What a time to be alive

Welcome back, Donald ... Will it ever end? ... And who else won?

Since most of you were probably glued to cable news and the doomscroll machine all night, we don’t need to tell you that we’re heading for another four years of President Donald Trump.

After Trump took Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it doesn’t really matter how Arizona shakes out.

The Associated Press called the race sometime after 3 a.m.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s presidential race remains too close to call and probably will stay that way for a while.

On the bright side, since the presidential race didn’t come down to Arizona, at least we don’t have to brace for the national media shitstorm¹ featuring Alex Jones and the QAnon Shaman camped outside ballot tabulation centers.

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What happened in Arizona?

Before we get to the results and remaining ballots, let’s take a moment to celebrate that it was a relatively uneventful election.

The only major problems at the polls were the hoax bomb threats that swept the nation, seemingly from the Russians, which hit Maricopa County, Apache County, Cochise County and La Paz County.

• Apache County also suffered printer breakdowns that caused long delays, leading the Navajo Nation to go to court to keep some polling places there open until 9 p.m.

• There were some sporadic long lines in Maricopa County and Pima County, but no systemic SNAFUs.²

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How long will counting take?

We’ll still be counting votes next week, and a few races won’t be clearly won or lost until every vote is counted and fought over in court.

But after tomorrow, we should know much more.

Right now, Arizona still has around 1.5 million or more ballots left to count, or nearly half of all ballots cast.

So a lot can change. But that number of uncounted ballots will drop fast.

Ballot tabulation will pick up again today, and counties will likely post some results throughout the day. By Thursday, election officials will probably start posting updates once a day at the close of business.

By Friday, most of these races should be settled.

But it may be more like Monday.

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Ok, so who won?

Just about every race we expected to be too close to call, remains too close to call.

That includes most of the competitive legislative and congressional seats.

But let’s start with the blowouts.

• Arizona for Abortion Access, Prop 139, was a slam dunk. It held steady above 60%.

• Open primaries, Prop 140, was an airball. It’s at about 40%.

• The Immigration and Border Law Enforcement Act, Prop 314, was an easy sell to voters, despite protests that it was just another iteration of SB1070.

• Seven of the eleven measures lawmakers sent to the ballot seemingly failed, including Props 134 and 136, which would make it harder to propose a citizen’s initiative.

  • Voters especially disliked props 137 and 138, which would eliminate judicial retention elections as we know them and cut the minimum wage for tipped workers, respectively. Neither got support from even a quarter of voters.

• Maricopa County’s sales tax extension for transportation, Prop 479, passed easily.

• The Arizona Supreme Court justices targeted for their abortion decision — Clint Bolick and Kathryn King — seemingly held on without much trouble.

• And Kari Lake probably isn’t going to the U.S. Senate. As expected, she’s way underperforming Trump, and Ruben Gallego holds a solid, but shrinking, lead. The Associated Press hasn’t called the race.

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Whose ballots are we waiting on?

There are basically four types of voters, and their ballots are counted at different times.

Early voters: The first votes counted come from people who show up to vote at an early voting center or mail back their ballot quickly. Election officials start verifying and tallying those before Election Day. In Maricopa County, anyone who voted before last Tuesday was probably included in the first batch of results at about 8 p.m.

In-person voters: The next batch are the in-person voters on Election Day. Those results are uploaded on election night, but not right at 8 p.m. because poll workers have to deliver the thumb drives and ballots to the main tabulation center before the results are tallied.

Late early voters: These are people who get a mail-in ballot and drop it off on election day. Because election officials have to verify the signatures on the ballot envelopes, those ballots start getting tallied on Wednesday. And there are a lot of them to get through. They’re a big part of why our elections take so long to count.

Provisional/curing: Voters who have to cast a provisional ballot, and voters whose signatures don’t match the one on file, are the last ones counted. State law says voters have five days to “cure” their signature if it doesn’t match, so officials can’t finish counting those ballots until at least five days after the election.

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Which side will those ballots favor?

The big unknown in Arizona is who delivered those “late early ballots.”

Generally speaking, more Republicans voted early and in person on Election Day.

Democrats mostly vote by mail-in ballots, and they’re generally more likely to drop them off on Election Day.

