An Arizona Swing County Could Stall Election Results

PHOENIX — Inside a squat constructing ringed with a chainlink fence and concrete obstacles in downtown Phoenix, election employees on Nov. 5 will start a grindingly gradual tally of each poll forged within the huge expanse of stucco and saguaro that’s Maricopa County, Arizona.

In what has grow to be the nation’s final swing county, the depend right here may decide whether or not Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump would be the subsequent U.S. president. It is also more likely to decide the winner of a intently watched race that would resolve which celebration controls the U.S. Senate.

It is without doubt one of the most consequential battlegrounds within the nation. Which means voters, campaigns and other people world wide typically should wait greater than every week to be taught who received the county, and with it, statewide races within the swing state of Arizona. This 12 months, election officers warn it may take so long as 13 days to tabulate all the ballots in Maricopa.

Learn extra: Why We May Not Know the Winner on Election Evening

The drawn-out depend has made the county a middle of election conspiracy theories spawned by Trump. It’s additionally made Maricopa a key a part of the previous president’s marketing campaign to put in those that supported overturning the final election in 2020 into positions overseeing future ones.

However the cause it takes so lengthy is straightforward. With its 4.5 million residents, Maricopa has the next inhabitants than practically half of the states within the nation and is house to 60% of Arizona’s voters. Election employees should observe voting legal guidelines — which had been accepted by Republican-controlled legislatures — that gradual the depend. And it is without doubt one of the few counties within the U.S. that’s so evenly divided politically that races are sometimes shut.

That’s made the county “the center of everything,” says Joe Garcia, a frontrunner of the Latino activist group Chicanos Por La Causa, noting it’s the inhabitants middle of Arizona, its middle of development and residential to the state capital.

“So the power structure, the money and the growth is all here in Maricopa County,” he mentioned. “If you can win Maricopa County, you’re probably going to win the whole state of Arizona.”

Maricopa’s place isn’t simply on the middle of Arizona politics. The county has been a daily cease for presidential candidates as they appear to clinch Arizona’s 11 electoral votes — together with Trump and Harris and their campaigns this 12 months — and it’s a fulcrum on which nail-biter races that may decide management of the Home of Representatives and U.S. Senate pivot.

The fast-growing county additionally has grow to be house to a stew of key demographic teams within the battle for the White Home: a rising Latino inhabitants, retirees, youthful, newly arrived voters and a broad and deep conservative inhabitants wrestling with a pivotal splinter group — college-educated, extra prosperous Republicans who’ve soured on the celebration’s extra pugnacious, and at occasions anti-democratic, flip beneath Trump.

It wasn’t all the time like that.

A ‘small town’ booms

Judy Schwiebert grew up in western Phoenix within the Sixties, when the now-booming metropolis was what she describes as “a pretty small town” and the most important occasion of the 12 months was the three-day rodeo.

The whole lot stopped for the rodeo parade, as horse-drawn carriages, marching bands and dancers made their manner by way of city. Colleges closed for the complete three days, remembers Schwiebert, who’s now a Democratic state consultant. In 1969, the county was nonetheless house to fewer than 1 million folks, lower than one-quarter the dimensions it’s right now. With about 4.5 million residents, Maricopa County now has a inhabitants much like all the state of Kentucky.

“Over the years here I’ve seen it grow and grow,” Schweibert mentioned.

The realm turned a magnet for conservatives like John Kavanagh, a retired New York Port Authority Police officer. After 20 years of policing, Kavanagh and his spouse headed west, to Maricopa County. They went in 1993, as a result of his spouse couldn’t stand the chilly in New York and Florida had an excessive amount of humidity and was “overstocked with New Yorkers.”

Kavanagh was like loads of different individuals who moved to Arizona within the Nineties — middle-class people fleeing colder locations and what they noticed as financial and political dysfunction for a sunny, reasonably priced, and what they perceived as a cleaner metropolis.

“A lot of people came from those other cities, and they don’t want a repeat of what they left,” Kavanagh mentioned.

