out west?

There were just a few issues.

But these are basically the same issues we see every election.

Something happens at a vote center where it has to close for a little bit or they have to reshuffle.

There was one major issue in Navajo County and they had to then keep the polling, one polling place open longer that went to court.

It was it was settled that way where they allowed people a little bit more time to vote.

Overall, it sounds like smooth election, except for the tabulator issues in Maricopa County.

And we're just going to have to let that one play out.

And even with that issue, the votes are being counted.

No.

One, you know, the lines did get a little longer.

And that was super frustrating for voters.

But there were no cases where people were not able to cast that ballot.

Now, when it comes to counting in the weeks leading up to Election Day, we had the Cochise County Board of Supervisors going back and forth on whether or not they were going to do a 100% hand count.

Judges said they couldn't do it.

They're doing it anyway, as the last I heard.

Yes.

The judge said on Monday, ordered them not to proceed with 100% hand count audit.

We have a state prescribed hand count audit that every county has to do.

If the political parties show up for it, where it looks at a sliver of these of these votes and hand counts, a certain portion of the races on the ballot.

Now, that state prescribed audit just looks at a sliver of the votes.

Now, what they wanted to do was a full hand count in Cochise County, and it looks like they're starting to move forward, even though the judge shut it down Now, the case went to an appeals court and it's waiting there, but it wasn't expedited by the court, meaning this won't be solved in time for the canvasing of elections.

The finalizing of results, which means that they could move forward outside of the court order.

And there obviously be challenges to that.

But for now, it is shut down And as you said, this is the audit they've already counted or in the process is all the counties are of counting.

This is just the audit, the recheck.

So it won't hold up the results necessarily.

Correct.

All right.

Well, thanks for spending some time with us and explaining what's going on with counting and clarifying some of the issues that maybe we only heard headlines about down here.

I appreciate you having me on.

On election night, Republican gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake spoke with her supporters and talked about ballot problems Democratic candidate Katie Hops used hard time in front of supporters to also talk about ballot concerns.

And as they continue to come in and our numbers go up, up, up like they did last time when we win, first line of action is to restore honesty to Arizona.

Election it's now.

God did not, God did not.

God did not put us on this fight because it was going to be easy.

Not one thing that we've had to go through has been easy.

We beat back billions We beat back a billionaire and the establishment.

OK, let's just be frank.

We have had everyone come against us.

Tens of millions of dollars in spending coming against us.

Nothing has been easy when corruption has risen to the level that is out right now.

It takes tough, strong people.

Are you tough and strong Are you willing to continue this fight Are you willing for incompetency to play itself out and the victory to come at us?

I am willing to wait for that.

And when we win and I think it will be within hours, I think it will be within hours.

We will declare victory and we will get to work.

Turning this around, no more incompetency and no more corruption in Arizona elections I kind of feel like it's it's a it's a Groundhog Day.

We had November 3rd 2020 that was called incompetency, one on one.

Then we had August 2nd 2022 incompetency in elections 202.

And now we're at incompetency in elections 303.

We need honest elections and we're going to bring them to you.

Arizona, I assure you of that.

Thank you all so much for being here.

And thank you for all.

Thank you all for your support throughout our entire campaign.

I'm going to keep this short because I know we're expecting a long evening.

We have seen the first results come in, and we are feeling good about what we're seeing And that's because of all of the hard work that everyone in this room has put in.

You all made calls.

You knocked on doors.

You talked to your friends, your family, your neighbors about what's at stake in this election.

And most importantly, you all got out and voted Now that the campaign is over and polls have closed, the county election officials are hard at work tabulating those votes and they're going to be tabulating them for the next few days.

I know that we're all eager to find out who won each of these incredibly important races.

But we need to be patient and wait for every vote to be counted because every single vote matters and every single vote counts equally.

Whether you voted by mail dropped out here a ballot in a secure drop box yesterday or voted in person today.

We know my opponent and her allies have been sowing doubt and confusion throughout this campaign.

And it's unacceptable that they were spreading misinformation today while people were exercising their freedom to vote.

