Joel Strabala: 80,000 Ballots Left, and What the Numbers Say So Far
Pima County will not have final results until next Tuesday or Wednesday. That was the message from Joel Strabala, a member of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission and chair of Legislative District 17, who joined Kathleen Winn on Thursday morning to explain where the count stands and what the early returns mean for local and statewide races.
Curing, Tabulation and the Hand Count
Strabala said roughly 81,000 ballots remain, plus an unknown number of provisional and conditional ballots, which numbered about 305 in the primary. They fall into several piles. About 23,000 early ballots from drop boxes and late mail still need signature verification, with just over 16,000 of those from dropped-off ballots. About 3,500 were still in signature verification as of that morning. Another 2,211 are in the "curing" process, which gives voters a chance to fix a problem so the ballot can count. Strabala said ballots can end up there for many reasons, including a damaged ballot, an empty affidavit envelope, a husband and wife putting the wrong ballot in the wrong envelope, a missing signature or phone number, a voter who has moved, or a voter who voted twice. The recorder's office contacts voters, and the parties help by calling their own voters when they do not answer. Roughly 400 of the ballots in the curing process are Republican ballots.
Early voting numbers tell part of the story. Strabala said about 35,000 ballots dropped off early or ID verified at vote centers are in the mix, and that roughly 17,500 voters ID verified in person during the election. The party expects Election Day voters to break two Republicans to every Democrat, and Strabala said that ratio is likely to hold for the early ballots dropped off late. "It looks like about 81,000 ballots," he said.
On Saturday morning, volunteers from every party will conduct a hand count to confirm the tabulators read ballots correctly. Strabala said the sample covers three vote center ballot boxes and seven bags of 250 ballots, roughly ten containers in all, and teams count the ballots for around ten races or propositions and compare the human total to the machine total. If they do not match, the team has to find the mistake, which can take two to four hours. "The hand count is putting humans in the loop," he said. The political parties also run test ballots before and after the election to confirm the same results. Winn said she has done the hand count many times, that the tables mix Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Libertarians, and that it is simply counting and organizing. Strabala said the Canvass report, due in three to four weeks, will show which sites were busiest.
Statewide Propositions and Pima County Votes
Strabala went through the ballot measures as they stood Thursday morning, with the caveat that none are final.
Prop 141 (ban on tracking vehicle mileage): Pima County voted no by 18,000, but statewide the yes side led by almost 30,000, which he called a toss-up.
Prop 142 (prohibiting DEI): Pima County said no by about 100,000 votes, and the state was also leaning no. "No, but when their kids don't get a job, maybe it'll come home to roost," Winn said.
Prop 144 (the state-level voter ID and citizenship measure, which also bars foreign money): failing in Pima County by about 75,000 and statewide by about 138,000. Winn and Strabala were puzzled. "That should be illegal," Winn said, noting that it is already illegal federally.
Prop 316 (capping the grocery tax): Pima County said yes by 40,000 and the state is ahead by nearly 500,000.
Prop 317 (declaring drug cartels terrorist organizations): Pima County said no by about 6,000, but statewide it leads by about 300,000.
Prop 318 (protecting girls' sports): Pima County is ahead by about 7,000 and the state by nearly 380,000.
Prop 319 (banning photo enforcement): Pima County said yes by 38,000 and the state is ahead by nearly 480,000.
Prop 320 (spending 60 percent of education funds in the classroom): losing in Pima County by 53,000 and statewide by about 60,000, in the toss-up range.
Winn took a bright side. Because the vote totals differ from one measure to the next, she said, "people actually took the time to read these."
Local Races
On the local ballot, Strabala reported that Prop 421, the Tucson Electric Power franchise renewal, was losing 71,500 to 58,000. Winn said she respects TEP and wants a franchise agreement but objected to what she called political add-ons, including the $2 million a year for heat resilience, which she said did not pass the smell test. She predicted a new agreement would be back on the ballot in March. The Reid Park Zoo sales tax continuation passed roughly two to one. Vail's Prop 423 was ahead 17,000 to 9,000, and the Northwest Fire District's Prop 424 bond passed 33,000 to 13,000. Amphi's Prop 426, to sell unused property, passed 36,000 to 12,000.
