It’s not going to be smooth
Here’s a little primer on what to expect:
Wondering when we will know election results? Check out my latest interactive with @baseballot!
We used primary data to see how fast votes where counted in the primary + tracked down info from state officials on what to expect.
Click on any state for more information on what will happen when the polls close. Of course, we also added “Races to Watch” buttons that will direct you to each race’s forecast.
Originally tweeted by Elena Mejía (@elena___mejia) on November 7, 2022.
And then there’s this crazy nonsense…
The morning before polls opened in Cochise County, Arizona, a judge still had not ruled on how local votes would be counted.
On one side of the case were state officials and voters who opposed an effort to audit Tuesday’s election by hand. Arguing in favor of an audit were some of Cochise County’s Republican officials, backed by lawyers previously involved in a chaotic 2021 election audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County.
Cochise, a rural county on the southern border, is one of several to preemptively call for an audit of its 2022 midterm vote. Although counties routinely review their elections, this new wave of audit enthusiasts is cozy with conspiracy theorists, and promotes methods like hand-counting ballots, which elections security experts describe as one of the most surefire ways to accidentally introduce errors into a vote count.
This is very stupid unless you plan to have partisan vote counters. They wouldn’t do that would they??
[…]
Two Republicans on Cochise’s three-person board of supervisors voted in favor of the audit last month, only to be hit with a lawsuit from a local voter and an alliance of Arizona retirees, who called the hand recount “unlawful, chaotic, time consuming and unnecessary.” Arizona’s secretary of state also weighed in with a brief, warning that a recount could cause a delay in Arizona’s election, where multiple election-denialist candidates have already raised the specter of fraud in the midterms. Arizona officials have previously raised concerns about conspiracy theorists using election delays as fodder for claims of election fraud.
But Cochise County officials say they’re within their rights to audit the vote by hand. The group struck back in court, represented by Bryan Blehm, an attorney who previously worked for Cyber Ninjas, the group behind a freewheeling “audit” in Maricopa County. In a filing last week, Blehm argued that opposition to the hand count was actually part of a plot to benefit Democratic Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs.
I know you are but what am I?
[…]
Some of the loudest calls for preemptive audits come from Republican strongholds in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Officials in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming and York counties have already committed to hand recounts, although York County officials said it would only examine ballots from three of its 161 precincts.
York County’s decision to hand-audit its election came after a meeting between York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler and Audit the Vote PA, the York Dispatch reported. ATVPA, an election-denial group, previously made headlines for an error-riddled “canvass report” of Pennsylvania voters. While conducting that survey, ATVPA volunteers knocked on doors and asked questions about residents’ votes, leading to York County locals accusing the group of intimidation and voter suppression efforts. ATVPA has also attempted to remove electronic voting machines in York County.
Wheeler, who did not return a request for comment on Monday, told CBS21 that the hand recount “is not tied to any election issues in the past. This is not an indication that we believe that prior election results that we certified are inaccurate.”
Other counties have entertained calls for hand counts, only to be stopped in the courts or by local officials.
A conspiracy-driven coalition campaigned to audit Pinal County, Arizona’s election, but was voted down by county officials this month. And in Nye County, Nevada, a county clerk who falsely believes Donald Trump won the 2020 election announced that he would conduct a hand-counted audit of his county’s vote. That effort was already underway in late October, when Nevada’s secretary of state halted the effort.
In a statement, Nye County announced that it would resume the hand count “as soon as our plan is in compliance with the Court’s order and approved by the Secretary of State.”
Republicans sue to disqualify thousands of mail ballots in swing states
The lawsuits coincide with a systemic effort by GOP leaders to persuade voters to cast ballots in person, not absentee
Buckle up…