♪ Music Playing ♪ >> Coming up next on "Arizona Horizon", reaction to president trump's stated plans to eliminate mail-in voting.

Also tonight, the State requires audits of out ESA money is being sprints but officials say the audits are not happening.

And an update on a new strain of COVID-19 detected in Arizona.

Those stories and more next on "Arizona Horizon."

>> "Arizona Horizon" is made possible by contributions from the friends of Arizona PBS.

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>> Good evening and welcome to "Arizona Horizon" I am Ted Simons, president trump's recent call for the elimination of mail-in voting is raising a number of questions not the least of which is if the president even has the authority to tell states how they should conduct their elections for more on this and how such an executive order would impact Arizona, we welcome Jen who reports for Votebeat a nonprofit organizes that focuses on election issues.

Good to see you again thanks for joining us.

>> Good to see you.

>> The president says he's drafting an order to eliminate mail-in ballots, when you first heard about this, what were your initial thoughts?

>> Well, I think just like the last executive orders there will be a lot of challenges to this.

We know what federal law says about who controls how mail-in voting happens.

>> What does federal law say?

>> It says the contusion says it's -- the States control the time, place, and manner of how our elections happen and congress can step in and make rules but it gives no rule to the president.

>> Congress can make rules but congress has natural made any rules and the president has not made rules on a variety of things but the president goes ahead with the executive orders.

Is there any indication that he is -- he said he has people drafting.

So what have we heard lately?

>> Well, there have been mixed reports since then.

Kind of a mention that it might go through congress instead.

So we really don't know if an executive order is coming.

Anything can happen he's done it before and he can do it again.

>> He wants to get rid of voting machines?

Is are these the tabulations machines we have in Arizona.

What is he talking about?

>> He was vague, one of his executive orders tried to get rid of a voting machine that uses bar codes we don't use that here.

Maybe he doesn't wants to use machines at all and hand count votes.

>> Goodness gracious, this is ahead of next year's election, the midterm elections.

For years, mail-in voting -- first of all it was initiated by Republicans and seemed it was a way to get older voters, conservative voters, rural voters an easier way to vote.

Now I am hearing this disproportionately affects Democrats.

Does that make sense to you?

>> We don't have that trend yesterday.

What withy is Republicans created it to boost turnout in the '90s and Republicans and Democrats used it alike.

Now during COVID, Democrats did become more likely to use mail-in voting.

But that doesn't mean that Republicans in our state don't use it or don't like it anymore.

>> So the impact here, such an executive order would come true, what would the impact be in Arizona?

>> Well, -- I mean, there would be tremendous blow-back from the rural areas that rely so much on this system to vote that like to get their ballots fill it out at home and not have to drive more than an hour or more to a voting location.

That would be first.

And then we would also see, you know, there is no proof that this would change partisan turn out in elections.

>> Really?

Okay.

Turn out not necessarily the process would change the numbers a little bit.

Change the dynamic.

>> It would.

75% of our state is on the active early voting list, that's Democrats and Republicans.

No partisan bend to that.

The entire state uses it.

We would have to increase the voting locations to add hundreds more locations so we don't have tremendous lines.

It would really be an upheaval of our current system.

>> If a tabulation machines are included, you need a whole bunch of folks counting as well.

>> Hundreds of people would need to be count that go night to stay for days.

The states that looked at this and Arizona showed it would take days to finish counting our ballots.

>> What is behind in.

The legislature is rumbling of doing this.

And it's mostly by MAGA and mostly far right folks.

What -- is this just basically not trusting elections as they are now?

>> This comes from the 2020 election before and trump was saying mail-in votes were not safe and it took off from there.

Our legislature has looked at cutting back on mail voting since then.

But really, I think that some Republicans like Gina, our GOP chair has said our ballot chase helped Donald trump in 2024 when we went out and tried to collect these mailed ballots.

There is a split on the party line there.

>> And I seem to recall a president trump as a candidate trump in 2020, basically saying, yes, is if you have to vote mail in, vote mail in.

>> Right.

What he saw was after he told people not to vote, you know, the Republican turn out dropped.

And then he lost.

So, you know, he went back and go ahead you need to vote now in '24 and then he won now he's again calling in to question our system.

I just want to emphasize there are, you know, all these claims of widespread voting causes fraud.

We don't have that proof.

What we know is you have to be a registered vote forget one.

You have to prove that you live there and you are a citizen before you get one.

And then you have to sign your name.

So there are protections in place to prevent fraud.

>> Obviously the attorney general in Arizona has said that she would vow to fight any such order.