In 1993, the county’s inhabitants was 2.3 million. Republicans dominated the state legislature and Maricopa County politics. As a younger state of transplants, it was simpler than elsewhere for brand spanking new arrivals to enter Arizona politics. Kavanagh was elected to the state’s Home of Representatives in 2006. Now he’s serving his first time period within the state Senate; the county’s inhabitants has practically doubled since his arrival, and its politics have modified.

Arizona now has a Democratic governor, elected in 2022. Each its U.S. senators — Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema — had been elected as Democrats, although Sinema has since grow to be an unbiased.

Kavanagh attributes the county’s leftward shift to a big selection of things — from societal adjustments he sees as pushed by the media and academia to folks transferring to Arizona for higher-paying jobs that require extra training.

“Hopefully there’s a point where people look and see what the result will be if that trend continues,” Kavanagh mentioned, predicting a robust November for his Republican Occasion. “Just look to L.A., look to New York, you know, look to Seattle. That’s where the continuing shift left will still occur. So let’s do a hard stop and maybe go a few steps back to the right.”

Clearly, many who made the transfer to Maricopa over the previous few many years weren’t like Kavanagh. The county’s conservative, low-tax strategy attracted companies in addition to people, and people corporations then attracted employees who typically had been completely different from the older transplants to Arizona.

Kevin Henderson moved to Maricopa in 2010 at age 23, after residing in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. A Democrat who works in catering, he was pleasantly stunned by life in a then-red state and its residents’ live-and-let-live perspective.

“The people were very friendly,” mentioned Henderson, now 37. “We are fortunate that, with such an eclectic group of people, we are very understanding and accepting of other people’s views.”

On the similar time that individuals like Henderson got here from different locations inside the USA, elevated migration to Arizona from Mexico additionally prompted political change.

Within the Nineties, President Invoice Clinton’s administration strengthened California’s border, pushing unlawful migration to Arizona, which already had a sturdy Hispanic inhabitants. Immigration rapidly turned a political flashpoint, main many within the rising Latino inhabitants residing in Maricopa legally to really feel that Republicans had been demonizing them.

The largest shift got here in 2010, when Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature handed a regulation permitting native police to cease folks they suspected of being within the nation illegally. The U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned the regulation, however it energized the state’s Latinos to arrange in opposition to Republicans.

The regulation, which opponents dubbed “Show Me Your Papers,” was the harshest anti-immigrant regulation within the nation, and it modified Arizona politics, Latino activist Garcia mentioned. It led to boycotts and protests. Nationally and internationally, folks knew about Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio — who pushed for the regulation — and his crime sweeps geared toward immigrants.

”That galvanized the Latino group like nothing ever had ever carried out earlier than. It galvanized the Latino group greater than all of the voter teams put collectively,” Garcia mentioned. “It was a curse, but it was a silver lining. It was a blessing because Latinos figured out that, you know what? If we’re not involved politically, then we lose.”

Republicans swept the state in 2010 and their hammerlock on Maricopa County appeared more likely to proceed even amid rising Latino dissatisfaction.

However that will change, as a brand new GOP chief emerged.

Republicans rethink

The primary rumblings that Maricopa County may swing in opposition to the long-dominant Republican Occasion got here in 2016.

At the same time as Trump was successful the county and Arizona, Republican Sheriff Arpaio misplaced his bid for a seventh time period. Arpaio was one thing of a precursor to Trump, identified for his starvation for media consideration and jousting with journalists, a hardline stance on immigration and a willingness to go after his critics — he even arrested a Republican county supervisor who criticized him. Trump finally pardoned Arpaio after the sheriff was convicted of contempt of courtroom for refusing to obey an injunction in opposition to racial profiling of Latinos.

Gordon Keig voted in opposition to Arpaio. A lifelong Republican, Keig was more and more uneasy along with his celebration’s rising hostility to immigration and SB 1070, the controversial 2010 regulation. Although he’s a developer and fan of low taxes, Keig was annoyed at how the GOP state legislature saved chopping Arizona’s already-low taxes, jeopardizing training funding.

Keig couldn’t deliver himself to vote for Trump or his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. And as soon as Trump got here into workplace and started what Keig noticed as his erratic, feud-driven strategy to governing — together with combating with Arizona’s fashionable senior Republican Sen. John McCain, whose grandchildren Keig’s personal daughters knew — Keig couldn’t take it anymore. He switched his registration to the Democratic Occasion.

