US polls: In Arizona, a county of great consequence

PHOENIX, ARIZONA—The tight US presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could be decided in places like Maricopa, considered the United States’ largest swing county representing more than 60 percent of Arizona voters.

Whoever wins Maricopa would most likely win Arizona and its 11 electoral votes, a sizable boost to the race to 270 needed to win the White House.

“Arizona, for a long time, was considered a Red state, a predominantly GOP state,” said Nate Young, chief information officer of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in charge of the mail-in ballots and voter registration. “In previous elections up to 2016, it was almost [always] a scenario where on Election Day, they would call the election [in the state] for whoever the Republican candidate was.”

Young, however, said this is no longer the case. “Demographics in Arizona are changing. More people are moving into Arizona and that’s been changing the way people vote. [Right] now, no one can really say how it’s going to go even five days out.”

Election fraud

Instead of a direct vote, Americans pick their next leaders through a slate of electors who will then vote for specific presidential and vice-presidential candidates based on the votes cast in each state. A candidate must secure the vote of at least 270 or half of the 538 electors to win the election.

In 2020, President Joseph Biden won Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes—way less than 1 percent—prompting his losing rival Trump to claim there was election fraud. The latter claimed, among others, that the county’s electoral database was deleted and that there were thousands of missing or illegally counted ballots despite multiple audits proving no irregularities.

In 2022, Democrat Kris Mayes won the Arizona attorney general race by only a 280-vote margin, defeating Republican Abraham Hamadeh.

“A lot of the other swing states can’t say that,” Young said. “For example, in Pennsylvania, races are decided by 80,000 votes … they didn’t really come close to the margins that we have.”

As of Oct. 31, Maricopa—home to 2.6 million eligible voters—has already received 1.1 million early ballots and could get as many as 300,000 “late earlies” on Election Day, Nov. 5, Young said.

Possible stall in tabulation

But Maricopa officials estimate that it could take 10 to 13 days to tabulate the results of this election. “We haven’t had to deal with more than one-page ballots for more than 20 years. So that was a challenge, to try and get the information for what that would entail for the voter,” Young said.

Maricopa ballots this year consist of two pages because there are multiple national and local contests as well as propositions—including a vote to support or oppose the amendment of the state constitution to provide for the fundamental right to abortion.

At the same time, Arizona is one of the few states that can receive “early ballots” on Election Day itself, Young said.

There is also the signature verification and cure process, where voters are given five days to prove their signatures on the ballots if officials can’t authenticate them themselves.

This year, too, the county was focused on improving its process to dispel electoral doubts, Young said.

Deescalation training

Ahead of the elections, the county has hosted over 150 tours and briefings to explain the process, beefed up its cybersecurity measures, set up temporary fences in its election warehouses, and gave its staff deescalation training to help them deal with harassment and attacks.

There is also a 24/7 livestream inside the election department to provide the public access to viewing the election process.

Ultimately it’s about “showing them that the people running the elections are your neighbors, not some amorphous ‘deep state,’” Young said.

“The world has changed a little bit since 2020 and the fact that people are more aware … I haven’t seen as much civic engagement in the current electoral process as we are right now, which is nice to see,” he said.

(The Inquirer is part of the media delegation on a reporting tour organized by the US Department of State’s Foreign Press Center for the coming elections.)