Secretary of state chief elections officer Adrien Fontes basically told the president to pound sands.

>> That was a direct quote from him yes.

He's made the rounds on national media.

He's making it clear that he would immediately challenge this.

>> I think president trump as citizen trump, he voted in the past with mail-in voting.

>> True.

I think his family members did too.

>> So the future of mail-in voting is what?

What do you see?

What are the tides saying not just Arizona but around the country?

>> I think it's in the middle.

If it doesn't go through I think we'll see more attempts to cut back on mail-no voting.

I know Nevada has changed its law already on this.

And it used to have pretty much all mail-in vote and it's cut back.

You'll continue to see efforts to cut back.

>> Are we seeing any reaction from the Arizona officials I talked about the secretary general and secretary of state.

Anyone else talking about it.

>> The governor, Katie Hobbs said she would challenge it as well.

And she's fought back against Republican proposals in our state, too.

Kind of chip away at our system >> And this also, we should mention this, follows a Republican efforts around the country, some successful so far, regarding redistricting.

And we should note that -- not to change the subject too much here.

But redistricting in Arizona, we have an independent redistricting district.

It's relatively safe in Arizona, don't you think?

>> I did reach out to the senate president Warren Peterson to see if he had heard from the white house to try to pressure them to change our system to redistrict mid cycle and he said no.

So that's all I know on that.

There is not pressure on him specifically.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

>> Yet.

>> And real quickly for those who don't know what Votebeat is, who are you?

>> We have a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering election and voting mostly in the swing states right know and try to cover the basics of how elections work.

>> And you are ramping up for next year or already ramp end.

>> I am ramped up.

>> General Fifield again, from Votebeat.

And until we hear more, mail-in ballots are a real thing and basically continue, but you just never know, do you?

>> You just never know.

>> Thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you.

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>> The Arizona legislature requires the ESA program to work with the State auditor general to create risk-based auditing procedures to ensure that students and parents are complying with rules on how ESA funds are to be use.

But those audits reportedly aren't happening.

Those reports come from Caitlin sievers from the news website the Arizona mirror.

Good to have you here.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> All right, you are supposed to be working with the auditor general, it's not happening, why?

>> So to be clear, they are doing the audits, they just didn't work with the auditor general to create the processes to do the audit.

>> Right.

>> Which is kind of like they are following part.

Law but choosing to ignore another part of it.

>> These risk-based procedures, what are we talking about here?

>> It's basically looking at some of the parental purchases made through the program.

Based on maybe if they had past misspending or in an area that's not to do with tuition for a school.

Maybe purchases from a website or something like that.

Looking at some of those purchases that would be more likely to be fraudulent or misspending.

>> More likely to be fraudulent because of where the items were purchased from or what the items actually were?

Have you not got to that level with this?

>> They have not provided me or the auditor general up to July 21st when they had a meeting about it with the criteria that they were using at all.

>> The education treatment is not complaint?

Are they even trying to comply with the auditor general?

>> They are now.

After a meeting of the joint ledge slay tiff audit -- legislative audit committee on July 21st the auditor general came to the committee and said I have been trying to get them to comply and they just keep blowing me off.

So what do I do?

>> And when the committee, which is made up of mostly people who fans of the ESA program, said hey, you need to meet with the auditor general so they have been talking about the process now.

>> Goodness gracious.

According to your reports, they just basically say it's not a priority compared to other things that they are dealing with?

>> Yeah.

I actually followed up with the department today and the spokesperson said we are doing the audit.

It's a standard process for government entities and businesses.

And we are talking with the auditor general now.

It's been almost a year since the law was put in to place and it says that the department of education and the auditor general's office shall work together to make risk-based audits procedures and that shall means it's not an option.

>> Right.

This is not just bureaucratic mumbo jumbo here this is to make sure that people are doing right by the ESA program, correct?

>> Right.

It's to make sure that people aren't making purchases such as we found out by 12 news through an investigation, of lingerie and appliances and diamond rings.

>> Yeah.

They were all over that one.

Basically the DOA.

Department of education saying that their priority more than this is to make sure that students that want to get into the program are into the program, correct?

>> Yep.

Yep.

Their director just said that's our priority.

And we are just pushing off this meeting until we have time.

>> Because, why, the staff is too small to do anything else?

>> Yes.

it is true that their staff is probably too small for the work that they have to do.

But that doesn't mean that they get to just decide what part of the law to follow.

>> Right.

Right.

