The Haunting of Democracy

Our election nightmares … The eternal voting lines … And what’s your costume?

Happy Halloween, readers!

In the spirit of spookiness, we’ve been pondering the panic-inducing potential fallout of the fall election.

There’s a lot to be afraid of this year, and we at the Agenda can feel the chill in the air that goes far beyond Halloween night.

What eerie surprises await us at the polls?

Which candidates still have dirty tricks up their sleeves?

What skeletons might come tumbling out of campaign closets?

And which candidates and issues will haunt us long after ballots are cast?

Our art intern, ChatGPT, tells us the title of this work is “The Haunting of Democracy.”

So today, we’re embracing our fears of the things that go bump in the election night.

Since we’re sharing our fears with you, dear readers, we’re hoping you’ll do the same.

What is sending a chill down your spine this election season? Let us know in the comments section.

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The tell-tale signs of rebellion

There’s really no good way out of this presidential election — the prospect of either candidate winning scares the living shit out of us.

If Trump loses, there’s gonna be chaos in the streets, riots in the Capitol and even the potential for a civil war.

If Trump wins, we’ll get all that, plus four more years of Trump.

The first presidential candidate in this nation’s history to refuse to accept defeat is again setting the stage for a coup if he loses, casting a dark shadow over any hope for a peaceful transition of power between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

In 2021, people were killed in Trump-condoned riots attempting to steal the presidency.

Frightening as it is, the next coup may succeed.

“This time, (Trump) won’t be sitting in the White House declining to call off armed mobs of supporters — he might well be out there urging them on. Republicans in Congress seem cowed enough not only to halt the counting of votes, but also to reject electoral college certification altogether. Restoring order might fall not just to the courts, but to the military as well,” Washington Post columnist Matt Bai wrote recently.

And if Trump does legitimately win, we shudder to think what the next four years will look like for his long list of political enemies and any number of vulnerable groups, not to mention us “enemies of the people.”

“Mr. Trump tells us he plans to prosecute his political rivals, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney and other members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee; deploy the army to repress protest; and order the deportation of 15 million to 20 million people, including some legal immigrants,” Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote in the New York Times opinion pages recently.

And we really can’t handle another eternal recount and return of the Cyber Ninjas.

Brewing violence

Regardless of the outcome of the election, there are those lurking in the shadows determined to do harm.

Last week’s arrest of an Ahwatukee man for shooting up Democratic headquarters, sending baggies of suspicious white powder and lining the streets with razor-blade studded political signs, is a good reminder that there are hundreds more just like him teetering on the edge of election-induced insanity.

This election cycle has already brought us frightening acts like an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, more threats on election officials than can be counted, ballot drop boxes set ablaze and an attempted bombing of the Phoenix Pride festival.

Maricopa County election and law enforcement officials held a joint press conference this week to assure the public that they’ve been planning for more than a year and they’re ready for whatever may come.

But our spidey senses tell us it will get worse before it gets better.

“Prior to 2020, we didn’t have these issues,” Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner told reporters at Tuesday's press conference.

The rise of the undead (candidates)

In 2021, Republican U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko caved to pressure from the nutty wing of her party and attempted to overturn your vote for president.

Now, she’s a lock for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, where she’ll be one of five votes to certify the election in the state’s most populous county.

Lesko has proven she doesn’t have the spine to hold public office. Yet in many ways, voters are about to promote her to a far more critical position.

And she’s just one of many politicians rising from the political grave this election cycle.

Failed secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, for example, has all but won a seat in the Legislature again after carpetbagging from Southern Arizona to Yavapai County and knocking out the more moderate Sen. Ken Bennett in the GOP primary.

Monster ballots

It’s rare to get through an election day with zero problems. And this year, we’ll have twice as many ballots to process. No, not twice as many voters — but twice as many pages of ballots, considering ballots spilled onto two pages this year.

And those monster-sized ballots will conjure up hellishly long lines, and more opportunities for human error and glitches in the machinery. Elections officials warn it could be a “nightmare” scenario.

“It’s like two elections instead of one,” Mark Earley, a Florida election official who has experience with two-page ballots, told Votebeat recently.

