Two elections officials walk into the Valley Bar
A lively and civil discussion about voting
I’m not a policy wonk but I had fun watching two elections experts talk shop at the Valley Bar in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday night.
A crowd showed up to listen to Adrian Fontes and Stephen Richer discuss this question: Should we change how we vote?
Fontes, a Democrat, is the newly elected Secretary of State in Arizona. Richer, a Republican, is the current Maricopa County Recorder. Richer unseated Fontes in the 2020 Recorder’s race — a fact that was fodder for banter between the officials throughout the evening.
The two former rivals now share a larger bond — they are both ardent defenders of our elections at a time when it has become fashionable, in the Republican Party, for losing candidates to attack the voting system rather than concede defeat.
Should we change how we vote? And if so, why?
Fontes said we have three items on the menu when it comes to elections: fast, accurate, and cheap. He said we can only choose two items.
Richer said this was a false trichotomy. Sacrificing accuracy is out of the question.
The choice, according to Richer, is between convenience and quick results.
One of the reasons why it takes a week to count all the votes in Arizona is because of what’s called “late early” ballots. These are mail-in ballots dropped off on election day. These particular ballots take longer to count because they are not tabulated on the spot but rather need to go through similar processing as the regular mailed-in ballots.
Richer has proposed an idea for eliminating the “late early” problem by requiring mail-in ballots be dropped off by Friday before election day — the last day for early voting.
Fontes doesn’t like that idea. He said he doesn’t want to limit ballot access in any way, shape, or form. The audience seemed to agree with Fontes on this point.
Another point of disagreement was on the issue of “adjudication” — or whether we should try to decipher the voter’s intention on a ballot that is mismarked in a way that renders it unreadable by a voting tabulation machine. Richer thinks we should maybe not adjudicate at all. Fill out your ballot correctly if you want it to count. Fontes said he wants to adjudicate as much as possible.
I learned a lot about elections from this discussion, but I don’t think the “average voter” really cares to learn the intricacies of the voting system. One of the reasons why conspiracists have been so successful at sowing doubt about our elections is the highly technical nature of the whole endeavor. It’s easy to find a detail that sounds shady, take it out of context, and then share it on social media as PROOF that our elections are RIGGED.
This is the issue I was hoping to hear more about. Elections officials have sustained years of harassment and threats. A cottage industry of conspiracy films and #content has emerged, fueling outrage in right-wing bubbles. If competent elections officials keep quitting, it will risk causing actual systemic problems to our elections, which will only exacerbate the problem we’re facing now with demagogues and their propaganda.
Audience question: What is causing people to distrust our elections?
Fontes answered in vague outlines about people in certain parties doing things that damage voter confidence. Richer was more specific, saying that members of his own party are incentivized to lie about our elections, logic be damned.
The problem has a very obvious origin, but the origin went un-named at the Valley Bar.
The host of Celebrity Apprentice cried fraud back in 2012, calling the re-election of Barack Obama a “total sham and a travesty.” When candidate Donald Trump lost the Iowa Caucus in the 2016 presidential primary, he claimed fraud and called for a re-do of the election. Even when Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he claimed that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” In 2018, when Martha McSally lost to Krysten Sinema in the Arizona Senate race, president Trump said there was “electoral corruption” and called for a new election.
When voters told Trump to relinquish the power of the presidency in 2020, his response was predictable and highly destructive.
Kari Lake is carrying Trump’s torch in Arizona, mimicking his destructive rhetorical moves, determined in defeat, logic be damned.
Lake's name wasn't mentioned during the discussion except once when the 2022 gubernatorial contest was used as an example to illustrate how a voter might mismark a ballot in a way that would require adjudication.
Maybe we should change how we vote, maybe we shouldn't. But the crisis in voter confidence is a self-inflicted wound to the body politic. The policy details won’t matter if we have political candidates who flat out refuse to concede losses. Structural reforms like ranked-choice voting or open primaries might lead to healthier incentives for political candidates, but in the meantime, I’m grateful for elections workers and officials who continue to do their jobs under trying circumstances.
Two of my biggest takeaways from the event:
First, the discussion itself is a good sign for the future. It is a sign that perhaps the chaotic and harmful attacks on our elections can be transformed into a reasonable debate about constructive policy changes. Fontes and Richer are taking the high road, bringing a fact-based bipartisan discussion to the public square. Maybe this is the road back to sanity.
Second, a crowd showed up and had a lot of fun watching this discussion. Still recovering from pandemic isolation, the public is eager for social events. We could use more live events in the Valley featuring dynamic speakers and interesting debates. The agents of political chaos are good at drawing crowds. This event is a signal that the exhausted majority of us who support democratic institutions might also show up to be entertained.
I hope to see more events like this in the future.
Thank you
Appreciated this commentary about voting.