Now, the department as you mentioned did their own kind of auditing procedure here with the 2,000-dollar limit, explain what that's is all about?

>> That last fall they had a huge backlog, I think it was 10s of thousands of purchases that were still waiting to be approved and waiting to pay for.

They implemented the process where they just pay for any purchase that's below $2,000 and said that they were going audit those afterwards on the risk-based procedures.

>> Well, if they are not doing it now, what -- are they going to -- can you trust that they will do them later?

>> I mean, that's a good question.

>> Okay.

All right.

That's something that they have to fix.

There was a 2020 audit that you wrote about as well.

That apparently the department did not follow-up as far as documents were concerned.

What's that all about?

>> Are you talking about the safety procedure?

>> I believe so.

But I am not -- it's basically it's another audit, I believe that's what it was but they -- not only did they not follow-up but didn't do the recommendations.

>> Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right I mean, generally the auditor general was very frustrated.

>> Yes.

>> With the department of education for just kind of pushing them off when they were trying to get documents for really anything that they were looking into.

>> And I think the department as you wrote, said that they were too busy -- no, they wanted to wait until a hand book of some kind was released before getting the documents out there?

>> So they -- they were waiting to meet with the auditor general to come up with the risk-based auditing procedures until after the ESA parent handbook came out.

>> Yeah.

>> And the handbook, the parents were angry about possible limits being put into place.

And so it was supposed to be approved in March or April and didn't get a proved until June.

>> Whoa.

>> So that push things back.

>> Okay.

So it appears as though, and correct me if I am wrong, but it appears as though from the reporting here that the department of education is not necessarily taking audits, auditor generals, all of that seriously.

Can we assume -- can we make that assumption here?

Or are they taking them seriously but just saying, we just don't have the resources nor the time?

>> I think it might be a little bit of both.

>> Yeah.

>> I think the auditor general certainly believes that they are not taking something of this seriously.

>> What kind of resource does the auditor general have?

>> I mean, I think what that July 21st meeting is probably good step.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, they are working on it now, but didn't give me a timeline for when they will be done with that.

>> And the ESA program just grows and grows, doesn't it?

>> Yep.

It's -- I think expected to have 90,000 students enrolled and cost a billion dollars.

>> Caitlin Sievers, Arizona mirror.

Good work on this.

The ESA program and the auditor general and the department of education, the whole kit and caboodle the.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

♪ Music Playing ♪ ♪ Music Playing ♪ ♪ Music Playing ♪ >> I am Jeff Bennett, tonight on "the news hour" the nation's leading public health agency is thrown in to turmoil after its director is fired.

That's at 6:00 on Arizona PBS.

♪ Music Playing ♪ >> A new strain of COVID-19 has been detected in Arizona.

The variant is named Stratus and it joins the more prevalent nimbus strain which is associated with what's described as a razor-blade sore throat.

Here to give us an update is Dr. Engelthaler director of infection us disease at T-Gen and director of ASU's health observatory.

Thank you for being mere.

>> Blood to be mere.

>> It's Stratus.

>> It's the latest and greatest name.

>> Are we seeing an increase overall of COVID cases in Arizona?

>> We have seen some indication there is some slight uptick but not true across the board from the indicators that we have.

As you recall, we don't have a lot of great indicators anymore.

We are not doing a lot of testing.

Dough we don't really note the full state of things but it seems like a lower level.

>> Compared to previous years.

>> That's correct.

>> What do we know about Stratus XFG.

What do we know about that?

>> It's just the latest flavor of omicron.

Remember omicron came out that really wiped out all of the other strains that were circulating and that's all we have seen it's different flavors of omicron.

It's still that virus, the one that is -- ended up being less severe, more the upper respiratory disease.

The coughing.

And not so much the pneumonia, the very sick illness.

This is the same thing.

It's just the newest version of it.

>> Okay.

And I mentioned that it was joining nimbus, is it joining nimbus?

Are they mixing around right now?

>> Yeah, we have multiple subvariants of omicron, nimbus, stratus and a few others where fancy nails.

>> All relatively of omicron.

>> And they act the time.

We are not seeing a different disease.

>> I was going to ask you, more so Stratus than nimbus, what are the symptoms?

What are you looking for?

>> It's settled in as a pretty severe cold.

Just like the other corona viruses that circulate around, this is one of them.

For most people it's just a bad cold, bad sore throat.

You know, get the coffee, stuffy type of a thing.

Other than that it usually lasts for a few days and it's gone.

Some people have a more lingering virus for sure and we have the at-risk groups.

>> It sounds tough with the sore throat.

