Rigging Arizona
Regardless of the midterm results, it's clear that something is wrong in the Grand Canyon State
Anyone who has lived in Arizona at some point over the past 25 years is probably familiar with Kari Lake. As the evening news anchor for Fox 10, many Arizonans came to rely on her program for accurate information about the day’s events. For two decades, her smooth voice and appealing on-screen demeanor made her widely recognizable and popular throughout the state.
In the mid-2010’s, Lake noticed something odd about the young journalists fresh out of college and starting their careers in media. These young reporters were ideological, crafting narratives to favor a Progressive agenda instead of asking the tough questions to get the bottom of what really happened.
What began as differences in opinion about journalism eventually grew into an insurmountable rift between Lake and her colleagues. The popular newswoman had developed opinions not allowed in the world of corporate media. She became an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, opposed the government’s heavy-handed COVID regulations, and voiced concern about the 2020 election. Shortly after leaving her decades-long career as a news anchor, she announced her intention to run for Arizona governor.
The mainstream media lambasted her for spreading “right-wing conspiracy theories”. Their utter disdain for Lake was not just rooted in the fact that one of their own turned against them. It was that one of their best turned against them. This woman was one of the most recognized people in the State of Arizona and was renowned for her communicative ability. Her candidacy for political office was going to gain traction with Arizonans, even if they would not all agree with everything she said.
With her “Arizona First” message and her promise to emulate Ron DeSantis, Lake turned out to be quite popular with MAGA Republicans and very unpopular with the establishment GOP and Progressives. Her campaign events drew large crowds, she got endorsements from DeSantis and Trump, and her expertly handled interactions with activist reporters went viral.
When Lake won the Republican primary, it was unclear how she would fair against the Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs. While Lake did not seem very popular with swing voters, Hobbs lacked charisma, did not hold many campaign events, and refused to debate her Republican opponent.
Hobbs’s primary advantage lay in the fact that she was serving as Arizona’s Secretary of State and was in charge of overseeing the upcoming election. She refused to recuse herself, much like the current governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, in the 2018 election. Like Kemp, Hobbs drew criticism for her decision, and accusations arose of her conspiring to rig the 2022 election in her favor.
Even though Lake was polling well in the weeks before the election, her victory was anything but certain. For decades, Arizonans overwhelmingly threw their support behind John McCain, whose neoconservative agenda has in recent years aligned more with Democrats than with the MAGA wing of the Republican party. These former McCain supporters were much more likely to vote Democrat than vote for someone who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections. It was possible for Hobbs to be behind in the polls, but still somehow manage to pull of a victory with support from establishment Republicans.
As election day neared, it appeared from polling data that Lake was pulling ahead. Even though polling data is not always accurate, it seemed her name recognition and charismatic campaigning were helping to win over decent margins of potential voters. In the first week of November, Lake was polling an average of a few points above her opponent. Though the lead was small, Lake’s chances looked pretty good going into Election Day.
Red Flags
Lake’s controversial claims that Arizona elections were poorly managed in 2020 and were likely to be poorly managed in 2022 appeared to be vindicated on Election Day. Reports arose that at 60 polling stations in Maricopa County, particularly in conservative areas, around 20% of the tabulators were not working properly. In other areas, ballots were not printing properly and could not be read by the machines. Other stations ran out of paper. In short, Election Day was an absolute embarrassment, particularly for Maricopa County.
In addition to Hobbs’s controversial decision to not recuse herself, the GOP Maricopa County supervisor, Bill Gates, stated in August after Lake’s nomination that the Republican Party might need to lose in order to find itself again.
Just like in the tight election of 2020, Arizona officials took a week to count the ballots while states like Florida were ready to announce results by the next day. Even if Hobbs were to win by an uncontested margin, the fact that ballots took so long to count is cause for concern. Critics might be quick to point fingers at Democrats for the delayed process, but the slow counting is due primarily to election laws passed under Republican rule. Whether Democrats are utilizing the process in their favor is up for debate.
Something Stinks in Maricopa County
Hobbs and the media proclaimed victory late on November 14, but some internet sleuths who have made accurate predictions on Twitter are calling foul.
Jonathan Cagle predicted on November 12 how the split in District 1 in Maricopa County would be reported.
According to him, election officials were using adjudication methods to suppress votes for Lake and make it seem like she was underperforming. Commingling, placement, layering, and integration were being used to steal the votes and hide the trail. In other words, someone was using the same techniques that criminals use to launder money.
Another interesting prediction came from John D on Twitter. He predicted that on November 14, approximately 20,000 ballots would be missing from the drop. This would give Lake only 57.6% of the votes from the batch and would result in her coming up short in the election. Incredibly, this is very close to what happened on November 14.
The model John created for his prediction was based on numbers shared by Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer on Kirk’s show regarding the batch drop from districts in Maricopa County on November 13. Assuming that all votes in Republican-leaning districts went to Lake, and all votes in Democrat-leaning districts went to Hobbs, the final percentage would be 67.57% vs 32.43%. 18,699 came from an unknown location. Assuming that all these votes were for Hobbs, the resulting percentage would be 54.76% vs. 45.2%. The actual result was Lake 54.6, Hobbs 45.4.
For the prediction on November 14, John used the same model and estimated that Lake would win 65% of the votes if they all dropped. If 70,000 dropped, the result would be 57.6% for Lake. The batch size turned out to be 71,000, and Lake won 56.8% of the vote.
A few assumptions were made in the model. All votes in Republican-leaning districts went to Lake, and all votes in Democrat-leaning districts went to Hobbes. All Hobbs votes would be counted. All votes from an unknown origin would go to Hobbs.
There may have been a little luck involved in getting the correct assumptions so that the model results matched the actual results on November 13. What is interesting is that the model was so accurate on November 14 in predicting how many ballots would drop in order for Lake to get around 57% of the votes and just come up short. Either John D was unbelievably lucky, or something very fishy was going on in Maricopa County.
One theory about the missing ballots is that most of them were for Kari Lake and sent to adjudication. Since voters only had until November 16 to correct the votes, it would be very difficult for Lake to pull off a win unless all the votes could be corrected.
While many people are focusing on the work of lawyers and judges in ensuring the election is run securely, the ones calling out fraud are concerned that the problem lies in the computers. If this is the case, it would not be the first time that adjusting computer settings would unfairly influence an election. Back in the day when it was acceptable to ask questions about election integrity, Bloomberg ran a piece detailing how voting machines could count votes in a certain way that would favor certain candidates or ballot measures. Election officials would not necessarily tamper with the machines. They would simply adjust the initial settings in order to yield a certain result. National elections could not be significantly influenced in this manner, but close races in local elections potentially could.
We may never know for sure whether there was fraud taking place in this election, or whether Democrats used the system to their advantage. What we do know is that the elections in Arizona, particularly Maricopa County, are very poorly managed. There should not be such large scale issues occurring on Election Day and results should not take over a week to record. Regardless of who wins, Arizona could learn a thing or two from states like Florida on how to run a proper election.