The county's Prop 425, which Winn called a blank check for the Board of Supervisors, was the closest. Yes led by about 1,300 votes with 80,000 ballots to go. "I'm going to tell you that our Election Day voters are more conservative," Strabala said. "They insist on voting. They don't like early voting." Winn said she remained hopeful it would fail. Sahuarita's Prop 428 was within 200 votes. Tanque Verde's Prop 429 led 3,366 to 2,613, which Winn called a limited, specific-purpose tax. Pima Community College's $250 million bond (Prop 430) led about 162,000 to 153,000, and JTED's $250 million bond (Prop 427) was ahead by about 9,000. Winn noted that the two programs overlap and said the redundancy deserves questions. Oro Valley's general plan (Prop 431) passed about 18,000 to 4,600. "We should try to be more like Oro Valley," Winn said.
All sitting judges appear to have been retained. Raymond Carroll was elected Justice of the Peace in Precinct 7, incumbent Crystal Foster led in Precinct 8, and Letitia Martin was ahead for Constable in Precinct 3.
LD17 and the Independent Voters
Strabala said LD17 Republicans Chris King (Senate) and Rachel Keschel and John Winchester (House) were behind by roughly eight to ten thousand votes, with Pinal County's portion of the district split evenly. The remaining ballots could still change things, he said, but "it's a big hill to climb." He pointed to independent voters as the key swing group. Winn said Pima County Republicans hit about 66 percent turnout before the remaining ballots, and credited the volunteers for what she called a record effort. "Don't listen to the nonsense out there," she said. "If anyone criticizes what was done, I didn't do it." She said the results reflected a national cost-of-living backlash, and that Republicans failed to counter Democratic messaging that the Republicans were to blame for rising prices. They also praised elections director Constance Hargrove and her team for working 26 to 27 straight hours.
Dave Smith: "We Need Real Leadership in the Senate and the House"
Dave Smith, a former Pima County Republican Party chair, offered what he called the game-film review. Winn noted that Arizona voters got some things right and some wrong, and that the constitutional republic is still standing.
Smith said Republicans should not read Tuesday as a verdict on Donald Trump so much as a revolt against the party's congressional leadership. "People are angry that Trump's the head coach," he said, "and our quarterbacks in both the Senate and the House failed us completely." He called House Speaker Mike Johnson well-meaning but ineffective, said the Senate blocked judges and bills, and aimed his strongest criticism at Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "We had a complete playbook from Trump," Smith said. "None of the plays have been run. That's what everybody's angry about." He pointed to what he said were unfulfilled promises on the SAVE Act, on dismantling DEI and on bathroom policies, and said the party has not made the case for the Iran war or fixed the economy. He said he understands the motive for the tariffs but that Trump should have pivoted once he lost in court.
A Populist Party or a Country Club
Smith said the party has to choose between populism and what he called a country-club Republican tradition. "We are either a populist party, Make America Great Again, America First, or we're a country-club bunch of Republicans in the Rockefeller tradition," he said. He said Republicans have to add emotion to their pitch. "We are pablum. We are soft-spoken. We need to become swashbuckling politicians. Emotion drives the vote, and Tuesday was the greatest lesson in that I've ever seen." He described an independent business-owner friend, 42, who predicted the result by comparing the energy at the polls to two years ago, when there were lines out the door. He said the party has also lost young men, the group he called its backbone in 2024.
Winn, who credited her county's work, said the party did the turnout job and missed independents, and said she takes responsibility for that. "We did reach out to them, but they're independent because something happened in either the Democrat or Republican Party that they didn't want to participate," she said. She suggested the Democratic Party is also split and that its newly elected socialists will pull against its leaders. Winn noted that Republicans still control the House and Senate for about six more weeks and could use that time to get something done. Smith said Marana's Election Day voters struck him as about 70-30 conservative, which bodes well for Congressman Juan Ciscomani.
Alaska's "Decoy Dan"
Smith asked listeners not to let the midterm wave wash away what he called a dirty trick in Alaska. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is in a razor-thin race with Democrat Mary Peltola, while a second candidate named Dan J. Sullivan, nicknamed "Decoy Dan" by the press, drew a few thousand votes. With a quarter of the Alaska vote still uncounted and ranked-choice voting in play, Smith said the second Sullivan could change the outcome. "It's crooked," he said, adding that he is not sure it was illegal but is sure it was immoral. He said it exposes the character of the Democratic Party and that Republicans need to remember it.