I have every confidence that the counties administering this election conducted free and fair, conducted a free and fair election, and their results will be accurate, but they will take time.

So prepare for a long evening and a few more days of counting.

And for now, let's go.

Enjoy the evening.

Thank you.

Many of the races are still far from decided, but themes are starting to develop for political watchers.

Christopher Conover sat down with members of the two major parties to look back at election night, talk about the governor's race.

No matter how it comes out and as one of you said, this is neck and neck and those of us who spend a lot of time watching these races aren't surprised by that.

But there's no mandate here.

So going forward, whoever at the end of we won't even say the day, maybe the week, probably next week comes out with the win on this How do they move forward, be it Kari Lake or Katie Hobbs?

Without that big mandate, it wasn't like Florida.

That was a 20 point win for Ron DeSantis.

Well, I'll take it up.

I'll say that.

If K.T.

Hobbs were to win, I think said she certainly would not be coming in with a mandate, particularly when she's going to be dealing with slightly, it seems like a Republican dominated legislature.

So she's going to have to come in and pick and choose which battles she's going to want to fight against the Republican controlled legislature.

I think if Terry Lake wins by just one vote, she's going to come in and say, I have the mandate to do whatever I want and she's going to be very aggressive on that.

I would I would bet a lot of money on that.

And particularly when you have a fairly solid Republican legislature, solid meaning not so much in numbers.

I mean, they're not going to gain a heck of a lot of seats, maybe one in the Senate, maybe one or two in the House.

It will increase their margins by a little.

But you don't have any what I would call the more centrist Republicans left that might challenge the Republican leadership.

I think you're seeing Republican caucuses that are going to be very united on a lot of the social issues and probably on the big budget and fiscal matters.

And that's where Lake is going to be able to capitalize on that.

Chad, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, you know, I think to kind of build up a high base point, you know, Kerry Lake, regardless if she wins by one vote or she won by 20,000 votes or, you know, she'd won by a million votes, she thinks she's going to have a mandate regardless of the vote count.

If she does win this race and I think, you know, I think that that's going to come back to haunt her and the GOP over the next year or two, if that is the case.

You know, I was saying this yesterday, and I'll keep saying it if I'm the Republicans and I'm looking at what's going on right now, I am not looking forward to 20, 24, quite frankly.

To him, his earlier point, this should have been a year where Republicans dominated the elections in Arizona.

We are still a republic in leaning state with a Republican majority of voters.

And you have a national mood that wasn't great for Democrats.

A president that's underwater in popularity and an about economic situation situation that should add up to running up the score.

If you're the GOP and a state like Arizona and they're hanging on by their teeth right now to win some of these races and the economy is quite maybe pick up a couple of seats in the legislature.

So that doesn't bode well for them in 2024.

So if Kerry comes in and continues with this MAGA agenda, and this MAGA mindset, I think that 2024 is going to be a very bad year for the Republicans.

I think it's going to be tough anyways, but I think she'll just make it exponentially harder.

And on the flip side, I think, I think Katie Hobbs understands she doesn't have a mandate.

You know, Katie is a former legislator.

She's been in the governing sector for, for over a decade now and understands how to govern.

And I think she'll understand that she's going to have to try to work with the Republicans to the degree she they they're willing to work with her.

Right.

And work on budget issues and some of those key issues where they can find some common ground maybe.

So I think Katie will understand she doesn't have a mandate.

I think Kerry will will not understand that regardless of the final vote tally, whenever it is this week or next week, when it came to that campaign as it was coming down to Election Day, I talked to some of those centrist Republicans who said, you know, I don't like Kerry Lake.

I don't like that side of the party, but I just need Katie Hobbs to do something.

Give me one thing.

And they were saying that they didn't felt like Hobbs gave them the one thing and they weren't sure what they were going to do with their ballots.

You all are both kind of on the inside, if you will, especially as former lawmakers, but as consultants.

Were you hearing anything similar?

And what do you think about that idea?

Chad, we'll let you go first on it, OK, yeah, I heard that from some folks, too.

And that and the Republican side or maybe the right leaning independent side of things.