He did get some pushback. Keig mentioned some buddies questioned how he may grow to be a Democrat, however others understood.

“I just felt like the Republican values weren’t, weren’t there for me anymore,” he mentioned. “But I think, you know, even some of my close friends that are still very, you know, active Republican Party members, understand and accept because they, I think they may agree with me that (what) buoyed a lot of the party has gone in a completely different direction.”

In 2020, Keig voted for Democrat Joe Biden. The change by voters like him is seen by evaluating Maricopa’s votes within the 2012 presidential election with 2020. A crescent of extra prosperous neighborhoods ringing central Phoenix from the north to the southeastern edge, the place a brand new Intel chip plant has attracted high-tech employees, switched from Republican to Democratic. Native political operatives dubbed the world “the flip zone.”

The flip zone largely tracks the place Maricopa’s extra educated residents have clustered. As soon as much less educated than the nationwide common, the county now boasts a barely larger share of adults with four-year-college levels than the nationwide common — a key indicator of voting Democratic within the age of Trump.

As Maricopa County’s political leaning modified, so did the state’s. In each presidential election since 2000, the Republican had received each the county and the state, although Trump’s 2016 margin over Hillary Clinton was smaller than earlier GOP victories. However in 2020, Democrat Biden received the county, and Arizona.

Trump falsely claimed he received Arizona after his 2020 loss, and he and his allies assailed anybody who argued in any other case.

Watching the response of some native Republicans after Biden received the state made Keig much more comfy along with his change.

When the Republican speaker of the Arizona Home refused to award the state’s electors to Trump, the previous president’s backers primaried him and compelled him out of workplace. When Maricopa County’s Republican supervisors refused Trump’s calls for to query the vote tally, they, too, had been focused. Threats in opposition to Maricopa County Supervisor Invoice Gates obtained so dangerous he fled his home.

“These are people I really, really admired,” Keig mentioned. “And they were just run through the mud.”

Denials and conspiracies

Trump’s lie that he received Arizona made Maricopa County one of many nation’s hotbeds of election denial and conspiracy theories.

After the 2020 election, Trump supporters turned up outdoors the county elections workplace, some armed and lots of waving Trump and American flags, for a “Stop the Steal” rally. His then-attorney, Rudy Giuliani, held hearings at a Phoenix lodge.

The Republican-controlled state Senate launched an error-riddled overview of Maricopa’s dealing with of the 2020 election that included inspecting ballots for indicators of fibers displaying they had been secretly made in China. The county turned one thing of a vacationer attraction for election deniers who got here from different states to look at the present.

County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who defended the accuracy of the county’s election outcomes, was singled out for criticism by Trump himself, and Richer and his household confronted threats.

In 2022, Republicans who sided with Trump in opposition to Richer and the county supervisors ran for high statewide places of work, and all misplaced. The shedding candidate for governor, Kari Lake, made so many claims concerning the election being stolen and allegations in opposition to Richer that he sued his fellow Republican for libel.

Lake is working for Senate this 12 months in opposition to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.

Richer says the explanation some Republicans stay skeptical of the best way elections work within the county isn’t as a result of there’s something particularly sophisticated or uncommon in the way it counts votes. It’s as a result of Maricopa — situated in a onetime reliably crimson state the place Biden in 2020 defeated Trump by a margin of about 11,000 votes — could also be the most effective place to undermine confidence in nationwide elections.

“I don’t think it’s the complexity of the process. Our process looks pretty similar to most Western states,” Richer mentioned. “I think it is that this is where the action is.”

Certainly, Trump, in a marketing campaign look within the county in 2023 known as the county’s Board of Supervisors, which shares election duties with the Recorder, crucial within the nation.

The 4 Republicans on the board additionally rebuffed Trump’s pleas to overturn the election in 2020. Two are retiring after threats, and a Trump ally received the GOP main to switch one in all them. A 3rd was ousted in a main by one other Trump supporter.

