Associated Press
For all the mockery Florida has received for its difficulties in counting votes, it's not the only state that has run into trouble in 2012. As of the weekend, by some counts, roughly 30% of the Arizona's 1.8 million were still outstanding, including over 300,000 votes in Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix.
Given such a large number of uncounted votes, some of the closer statewide contests in Arizona could, in theory, still see significant shifts. One of those races, in turns out, is the U.S. Senate race.
The Arizona Senate race has already been called by networks for Republican Jeff Flake, but with many votes still to be counted, Democrat Richard Carmona isn't ready to give up yet.
"We're watching it very closely, and we're going to make sure every vote is counted," Carmona's spokesman Andy Barr told TPM on Monday.
He said the campaign has not ruled out taking action if the race tightens.
Based on the information currently available, Carmona trailed by about four percentage points, and after the race was called by news organizations, the former surgeon general conceded the race.
But the circumstances have changed. Carmona trails in the latest tally by about 79,000 votes, and with roughly a half-million votes uncounted, that margin no longer appears insurmountable.
Democrats shouldn't get their hopes up -- Maricopa County is not a heavily Democratic area -- but the vote tally going forward is well worth watching.
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Saint sheriff Joe Arpaio , the Saviour for the undisciplined is probably safe because he has communicated with all the usual , divine , suspects . This , and in his abject humility , he accepts that his dominion over outdoor living and pink are a weakness of his good friends in the Latino community .
Rachael, Please look in to what is happening in Arizona. The rest of the country is counted and Maricopa County (Phoenix area) and Pima County (Tucson area) is thousands of ballots yet to go, yet they call the races. Arizona needs your eye and investigative tallents. Please help us, racism is terrible here.
Thank you for your work,
Dolores
You're right, Dolores. While Rachel has a point about Maricopa County not being overly Democratic in its general leanings, she did not take into consideration the demographic of most of the people who were tricked into using a provisional ballot that were not required to use one: Latinos. Latinos may seem to be ideologically conservative, but their vote this election has been overwhelmingly Democratic. There are also tens of thousands of votes in Pima County that have not been counted yet, and still more provisionals, most of which, again, were probably not necessary. Something MUST be done.
Unless something has changed, we also still have about 1/3 of the ballots uncounted in Cochise County as well.
Arpaio and Carmona are not the only races that were called before all the votes had been counted.
McSally was the "declared" winner for Gabby's old seat, which Ron Barber has just WON two months ago.
And as of right now, Rob Barber is ahead of McSally.
Those posters above that have questioned the use of provisional ballots are correct. Something went terribly haywire in the entire way the voter rolls were put out. Out of my family of seven people, two had errors. One was completely dropped, the other had been marked for a mail-in ballot even though she didn't mark the box for one, and she certainly never received one in the mail. That's two out of seven! How many more out there were effected?
None had changed addresses in literally decades, and none have hispanic sounding names, so it can't even be put up to racist motives. The two with problems were also registered as independent. Personally I think it was just plain and simple very ineptly handled. Perhaps if the Secretary of State was not so focused on finding Obama's birth certificate and being co-chair of the Arizona Elect Romney campaign, it might have left more time to actually deal with holding an election?
I just read a post on "Live, Local, Late Breaking" that a voter named William Odle had lawyers file a suit on McSally's behalf to exclude 130 ballots from the Barber-McSally House race b/c the ballots were left open after being counted. I wonder how Mr. Odle knew these ballots were left open? did he peek and determine that a vote for Barber was a vote to exclude??
The rest of the country has not been counted either. There are over 70,000 testimonies to election count, vote fraud, and polling anomolies. This election has been stolen by the hacked electronic voting machines put in place by the two major political parties. It has been rigged from the onset. This election needs to be done over with paper ballots, hand counted at the precincts in public before they are whisked away and the chain of custody is broken and contaminated. Half the votes aren't in and the mainstream media has declared obama a winner. I'd like to see the verification of the votes. There is no way to know if the votes being tallied by the electronic voting machines in secret were done correctly. FEDERAL ELECTION FRAUD
John Husted Alert! Since he restricted our voting rights, we are going to become the next generation of election officials. Please help us Occupy Democracy!
www.ohioelectionstraining.sos.state.oh.us/
Oh, America. You are so very welcome!*)> Buckeyes are not merely nuts!
Chad with what Ohio did for the President and Sherrod Brown I'm a new life long Buckeye fan. Sorry Longhorns.
Check the provisionals and uncounted absentee as well.
Also the "spoiled" ballots. That's where they really like to sock it to the poor and Democratic voters.
Arizona is rapidly passing Florida in skulduggery and may soon add San Diego when that city secedes from California.
This is wonderful news!! I was very sad Carmona lost.