So it stands to reason that those “late earlies” could lean Democratic and that we could see a Democratic surge. How big of a surge? We don’t know.

If those ballots do trend toward Democrats, it could mean they ultimately flip one or both chambers of the Legislature.

But if they trend toward Republicans, the small gains Democrats are showing now could evaporate.

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What happened with the Legislature?

If Tuesday night’s results held steady — and they probably won’t — Democrats would split the state Senate and lose a seat in the House.

But again, many of those races are teetering on a knife’s edge, and we’re not gonna call them yet.

Right now, the bright spot for Democrats is Southern Arizona’s LD17, where Democrats John McLean and Kevin Volk are leading to take the Senate seat and a House seat, respectively.

For Republicans, the highlight is Yuma’s LD23, where Republican Rep. Michele Pena is holding on against the odds. Even Democratic Sen. Brian Fernandez is barely leading his Republican challenger.

A few other races to keep an especially close eye on as counting continues:

• LD2 Senate: Republican Shawnna Bolick is leading Democrat Judy Schwiebert by a few hundred votes.

  • LD2 House: Democrat Stephanie Simacek is leading the two Republicans running for two House seats. But she’s still within a few thousand votes of Republicans Justin Wilmeth and Ari Daniel Bradshaw.

• LD4 Senate: Democrat Christine Marsh had a few dozen vote lead over Republican Carine Werener, last we checked.

  • LD4 House: Republican Matt Gress is narrowly leading Democrat Kelli Butler and beating out Democrat Karen Gresham for the district’s two House seats.

• LD9 Senate: Democrat Eva Burch is leading Republican Robert Scantlebury, but her margins have been shrinking.

  • LD9 House: Republicans Kylie Barber and Mary Ann Mendoza surged late last night to within striking distance of Democratic Reps. Seth Blattman and Lorena Austin.

• LD13 Senate: Republican JD Mesnard is leading Democrat Sharon Lee Winters by a few thousand votes.

  • LD13 House: Republicans Jeff Weninger and Julie Willoughby are leading the Democratic candidates, Brandy Reese and Nicholas Gonzales, but not by a lot.

• LD16 House: Democrat Keith Seaman is trailing in his reelection bid to Republican Chris Lopez, but the race is still tight.

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And those competitive congressional seats?

In the Valley’s Congressional District 1 Democrat Amish Shah led Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert for most of the night, but that lead evaporated by the early morning hours.

In Southern Arizona’s CD6, Democrat Kirsten Engel’s lead over Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani is still tentative.

Northern Arizona’s CD2 turned out to not be even close. Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane holds a nearly 10-percentage-point lead over Democrat Jonathan Nez.

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How about the Corporation Commission?

Republicans are leading for the three open seats, but Democrat Ylenia Aguilar is still a little too close to Republican Lea Marquez Peterson to declare the race over.

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Who are my new county officials?

The hottest race in Maricopa County — the fight to become the next county recorder — is still too close to call. But Republican Justin Heap, who is an election skeptic, at least, is leading Democrat Tim Stringham by a few percentage points.

Meanwhile, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is teetering on the edge of Democratic control. Democrat Daniel Valenzuela is leading Republican Kate Brophy McGee for one seat, but Republican Mark Stewart took the lead over Democrat Joel Navarro early this morning.

In Pima County, the only Republican supervisor is in trouble. Democrat Vanessa Bechtol is narrowly leading Republican Steve Christy.

In Coconino County, former Republican lawmaker Bob Thorpe won’t be the next recorder. He lost to Democrat Aubrey Sonderegger.

In Navajo County, Timothy Jordan appears headed for victory in the recorder’s race, despite recently being arrested for pulling a gun during a road rage incident near a school and lying to police about it.

And in Cochise County, former lawmaker Frank Antenori is making a comeback as a county supervisor after beating out challengers to replace outgoing supervisor Peggy Judd, who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from refusing to certify her county’s election.

1. The rule of thumb is any time Anderson Cooper is in your state, something has gone terribly wrong.

2. And because both Maricopa and Pima counties employ a vote center model rather than a precinct-based voting system, you can just go to another polling place if yours has a line.