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Final Arizona election results could take days

Voters cast ballots for the midterm elections at the Northern Arizona University Skydome on Tue, Nov. 8, 2022.
Ryan Heinsius
/
KNAU
Voters cast ballots for the midterm elections at the Northern Arizona University Skydome on Tue, Nov. 8, 2022.

Election Day was yesterday, but it could be days before we have official results for most major races. KNAU’s Bree Burkitt spoke with Northern Arizona University politics professor Fred Solop about when we might officially know who won.

We saw the initial election results start rolling in Tuesday night. Are those accurate? Or should we expect those numbers to change?

I expect the numbers to change. They're accurate — as far as what's been counted. We know that the counting process goes through different waves, and, in those different waves, different ballots get counted. So, the initial results, which came out at 8 p.m., were early ballots that were dropped off up to a couple of days before election day. And then we start to see — later in the evening — we start to see the election precincts roll in their data starts coming in. And they come in at different times, we have rural communities, we have urban communities that are accumulating their information and sending it to election central at different times of day. Even in Coconino County, we have ballots coming in from Havasupai that are backpacked out of the canyon, and it takes time. So, we know that things are coming through in different waves, the precincts come in, and then after election day, we'll start to have signature verification on late-arriving early votes. And things will be going on for a few days from now.

So what's the process after they start tallying all these ballots? How does that work?

Well, they tally the ballots and they keep accumulating. They keep adding to the vote tallied until we get to 100% of precincts and we get to 100% of early votes being cast. We also have late-arriving absentee ballots from people living abroad — military members who are living abroad who send their ballots in Actually, in Arizona, they have up to 20 days to count those votes. So, we may not have all the votes actually in till a few weeks from now.

And how have we seen the vote-counting process change in light of what happened in 2020, and the controversy surrounding that election?

Well, there's a lot more attention brought to the processes. We know in Cochise County that folks want to do a hand count of every ballot and that just would have really slowed the process down. That’s being contested. So there's a lot more attention and scrutiny paid to the process. But I will say that, from my point of view, this process is managed by county recorders who are very dedicated to elections as an institution. They really believe in the system, and they want this system to work out. The vote tabulation is observed by both Democrats and Republicans, that there are many people involved in this. There's a lot of transparency to the process, more transparency even than there was in 2020.

What's at stake with this election — especially here in one of the most watched races in Arizona?

Well, nationally what's at stake is the control over the House of Representatives, which is likely to go to the Republicans. It could be control over the Senate. One flipped seat means that the Republicans will control the Senate. And if Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, that is going to define the next two years. Now, if we look at Arizona, if it turns out that the Republicans have a clean sweep of the statewide seats, we become the gateway for Trump to run for president. The road to the White House starts in Arizona.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Thank you.

Bree Burkitt is the host of Morning Edition and a reporter for KNAU. Contact her at bree.burkitt@nau.edu.