Its not just the US senate seat, there is also a US house seat, maybe two, that are in the swing. Any of these seats would be good wins, all three of them would be excellent. On top of all that, Sheriff Joe Arpaio may loose the election if all the votes are counted. Besides for the general incompency of administration in counting the votes and the swing of the election, these counting fiascos (as well as the fiascos if administrating election day itself) are challenges to a bedrock American value - small d-democracy. I would think real conservatives, regardless of party, would be up-in-arms about getting the votes counted correctly. Then, again, I'd think they would be up having a cow about not allowing people to vote in the first place.
While Maricopra county is not heavily Democratic, it is entirely possible that the uncounted votes are from poor latino neighborhoods which may well be Democratic heavy.
The Republican Party has made it clear what they mean when they support freedom, is the freedom to be Republican. Even if they wake up to the hypocrisy of their suppression, it won't be because they've had a sudden moral realization, it will be because voters brought them to their knees and left them with no other option except extinction. The same party that continually claims they are the party of freedom, will never be able to hold the torch of freedom when it comes to expanding and improving our election process. Because even if they join up now to improve our system, it will be behind Democrats who have been carrying the torch all the way.
well said, jst1voice!
Yes Rachael, please keep an eye on AZ.. This debacle with the count in Pima and Maricopa Counties is really not right.. Pima went blue for Obama, Carmona should have been right there with him! Thanks for your great show and online blog!
Mare
Thanks for posting this story. It is almost getting no coverage with a lot of attention being given to the shiny sex scandal story.
I doubt Carmona can make up the total but that is the same thing they said about Al Franklin before he took the early lead and never looked back. The best part about the '08 MN seat was seeing his opponent Cole flip-flop on recounts. I still doubt Carmona can overcome the defect.
Hopefully the two House races stay blue! 201-234 is only 17 seats away from sanity.
I've checked the election totals by county and Pima County went very heavily Democratic (2/1). There were 26,000 provisional ballots and 54,000 early voting ballots not counted yet. If these ballots reflected the same division as the polling site ballots, there could be 55,000 votes for Carmona.
Currently, the Democrats are ahead in five of the nine Congressional districts, although Ron Barber is only up by about 502 votes in CD2. Even if he wins, it will probably end up in a recount.
I don't know if the provisional and early voting ballots favor Democrats or not. Sadly, due to limited time, the provisional ballots may not be counted fully. Voters only have two days to show their ID to the election headquarters.
Let's hope our Democrats (Sinema, Pastor, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick and Barber) all make it through and start to turn AZ blue.
I'm one of those 54,000 early voters and am in disbelief that my vote means so little to this state. as a recent transplant from Iowa the Arizona Republican mindset is quite disturbing!!! while the idea of a fixed election is not something new, it is quite repulsive when it becomes one's lived experience! help us, Rachel! the local news does not have one word about any of this; I have to tune-in to your show to know what's going on in Arizona!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for reporting on this Rachel! We need your smart analysis of this mess we have here in Arizona. I guess it is easy for a state to stay red if they just don't bother to count the blue votes.
This looks like a job for Eric Holder. Brewer and the Republicans are going to be working overtime to make sure the next election gets stolen without fingerprints. It will be interesting to see what new subterfuges are added to Republican state voting laws.
Holder is resigning. Too much pressure, what with him knowing about Petraus for quite some time and not telling Obama. Of ourselves, on top of fast and furious. Obama has lost confidence in him.
I second / third all the calls to please shine a light on AZ!
Is anyone watching out for that 10% "red shift" that comes from large precincts only. It usually turns close races if it is not caught. DU had an article posted about this and how to check for it. Races this close should be watched closely...and recall it is always republicans glitches in the voting process seem to favor...and being this is Arizona...scrutiny comes to mind.
This may be a good time for the Justice Department to take over the AZ vote counting.
On Election Day 2012 I served as a volunteer (paid) worker at a voting precinct in Avondale. Our job, at the polls, was to issue provisional voter ballots to those who were not on the voter lists, had been mailed Early Vote ballots and now wanted to vote a regular ballot, or were listed on the ballots but their identification did not agree with what appeared on the ballot.
As in other precincts we were inundated and swamped with the need for provisional ballots and twice ran out of and had to wait for supplies to be delivered. The last provisional voter finished voting about 8:00 PM and all of our provisional and early vote ballots were delivered to the collection point by 9:15 PM.
Not one person was turned away.
The bulk of the provisional ballots issued were for those had allegedly been mailed early ballots. Many complained that they had not received the ballots, but more said that they had received them but had ignored them and many said that although they had received them they had not requested the ballots and therefore did not fill them out. We also had a sizable number of first-time voters who were not listed on the roles.