>> It's more clever marketing.

>> Just to make sure that nimbus gets its name out there.

>> That's right.

Will stratus become the most preleapt strain in Arizona?

They work that way, don't any.

>> They do.

It's the spike protein.

The Jean.

It can evade the antibiotic Is we got from the last infection.

Stratus has the right mutations to evades the antibody we got from a year ago.

>> With every strain it's more contagious, is that the case here?

>> I don't think it's true.

Not necessarily more contagious, just spreads better than the other ones because people don't have the rate immune profile.

The right antibodies to knock it down, it is spreading very quickly.

Like all of omicron.

>> As far as vaccinations -- the late every -- the newest.

What's out there right now will Stratus being affected by that?

>> It's a good question.

The formulations in the vaccines were not tested against Stratus it came later.

By and large still going to give some protection.

The immunity that he had from previous infections and previous immunizations also going to give you protection and it's also mostly upper respiratory.

So the overall risk Pat certain going to be really low for most people.

>> And the vaccinations, I guess come fall we'll get a new batch, correct?

>> This is -- they are going to continue to put out new ones.

So, yeah.

It will be targeting the last version.

Which is about six months ago.

So it may not be perfect for what we are seeing once you get vaccinated if you choose to do so.

>> If they are all omicron variants, -- >> You are still getting enough protection to -- that will certainly prevent from you getting seriously ill. >> When COVID-19 hit there were -- we know, it was just terrible as far as the illness, and reaction.

And as it's gone on, it's gone down.

Why is that?

Why is Stratus not COVID-19?

>> Yeah.

You are right.

We are really lacking at COVID 25 now.

This is the version of the virus that settled in to have really the maximal ability to spread can keep generating going between people but not cause the severe illness they are all common cold viruses so it's acting like the common cold.

>> Do we know why that is?

>> It is just that little tweaking of that one Gene where we get the mutations and the spoked protein it allows it to evade our antibodies to keep going.

>> Once Stratus runs its course will get another exotic name next year?

>> Absolutely.

They are getting more creative.

>> At what point do you think, we don't vaccinate against the common cold.

At what point does that downward graph hit a level where vaccinations are EH.

>> As you know recommendations are changing.

>> Yes.

>> And we are still seeing strong recommendations for people that can get serious illness, people over 65, or people with those heart conditions, lung conditions diabetes, others, they are recommended to get the vaccine, that's likely to continue moving forward.

Everybody else is really a decision, that's what we settled into.

We don't have great uptake in people who are not at high-risk because it is like the common cold for most people.

>> You talked about recommendations, FDA approved I guess, an updated COVID vaccine but the recommendations only for 65+ and also younger folks at higher risk.

Is that what we'll be seeing here?

>> I think so.

Unfortunately it makes it harder for people to get the vaccines that are not in high-risk because insurance won't cover it.

>> OH.

>> Likely this year end everybody will be good at least until the end of calendar year.

The recommendations may kick in at the beginning of next year and then it will be more difficult if you really want the vaccine and you are not recommended for it.

>> And I don't want to get new trouble here with the HHS secretary and stuff like this.

But it sounds as though he may call for a limit to vaccinations especially for younger children.

The importance of vaccinations in general, for the little folks, I mean, -- >> I think we have just a great example of the importance of vaccines for kids, which is measles in this outbreak that's been going on across the country.

We are seeing more cases, in Arizona, and communities that don't have high vaccination rates, we have been able to get rid of some of the bad diseases that would make our kids really sick or even kill them.

We have mostly gotten rid of them.

Now we are starting to see them creep back up because the changes in understanding around vaccine as well as now recommendations and rules around vaccines.

>> Herd immunity is that being affected in any case?

>> We are definitely seeing that so like with measles and MMR vaccines, we are getting down blow below that magic number.

We are still high levels.

Probably above 90% but below 95% that means the virus can still find its way around.

>> I found it interesting, the American academy of pediatrics broke in the C.D.C.

They do recommend vaccines for infants and young children.

>> They do.

I think especially for what we are talking about here is COVID.

I do think that what we need is not to die on these, you know, specific hills of ideology around COVID and what happened in the past.

Really let's focus the scientific evidence, what is it saying?

A lot of scientific studies out there.

If it doesn't match up with an ideology we want to protect our kids.

>> Good information, Dr. David Engelthaler with T-Gen and ASU health.

Good informing and good to have you here.

>> Good to be here, thanks, Ted >> And that is it for now.

I am Ted Simons, thank you so much for joining is us.

You have a great evening.

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