Ducey wants a new law passed to lead to faster election results

PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey wants a big change in state law that he said should lead to people knowing the outcome of all contested races on Election Night or soon after.

The Republican governor, on the heels of participating Monday in the formal certification or canvass of the November election results, said he has trust in Arizona elections. He and other state officials signed the paperwork formally declaring the winners.

Those winners include Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who defeated Republican Kari Lake in the race to succeed Ducey as governor. But Lake, along with some other losing candidates, already said she will take advantage of the five-day window following the canvass to ask a judge to overturn the results.

“I think we do them well,’’ Ducey said of elections. But he said there are things that can be done to increase voter confidence.

Most notably, he said that involves getting finality quicker.

Ducey said people who want to drop off their early ballots at polling places on Election Day should be able to have them opened and counted there along with those who actually vote that day. Now, counties send those “late early ballots’’ unopened to a central location where the signatures on the envelopes must be compared to those already on file.

Only after that happens are the envelopes opened and the votes tallied. That process, which can take days, occurs only after all other ballots are counted.

Ducey’s comments followed claims by Lake that election officials were deliberately slowing the count in order to delay declaring the winner, which she contended would be her.

“They’re slow-rolling the results, and they’re trying to delay the inevitable,’’ she told Newsmax three days after the election.

As it turned out, the certification signed by Ducey and others Monday shows Lake lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.

The certification process, which also involved Secretary of State Hobbs, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Republican Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, went off without event.

“But I would like us to have the winner decided the day of the election — (or) the day following in a highly competitive race — or as close as we can get,’’ Ducey said.

He brushed aside questions of whether such a system might gum up the process, leading to longer lines at polling places as people who used to simply drop their early ballot envelopes into boxes and leave now would have to produce identification and then have their ballot envelopes opened.

“That’s the price of being a citizen and wanting to participate,’’ he said.

As long as races are close, controversies will continue, said Ducey, who under state term limits was not permitted to run this year for a third term.

Getting the last-minute early ballots counted immediately would mean counties would be “much closer to 100% of the votes counted by the close of business.’’

Legal challenges expected

The state’s counties certify their own election results, which are then sent to the Secretary of State’s Office. Monday’s canvass is not the last word on election returns but simply sets the clock running for what are expected to be several legal challenges to the outcome.

Lake has alleged that Election Day issues in Maricopa County affected her loss.

Those include issues where tabulators at some vote centers could not read the ballots printed on site and that some people who went to second locations did not have their votes counted.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

County officials acknowledged the problems. But they insisted no one was denied the ability to cast a ballot, even if it was not tallied on site.

Lake contends the problems, some of which led to lines at some voting centers, had an outsize effect on Republicans, who are more likely to vote on Election Day than Democrats, who generally prefer casting early ballots.

Two other legal actions already are written and waiting.

Republican Abe Hamadeh, the losing candidate for attorney general, is using the Maricopa County Election Day issues to claim the results showing Democrat Kris Mayes got 510 more votes should be disregarded.

Hamadeh filed suit last month. But a Maricopa County judge tossed the case, saying his filing was premature.

A similar fate met failed Republican congressional candidate Josh Barnett.

He went to court last month, not over his own election — he came in third in the August GOP primary — but instead with a laundry list of allegations about broken laws and rules in the general election. Barnett, representing himself, said that precluded the state from certifying the winners on the races for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and U.S. senator, all won by Democrats.

But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Alison Bachus said Barnett’s complaint, regardless of how it was worded, was an election challenge that could not be filed until after Monday’s canvass.

And Oro Valley Republican Mark Finchem, who lost his bid for secretary of state to Democrat Adrian Fontes, also has vowed to sue, and sent an email to supporters on Sunday asking for $120,000 to cover the cost.

But Finchem, who lost his race by more than 120,000 votes, may be having trouble lining up legal help. On Thursday, he posted a message on Twitter saying “No RNC lawyer is calling me to help,’’ a reference to the fact that the Republican National Committee has interceded at least to help Hamadeh in his case.

Lacked drama of 2020 event

Even without litigation, Monday’s action is not the last word in two of the races.

The 510-vote difference between Hamadeh and Mayes is well within one-half of 1 percent of all votes cast. That triggers an automatic recount.

But that recount is done through electronic tabulation; there is nothing that requires a full hand count.

A similar situation exists in the race for state schools chief where Republican Tom Horne has an 8,967-vote edge over Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman, also within the recount margin.

Brnovich acknowledged there is more to come before the results are final.

In a prepared statement, the attorney general said he and Ducey “merely serve as witnesses’’ to the certification by Hobbs, saying his participation serves “as neither an endorsement of the election results nor the lawfulness under which the election was conducted.’’ Those issues will be decided through individual election challenges, Brnovich said.

Monday’s formal canvass lacked the little bit of drama that occurred two years ago when Ducey, about to ink his approval to the certification, got a call on his cell phone with the ring of “Hail to the Chief.’’ That’s a ringtone he had assigned to the White House to ensure he would not miss any calls from then-President Donald Trump or Mike Pence, his vice president.

Ducey ignored the call from Trump, who was trying to get Republicans across the nation to refuse to certify results showing that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency.