They again counting votes from 2022 in June 2023 because whiney loser Lake can't take defeat? It's gotta be a joke.
Or maybe could the fact that Katie Hobbs did not even campaign at all or release any promo videos, unlike all other candidates even those in states they were never going to win, be a possible red flag? Getting elected in a very competitive state without campaigning, a bit fishy if you ask me.
The AZ SOS needs to reform the counting process though - the vote margin changing by that much for several days after the election doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the system.
The bolded part is spot on. Despite thinking she's the greatest thing since sliced bread, Lake was in fact a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad candidate. She had a huge ego, zero political experience, and very little skill at it. One example among many: her telling McCain Republicans to "get the hell out". Rejecting a portion of your party's coalition in a close state is not exactly a winning strategy. Hobbs took a calculated risk that keeping a low profile and letting Lake be her own worst enemy would be enough to win the race, and it was.
Regarding the second paragraph, Arizona certainly had a few problems administering the last election (although none severe enough to flip the governor's race) that they need to address. But as far as the counting bias, I don't see what you can do to change that when so much of the state votes by absentee ballot, and those have become predominantly Democratic since 2020. In earlier years, Arizona absentees went heavily Republican and the counting bias tended to go the other way.
Yeah, Lake seems strong because she didn't Mastriano herself, but Arizona had a much more favorable Republican turnout than Pennsylvania, and she managed to outrun Blake which is not a good yardstick of a generic candidate. The only reason Lake outran Masters is because Masters was even worse (he had the same vibes as what DeSantis right now - a nazi incel, a socially awkward creep, focusing excessively on culture wars instead of the economy, etc.) The 2022 results should not be a baseline suggesting that Arizona is now a blue state; it's still purple and I fear the left might soon make the same mistake (I've seen rhetoric like "Arizona is blue enough to elect a progressive; we don't need a moderate". This rhetoric might work against a
retread Lake but they would lose as soon as the GOP put up someone like Yee).
Regarding the counting process, one reform I would make is to make the deadline for mailing in ballots the weekend before the election, and any absentees past that need to be dropped off at a vote center. Since a majority of absentees are ie mailed from Maricopa to Maricopa, most should be counted within 12 hours of polls closing. There will be small amount of provisionals and postmarked absentees arriving after that, but that would only be a trickle, and not cause a sudden large shift. I would aim to get at least 95% of the ballots in by the day after the election (and ideally, 99%), not 80% like before.