And, you know, I can't speak for them.

I'm not sure exactly what what what they were looking for, though.

You know, Katie has I just mentioned this a minute ago.

Katie has a track record of governance.

I mean, she I think she's done a phenomenal job as secretary of state and upholding the rule of law there and making sure the elections process processes were done correctly.

Right.

And she has a track record of being a leader in the Arizona legislature.

I mean, people know what she stands for.

And she talked about that and she put out policy positions throughout the campaign cycle.

She talked about water.

She talked about how she's going to approach the budget outsourcing, approach taxes, I mean, she talked about immigration.

She talked about the border.

You know, and quite frankly, Terri Lake was really more just bombastic and kind of soundbite driven.

Right.

I mean, it was again, it was more of a Trump style campaign.

So, you know, I don't know exactly what they were looking for.

I you know, I know a lot of people talked about the debate or lack thereof.

I still stand by the fact that I think that I think Katie Hobbs did the right thing in not debating Terri Lake.

I think it would have gone nowhere.

I think that was demonstrated in the Masters debate with Mark Kelly actually letting Masters had a platform to blatantly lie in that debate, which is what I think Kerry Terry Lake would have done in a debate.

So I think Katie did the right thing and not debating Terri Lake.

And I know a lot of people still were hung up on that, but I think that was still the right decision.

I my.

What are your thoughts I think Chad has a lot of great points, but I do fundamentally disagree with that decision.

I think that that became the story.

And every time and and Terry Lake was very adept at doing this is that when she was pushed on some hard issues, she'd always pivot to that.

Well, look, I'm here to talk.

I'm willing to talk about these things, but my opponent won't talk about these things.

So why aren't you asking her about it?

So she was able to, in a lot of ways, jujitsu herself out of a lot of tight situations.

And it gave her an opportunity to constantly pound Katie Hobbs as being really scared.

And I think Arizonans don't like that fundamentally.

Now, I've seen some weakness in Arizona history.

As we all recall, Jan Brewer probably had the worst debate in the debates in the history of debates and she still won and she still won handily.

And one of the reasons was that I think even if Kelly Hobbs would have been in that back and forth session with Terry Lake, she could have shown that she had the mettle to be somebody that was going to be tough, especially that she was going to have to be if she's going to be governor, where the Republican controlled legislature.

So that was a missed opportunity for her because I think if she would have done it, it would have been done.

It would have been a non-story.

And then she could have focused on those areas that she talked about as being more policy driven, that it could have been they could have cut through the clutter, but unfortunately, she could never cut through because it was constantly 24 seven.

Oh, she doesn't want to debate Kerry.

And so I think that tactically was a big mistake.

All right, gentlemen, we'll thank you both for spending some time with us to break down what we know at this point and beyond.

Thank you, Joe.

Now for the election in Arizona.

This year was near 50%.

In the coming weeks, pundits will look at exactly who came out to vote.

As our Christopher Conover found out, younger voters will be part of that discussion.

So you spent time looking at, I guess we'll call it the youth vote the younger voters especially 18 to 24.

Let's start at the higher level here in big terms what did you find out how did 18 to 24 year olds register for this election versus previous.

Well one of the things that is really key to young people being new to an election cycle is making sure that young people are registered to vote.

And for some young people this can be a pretty significant step if they don't have other people in their life who are talking about elections or who who are active voters.

And so we check on this we check on this for 18 to 24 year olds and also 18 or 19 year olds who just age into the electorate.

And when we are looking at that during the 20, 22 election cycle, we found that right before the election there were about half of states who had over the number of young people registered in 20, 18 in the 20, 22 election, which was a pretty significant thing because the 2018 election was a high watermark for youth voter participation in the midterms since the voting age was lowered and we actually found that there were 5% more young voters in Arizona in 20, 22 than there were in 2018.

And since Arizona's youth voter turnout skyrocketed in the 2018 election, this was a pretty pretty huge opportunity for people to have young people participating in the election.

I know it's early but looking at previous selections the difference between registration and actually filling out a ballot because it's easy to register especially on college campuses did you see those numbers correlated or did a lot of people register and then just not vote?

