Republicans from the state that gave us Sheriff Joseph Arpaio are working overtime to thwart a wave of mail-in ballots that could tip the scales to a new, Democratic senator from the Grand Canyon State.
After Ann Kirkpatrick’s Tucson-area district victory secured Democrats a 4-chair majority of Arizona’s nine-man congressional delegation, Republican hand-wringing kicked into high gear over the too-close-to-call race left by Jeff Flake, the former GOP senator who did a brave thing once.....kinda.
As Arizona voters watch polls to divine a winner between President Trump-touting Republican Rep. Martha McSally - a critic of then-candidate Trump who embraced the orange moral vacuum after Trump won in 2016 - and Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, state Republicans had a better idea.
No doubt haunted by the 12-day, come-from-in-front defeat suffered by McSally during her first congressional bid in 2012, Arizona’s GOP delegation, which has boasted a controlling majority of the state senate and house of representatives since the start of Michael Jordan’s final title run, suddenly realized their elections were being bogged down by the longstanding, decades-held practice of manually confirming the signatures on each mailed ballot before opening and counting them.
With 75 percent of state voters opting for snail mail, and McSally holding a 14,000-vote lead Tuesday night, they suddenly realized the grave inefficiency present in a system predicated upon dozens of (presumably decrepit) volunteers sifting through paper ballots while the republic watches with bated breath.
A suit filed yesterday by four Republicans cites the state’s limited number of recorders (15, to be exact) and their lack of uniform code, which plaintiffs allege could allow for improper vote changes and fixes. Democrats, spotting the jig during its ascent to the stratosphere, allege voter suppression while urban votes lay contested.
So now we wait...Well, Arizona waits. But we stopped fucking with them around the time they refused to make MLK Day a holiday.