What's going on in Arizona and Nevada should be an embarrassment to both states that causes change so that something like it never happens again.
If I recall correctly AZ Republicans passed a bill in the state legislature to mandate hand-counting of ballots, for phantom machine error syndrome. But delays in counting votes also plagued the 2020 presidential election there. I'm not making this up: local officials expect to have winners announced for senator and governor by Thanksgiving--or by the latest Christmas.
I don't know what the issues are in Nevada, I didn't pay the senate election there any mind because I thought, although the vote was close, that Adam Laxalt, the R, was a shoe-in. Then just a few minutes ago I saw an AP blurb "a Saturday deadline to accept finally arriving mail-ins."
⭐1) Since manifestly you cannot do this in a day with an extra day's margin of error, Do not release results in dribbles; release them when they're all counted. It is torture for the candidates and for the state parties to have early leads dwindle...and dwindle, perhaps to disappear entirely and conversely it is startling for everyone that a candidate for whom little hope was held to be creeping...creeping, ever closer. We have to to use educated guesses--which are GUESSES--which way the vote may go based on macro data, e.g. all the outstanding votes are from Maricopa and Pima counties, as if Phoenix and Tucson are not big enough for two political parties. Come on.
2) It seems like the problem is a lack of staff in AZ. I can understand, if my understanding is correct, that the hand-count mandate passed this summer jammed up election officials and so they had a tighter hiring window before the election...I'm sorry, why did you not hire enough people? And why was 2020 so attenuated?
Finally, do you think I would give a fuck who you elect in Arizona or Nevada?--I wouldn't know Something Cortez-Something if she knocked on my door--except for them being your states' choices for two seats in the upper house of the NATIONAL legislature. It is really unfair to the country to have these votes for United States Senator dangled before us like this. Come on, this is not rocket science, get your acts together.