Well this is a good question and for young people it can be a confusing process to understand.

Now that you're registered, how do I cast a ballot if I want to vote in-person, where do I do that?

And so we can't utterly assume that that's an easy process for all young people.

And but what we usually see is that a significant portion of young people who are registered do actually turn out to vote.

Now, that's generally that's not about the specific election cycle.

In this specific election cycle.

We don't yet have that information about Arizona.

But we do know that youth voter turnout in the 20, 22 election cycle, our early estimate is that it's the second highest midterm youth voter turnout in the past 30 years.

Talking about some of the Arizona data, I saw that you had 5% up for 18 to 24 year olds but 18 and nine year olds.

Those first time voters it was actually down for them.

So people who were eligible two years ago but chose not to get registered did this time.

Any thoughts on why that is.

We have a really hard time across the country making sure that young people even before they're 18 years old, are thinking about elections and thinking about voting and so you're right, when we looked at the data in October and throughout the summer, we saw that 18 and 19 year olds were really traveling 20, 18 when it comes to youth voter registration in the state of Arizona.

Now there's a bunch of reasons why this could have been the case.

The 2018 elections are considerable amount of organizing among young people around issues like gun violence and it was a high watermark.

Now at the same time there's so much that we can do to address this issue.

We call this the process of really trying to grow voters and that can include media, it can include news media talking about how you do things like that, asking parents and families to actually talk to young people and make sure they know this information.

It can also include nonpartisan voter education in schools, combining the process of voter registration with learning about elections and voting.

Many states, although not yet Arizona, have pre-registration where you can register to vote even before you're 18 years old.

So there's a lot of people in our communities who can make sure that young person, no matter their race and ethnicity, no matter their family background, have the opportunity to understand that they can register to vote and participate in our democracy.

As you said, Arizona saw about a 5% bump in that younger voter registration, which is great but then there were states, I think, saw Michigan.

24% bump.

What does that say about Michigan or what does that say about Arizona?

There's a lot of factors that influence youth voter registration numbers by state, and they differ, as you point out, very dramatically by state.

One of the things that Michigan has going for it is the fact that it has automatic voter registration.

And so that means that people who go through the DMV and through very particular processes are automatically registered to vote and have to opt out instead of having to pop in and so that's something that states with higher registration numbers do allow.

Arizona allows online voter registration, which is fantastic.

But some states do have policies that go beyond that.

And what's really critically important in some of these states is making sure that these policies really reach young people so they know that they can do things like use online voter registration.

They know how that process works.

They know where it is.

Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean that everyone knows that it's there.

So we've seen these big increases you mentioned in 2018 that gun violence was something that drove a lot of younger voters to register and get involved.

Do we have any data on what is driving this big increase across the country, not just Arizona this time around?

You know, this is such an important way to connect to elections for a lot of young people, connecting through issues that directly affect their lives or people who they care about.

And largely that's what we've seen in our research that young people are motivated to vote because of issues that affect their lives, not necessarily always because of a partizan affiliation.

We're seeing many young people choose to not be affiliated with a particular political party some are, of course.

And so what issues are being talked about or organized or what young people are organizing around in communities really matters to in elections cycle.

And we've consistently seen young people organizing, you know, obviously in the 2018 election, the 2020 election was huge.

And we've seen young people organizing around reproductive rights this year.

We've seen young people organizing around climate justice, we've seen young people, you know, really be talking about things continuing to talk about things like gun violence prevention.

And so the ways in which young people talk about those issues but also get their peers involved in talking about them as well and connecting that to registering to vote is what's really critical here because just having a policy passed in Washington, D.C. doesn't automatically magically mean that young people.

No, no, no, it happened.

Right?

So the communication that elected officials and candidates were doing to talk about that those issues and the connected to elections was also really critically important.

All right.

Well, thanks for talking with us for a few minutes.

Thank you.

And that wraps up our weekly TV coverage of your vote.

2022.

I'm Liliana Soto.

Happy Veterans Day.

And thanks for joining us.