A final note - the problem of uncounted provisional and early ballots (dropped off on election day) could have been eased considerably if people had used the ballots mailed to them and returned them in a timely manner, the Board of Elections was not solely to blame.
(The writer is a strong liberal Democrat.)
KA- you'd better be careful. You'll be stripped of your liberal status if you demand personal responsibility too often.
Why should someone that did not request an early ballot, fill it out and send it in? I wouldn't either. And I'm an indie.
Why must voter registration be geared towards the election cycle? This just provides an easier target for anti-voting groups and legislatures, and increases the likelihood that local boards might be overwhelmed by the spikes in volume -- especially before presidential elections.
On his/her 18th birthday, each eligible voter should be sent a voter-registration form and/or information on how to register. Every child born in the US receives a social security number. This means that there already exists a system with the tools to track the age of every native-born American.
A process of continuous registration would alleviate high volume (and target rich) registration just before presidential elections. Another result is that approximately half of new registrants could learn of problems with their registration in "off-year" elections (if they actually go to the polls to vote).
#15
Still a lot of work to do to make sure everyone finds the most accessible way for them to participate within the system. But in the meantime, thanks for your work at the polls.
While Maricopa County is not heavily Democratic, the majority of the outstanding votes are from Hispanic voters, either because of conscious efforts to suppress their vote or through sheer incompetence. Because of this, there is sufficient cause to think that Carmona could still overtake Flake and that Sheriff Arpiao could finally be booted out.
Absolutely, Steve--they really helped Sinema move ahead in my moderate district. The outstanding votes, even from Maricopa, are definitely in the Dems. favor.
(btw, "they" = the votes, not the Latino Community)
Kyrsten is ahead by about 5,000 votes in CD9, which includes Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert.
I'm all for booting Sheriff Joe; it's time for his dangerous barbarianism to be locked up and the key thrown away!!!
if one race is overturned, do we have legal action against what appears to be corrupt (certainly incompetent) gov't agency? how about civilly responsible if not criminally responsible, again recourse? This action cannot go unanswered or what will they try next time?
He's doomed anyway. People who cast provisional ballots need to go and show their proper ID afterwards, and I haven'ts seen waves of people doing that in Pima COunty where I live. All of those ballots aren't going to be counted because of our godawful voter suppression, i mean ID law.
Seems like it's time to take the federal elections (President/Members of Congress) out of partisan hands at the State level and establish national guidelines and voting procedures for all. Have it run by civil servants, and darest I say it....like the MVA. Just come in, get a number/letter and step up to window and vote. Ummmm maybe not. But do set up a non-partisan group to run the national elections....
One Federal agency that comes to mind as being COMPETENT and NON-PARTISAN is the Secret Service. Presidents and candidates of both parties (and even third parties) trust them with their lives, regardless of who is in the White House, or WAS there when their leaders were appointed. And that is only their secondary job (the less publicized primary job is fighting counterfeiting). Since they are already involved in elections anyway, protecting all Pres and VP candidates, they are a natural fit for supervising elections. And their knowledge of document integrity would be helpful in designing ballots for security and secrecy.
Vote tabs: http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/AZ/42050/111911/Web01/en/summary.html;
Got ballots? Cameras on Maricopa counting site: http://recorder.maricopa.gov/elections/Live_Feeds/btcgallery.aspx (check out North view)
A few notes:
--This evening our new (& my!) LD (9) was called for Kyrsten Sinema (D) & tea party Vernon Parker conceded.
--Barber (Gabby's former aide, was injured in shooting) on the path to win his/Gabby's district (LD 2)--will have to de-concede his race.
--Looks like 5/9 of our US House seats will go blue
--Dems picked up seats on the state level
Not looking good, but I'm not going to give up on Carmona until all votes have been counted. w/ regard to Carmona, definitely can't ignore Pima--far more blue than Maricopa & he's well known in Pima. (I could not even enjoy Obama's election night win b/c Carmona was defeated.)
So, let me get this straight...West is a crazed f*** because he won't concede though he's lost by only .5%, but Carmona is a hero for not conceding even though he's down by 4%???
Yeah, but West's votes are all counted, and even though he lost by an amount greater than needed to force a recount, he's suing to seize the ballot boxes.
Carmona may be down 4%, but there are still a lot of votes out there that haven't been counted, including Democratic heavy Pima County.
OMG.....I'm stuck in-between two of the worst states in the Union.....Arizona and Texas....I sure hope they don't infiltrate into our pristine state of New Mexico. These people need to regain their sanity.
I was making calls at the DNC when a voter told me he had gotten a robocall from Flake misdirecting him to the wrong polling location. There is an FBI investigation that will hopefully prove this a case of voter suppression. Rachel, please do a story on this.
Who wants a flake in the Senate?
Flake is one of the many big Mormon family names in the state--Mormon royalty if you will.