In July, Richer misplaced his Republican main. The winner, state Rep. Justin Heap, has questioned the ballot-counting course of.

A part of what fuels the conspiracy theories is sheer disbelief that Maricopa, a nationwide magnet for conservatives for many years, may go Democratic.

Michelle Ugenti-Rita is an Arizona native who sought a seat on the county Board of Supervisors however misplaced in a GOP main in July. Chatting with a gaggle of Republicans gathered in Scottsdale to look at the controversy between Trump and Biden earlier this 12 months, she denied the shift is because of precise votes.

“I am tired of the media colluding with the Board of Supervisors and gaslighting us to make us feel like we’re liberal, like we’re California,” Ugenti-Rita instructed the group.

Nonetheless, many in Maricopa are keenly conscious they’re residing on a partisan razor’s edge, intently balanced between the 2 sides. Take Sandra Heyn, an 80-year-old retired trainer from California who got here to the county three years in the past to be nearer to one in all her grown sons.

She’s a Republican and religious Lutheran who’s uneasy about Trump, although she voted for him in 2020. However she’s bemused at how, when she meets folks simply in line on the grocery store, the dialog rapidly turns to politics.

“I’ve had people, some people tell me, ‘Oh, you’re from California. We don’t want anybody liberal coming here.’ And then I’ve had other people say … ‘If you’re not liberal, keep moving.’”

Why an entire depend takes time

The conspiracists have seized on how Maricopa reviews its poll counts in a single giant burst after Election Day after which in dribs and drabs for greater than one other week, when it lastly turns into clear who received. There are three most important causes for this — Maricopa’s measurement, the closeness of races within the county and Arizona’s voting legal guidelines, which had been written and accepted by Republicans.

Maricopa is the second-largest election jurisdiction within the nation. Solely reliably Democratic Los Angeles County is bigger.

Maricopa reviews its outcomes far sooner than Los Angeles, however it takes longer to seek out out who received Maricopa, which creates a misunderstanding of dysfunction within the vote depend there.

The rationale Maricopa takes longer is as a result of Maricopa — and Arizona general — is so evenly divided these days that a couple of thousand votes make the distinction. So information organizations have to attend till nearly the final poll is counted earlier than declaring a winner.

In 2022, a Democrat received the state legal professional basic’s race by 280 votes. In much less aggressive locations, from Florida to California, the victor is often clear inside minutes of polls closing as a result of the tens of hundreds of excellent ballots wouldn’t be sufficient to shut the hole.

This election, voters are casting an extra-long two-page poll that takes longer to tabulate, so it may take as much as 13 days earlier than they end counting, Deputy Elections Director Jennifer Liewer mentioned. The timeline is much like the variety of days it has taken in latest elections to finish the depend. Related Press analysis discovered it took 13 days for Maricopa County to complete counting within the 2018 basic election, 11 days in 2020 and 13 days within the 2022 midterms.

Arizona’s mail voting regulation additionally drags out the depend. It permits voters to return mail ballots by the shut of polls on Election Day. In 2022, some 293,000 voters — representing one-fifth the whole vote in Maricopa — dropped off their mail ballots on Election Day.

Mail ballots take longer to depend as a result of, earlier than they are often tallied, the envelopes should be scanned, the ballots sorted and the voters’ signatures inspected to make sure they’re legit. Some states like Florida require all mail ballots to be in earlier than Election Day so this course of is over when the polls shut. Due to Arizona regulation, when Maricopa’s polls shut it’s simply starting.

Extending the depend even longer is a provision in Arizona regulation that enables voters to “cure” their ballots as much as 5 days after Election Day. Which means if the election workplace thinks the signature on the poll or another technical element is improper, the voter has 5 extra days to return in and repair it so the poll counts.

Normally the variety of cured ballots is comparatively small, however in elections the place each vote is crucial to figuring out the winner, the curing course of drags the suspense out much more.

Richer famous that, whereas these processes might sound overly advanced to some within the U.S., they’re issues that Western states like Arizona have been doing for a century or extra. Mail voting dates again to the nineteenth century within the area.

“We vote differently than most of the Eastern United States does,” Richer mentioned.

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Related Press reporter Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.