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Notes -
What was problematic about the Arizona 2022 election?
My overall impression was that the Republicans just ran a slate of terrible candidates and lost. (By a very close margin, in the case of Hamadeh.)
Republican precincts in maricopa county suspiciously ran out of ballot paper(although, yes, Kari Lake and Blake Masters were not good candidates). The same thing happened in Houston and plausibly swung some county level elections(specifically the county judgeship).
I just looked it up again, I'd forgotten about that. It looks like it was problems with toner printing too light before it was fixed, and they were still able to vote, just their ballots were counted separately or something? I'd imagine that would cause some people not to vote, especially with it hitting social media, which yeah, could well have meant that Hamadeh would have won.
Why would you assume that it was interference rather than just an error, though? I'd thought that in those districts the voting was mostly administered by republicans?
Because elections just keep having irregularities that are totally secure and fine but always wind up favoring democrats, in short. I’m not totally familiar with the division of labor in Arizona elections, but in Texas(where Harris county which did the same thing and plausibly swung the county judge election is located), it’s a county level responsibility to run elections, the elections judge has a fancy title but is basically just a clerk. My assumption is that Arizona is the same way; the Maricopa county elections department being responsible for sending out all the equipment(incl ballot paper) and the poll workers just use it.
“Always wind up favoring Democrats”
And yet Republicans win plenty of elections.
Perhaps you recall way back in 2016 when the underdog presidential candidate outperformed polling and won an extremely close election?
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