His closing was a plea to refocus. "America has a revolution every two years. We just experienced one. Now it's time for us to have one back," Smith said. "We can start answering in about a year."
Tim Sandefur: Goldwater Wins Against the Cage-Free Egg Rule
Tim Sandefur, vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, joined from Phoenix to discuss a court ruling the Institute won this week on behalf of Tucson restaurateur Grant Krueger. A Maricopa County judge struck down the Arizona Department of Agriculture's cage-free egg rule, which the department adopted by regulation in 2022 while a related ballot initiative was pending.
"The court declared the Arizona Department of Agriculture's so-called cage-free egg rule to be invalid," Sandefur said, "that the department adopted specifically for the purpose of preventing the democratic process from operating." The department pointed to a statute that lets it adopt whatever rules it wants for raising chickens. Sandefur said that amounts to a blank check. "The legislature makes the laws, not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who think they know better," he said. An agency's job is to execute the law, he said, so whenever it acts, "you should be able to point to a law that gives it the power to do what it's doing."
Affordability
Responding to Winn's question about food costs, Sandefur said he sympathizes with animal welfare concerns but cannot accept that it is okay for the government to make food more expensive. He noted that Governor Katie Hobbs herself repeatedly postponed implementation of the rule, which he said showed the government considered it too expensive to enforce. "By the government's own admission, the same bureaucracy that created the rule is saying it's too expensive to actually implement," he said. "How is that even rational?" Sandefur said he has not yet had time to call Krueger because the week has been so busy.
Bureaucracy and the Next Four Years
Sandefur said the court relied on a state law Goldwater wrote, which says an agency cannot act unless specifically authorized to do so. "It should be sort of Schoolhouse Rock, how a bill becomes law," he said. He noted that Pima County's moratorium on data centers is still in place and cleverly labeled temporary. Asked whether a Democratic governor and what Winn said looks like a Democratic legislature would expand the bureaucracy, he laughed. "Is the Pope Catholic? That's what these people do." Elected officials, he said, like bureaucracy because they can say "it wasn't me."
Sandefur said Goldwater is not disheartened. "This is what we were made for," he said. "We sued Republicans, we'll sue Democrats. We stand for the Constitution, not for any particular party." He said the party that wins thinks it has a mandate, citing Bill Clinton's thin win in the 1990s, and that the pendulum swings back. His advice is to imagine the worst people running the government and ask what protections you want in place, which is what the Constitution does. "I can't be downhearted about these things," he said. "We look forward to seeing them in court." Sandefur said he was not familiar with Prop 425 but would be ready if it passes.
Kathleen Winn: Looking Ahead
Winn closed by conceding that Republicans lost the District 5 supervisor race, where Democrat Andrés Cano won. She praised Jeff Rhodes, a write-in candidate who she said would end up with around 10,000 votes, and noted that the seat is up again in two years. She said the party needs to focus on the supervisors in 2028 and on next year's city council races, where Mayor Regina Romero faces Paul Cunningham. "It shows it is not just the Republican Party that has factions," she said. She hopes Steve Christy gets some relief on the board.
Winn said Republicans can only be responsible for Pima County, that the voters wanted relief on the cost of goods, and that her generation raised its kids with opportunities that the 18- to 30-year-olds now entering the workforce do not have. She said the Democratic opposition to AI, as she described it, is another worry. On the government's role, she said, "in my 50 years of experience of being an adult, giving government more money never works out well for us." She said Republicans do things differently. "We heat up the conversation, but we will be respectful and we will use the law and the Constitution," she said. "We are not the fascists. We are not the racists. We are pragmatic and we're patriotic."
She also said Pima County Republicans have a shot at 70 percent turnout, which she called unprecedented, and thanked Congressman Juan Ciscomani, whose race remained too close to call. "You give us nail-biters every single time," she said. "It will be an incredible loss to Congress and to the state of Arizona if you're not returning." She said the party made more than 40 calls to lawyers on Election Day, some of which turned up nothing and others that are still being pursued, and that any anomalies will be examined factually, not emotionally.
In a lighter segment, Winn promoted the Arizona Bowl, which moves to January 2nd this year and is run by a volunteer group called the Blue Blazers. She said 100 percent of its proceeds go to local charities, with tickets for veterans and teachers and at least 20 teachers receiving $1,000 for their classrooms. She said Snoop Dogg will take part and encouraged listeners to consider tickets or group sponsorships.