Refusing to rest

U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake’s campaign is already looking a little walking dead, if you trust the polls.

Another loss should drive a stake through the heart¹ of her dream of representing Arizona.

But we fear that her political ambitions will refuse to stay buried and in another two years, she’ll still be howling about phantom voters and rigged elections while running for another office.

Happy Halloween: Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be in Phoenix today — Trump to record an interview with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, and Harris for a rally while the band Los Tigres del Norte performs, per the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L'Heureux.

Trolling too close to the sun: Court testimony revealed Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell’s fiancé, Paul Stout, was behind two anonymous Twitter accounts that harassed journalists and politicians criticizing the county attorney online, the Phoenix New Times’ Stephen Lemons reports. Stout revealed his burner accounts while testifying against a suspended attorney who he got into Twitter beef with, and while the @AZJayPaul and @AZ1Patriot accounts were taken down, that lawsuit immortalized the secret Stout tweets, like one telling Mitchell’s political rival Gina Godbehere she was wearing an “overly too tight shirt,” and another where he told Abe Hamadeh his “political career is like a backed-up toilet.”

We also dabble in trolling politicians. But we do it in the open. And we need your help to keep doing it!

Hurry up and wait: It’ll probably be a while before the results from ballots cast at Maricopa County’s polling places on Election Day come out because of a new state law that requires poll workers to count the number of mail-in ballots received at each location before pushing the results to the central counting facility, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports. We’ll still get a batch of ballots reported around 8 p.m., but the second round of results on election night will likely be delayed past 11 p.m.

A matter of faith: More than 62,000 voting-age adults have become Arizona citizens since the 2020 election, and a survey of newly naturalized Arizona voters found that 81% plan to vote and 57% support Harris, per the Republic’s Nadia Cantú. Meanwhile, some evangelical Latino voters are conflicted on how to vote as they weigh factors like their own opposition to abortion with harsh immigration rhetoric from conservatives, the Associated Press reports. About six in 10 evangelical Latino voters backed Trump in 2020, and a reverend of a Phoenix church with mostly immigrant congregants said voting isn’t “an intellectual issue” but a “matter of faith and spirituality.”

No, no and no: The Arizona Court of Appeals declined to reverse the results of the 2022 Arizona Attorney General’s race in favor of now-congressional candidate Abe Hamadeh, though the court didn’t make him pay $200,000 in legal fees that the Attorney General’s Office wanted, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. In one swoop, the three-judge panel also cut down two other 2022 election cases, all based on claims that a number of early ballots were illegally included in the vote totals. One was the voter-approved measure to give in-state tuition to dreamers, the other was the voter-rejected measure for stricter voter identification requirements.

Ponying up to the polls: A caravan of Phoenix residents rode to the polls on horseback to deliver their early ballots on Tuesday, and they were joined by a host of celebrities like the Phoenix Mercury's Brittney Griner, actress Mishel Prada, and actor Jose Velazquez, the Republic’s Paula Soria writes. It was the second horseback-riding-to-the-polls event, part of a larger effort to mobilize Latino populations to vote. Griner said this election is “a pivotal moment in Arizona.” And while horses won’t be much help on Election Day, religious groups are sending out “poll chaplains” to bring peace to the polls, per Cronkite News’ Tony Gutiérrez.

Google created a “Freightgeist” database that tells you the most popular Halloween costumes in your area. Phoenix’s top three are Woody, Batman and Deadpool, but as reporters who’ve been too engulfed in election coverage to think about Halloween costumes, those options felt a bit uninspired.

So we had our art intern, ChatGPT, come up with some other choices.

Sharpiegate

Reporters have already had to debunk claims that election workers hand out Sharpies to cancel your vote. Spooky.

An ode to our intersections

We can’t tell the difference between this costume and a Phoenix street corner.

Ghost ballot

Arizona’s Election Day lines will probably be much longer than years prior because of the four pages worth of choices voters have to make. Pretty scary.

1. Yes, that was both a Halloween pun and a reference to Lake’s claims she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine” two years ago. You can click the button to register your approval.