Transcription

• Speaker #0

  The name is everything beyond the ballot. We're taking voters beyond the ballot to help them understand really how government works for them, how they can be civically engaged and, you know, how their voice matters.

• Speaker #1

  You're listening to Beyond the Ballot AZ. I'm Tom Collins, executive director of the Arizona Clean Elections Commission.

• Speaker #0

  And I'm Gina Roberts, voter education director.

• Speaker #1

  Twenty twenty five. Despite being. an off year has been a busy year for elections in Arizona, and we covered it all here on Beyond the Ballot with stories like the CD7 special election.

• Speaker #2

  Hello and welcome to this special general election debate for Arizona's Congressional District 7. This September 23rd special election was called for by Governor Katie Hobbs after the recent death of Representative Raul Grijalva.

• Speaker #1

  Government shutdowns.

• Speaker #3

  The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is coming to an end.

• Speaker #1

  And redistricting taking major headlines.

• Speaker #4

  In most of the country for a very long time, legislators were really in charge, redistricting, drawing district lines for who gets elected to office, where is like a statute like any other. But in places where there were ballot initiatives, where the people had the ability to change the rules of government, the people increasingly took that option and Democrats took it. Independence took it. Republicans took it. This is a very bipartisan thing where the people have the opportunity to tell politicians where the line should be rather than politicians picking their voters.

• Speaker #0

  It was our first year of having the podcast and we kicked things off by talking to former Tucson Mayor Tom Bolge about Congressman Raul Grijalva's legacy. So in 2025, Congressman Grijalva, he passed away and that created a vacancy in Congress. And so we had to have a special election to fill his congressional district seven seat.

• Speaker #5

  In Raul's case, he championed causes that needed to be championed in his congressional district with an enormous amount of passion and dedication and a constant attention to the needs of his constituents. It is a legacy of public service that is very, very hard to follow.

• Speaker #0

  Congressman Grijalva's daughter, Adelita Grijalva, actually won that special election, filling the seat of her late father. She was actually just recently sworn into the House of Representatives last month. following the end of the federal government shutdown.

• Speaker #6

  And thank you to La Gente of Southern Arizona for making history, electing me the first Latina, the first Chicana from Arizona to ever go to Congress.

• Speaker #1

  You know, that election demonstrated how in Arizona itself is a closely fought state. And then each seat in Congress itself, with the margins in Congress being so narrow, is itself important. So the timing of... Congresswoman Grijalva swearing in became a national story and elevated Congresswoman Grijalva to essentially a nationally known figure overnight. I mean that to me was remarkable to take Mayor Volji's history of Congressman Grijalva and then to see that already his district and his daughter have now this national profile.

• Speaker #0

  You know, Tom, we did a lot of episodes this year. We've talked about everything from education to the federal and the state budget. We even had a special Fourth of July episode about how fireworks impact, you know, your animals and how you can keep your furry friends safe. To me, what really stood out, what sticks with me are two things. One, I find it really fascinating what we learned about Gen Z and their politics.

• Speaker #7

  I think collectively, there is a sense of like, we don't care what the old playbook was. Like, obviously, things have changed so much to the point where we need a new playbook.

• Speaker #0

  And then the other thing too, that I always find fascinating because I'm a parent and I've got children in the school system is just our education series. So what we've learned about from how schools are funded, from, you know, where we are right now with potential school closures and school facilities.

• Speaker #1

  So we had two different episodes about that. We had one early on with Christine Thompson and then we had one with Glenn Farley from the Common Sense Institute. And I thought those bookends to the education series were interesting because they had very different perspectives on how We make decisions around resource allocation, right? I mean, in terms of, and when I say resource allocation, it's very bureaucratic way of talking, how we put money into education and how it reaches the classroom, right? So that was really interesting, right? Because Christine really was focused on the fact that, you know, we have a gap between, you know, where we ought to be in terms of education spending and where we are.

• Speaker #8

  It's almost like health insurance, right? When your mix of your population changes, the expense of... supporting those students changes drastically. And you could be left with some of the more expensive students, but less funding to take care of those more expensive students or the opposite way around. You know, you've got money that can go farther because of the population that you have.

• Speaker #1

  And Glenn Farley's point was more like, it seems like maybe the gap is between where we're putting the money and not necessarily what amount of money. there is.

• Speaker #9

  What is inarguably true is the amount of money that's been invested system-wide over the last two decades is far in excess of what enrollment growth alone should have demanded. And the result should be that we have a lot of excess facilities and a lot of facilities, you know, we should see it showing up on the quality side. And this is where I think there's a massive data gap that's fueling litigation and public angst and things like that.

• Speaker #1

  That will frame a lot of what voters are going to experience over the next, you know, the next year.

• Speaker #0

  Absolutely. You know, I will share one other thing, too, Tom, that really stuck with me, which I had never thought about this before. But we had an episode on Beyond the Balladese of how federal debt and your finances are linked. And so this is where we had Dr. Jose Jurado come on and talk about how the federal debt and the deficit work. And he he had this quote that really stuck with me. And he was essentially saying that there is no such thing as a tax cut.

• Speaker #10

  It's either is that there's no such thing as a tax cut. It's the only thing that exists is borrowing against your children. So lower taxes today just means that you're going to pay higher taxes in the future. There's no there's no way around that.

• Speaker #1

  That was my probably I mean, if not my favorite, definitely my top. couple, three episodes that we recorded this year. And I thought it was really bracing to take a step back and say, look, the deficit doesn't necessarily matter in the way that we talk about it politically. I'll just be honest with you. I found that episode to be downright chilling.

• Speaker #0

  It was. It was somber. Well, and you know, You tie that with the episode that we had with former Secretary of State Ken Bennett. He was, you know, president of the Senate where he talked about the state budget, right? Because two different things. We have our federal budget, state budget. And when we had Ken Bennett on and he explained, you know, really what makes up the pie of the state budget and how much of our funding is federal dollars. To me, that was eye-opening as well.

• Speaker #11

  And this year, just kind of for an example, the state money is going to be about $23 billion. There's 45. billion of federal and other monies that comes in to the budget negotiations. And then there's about $5 or $6 billion of local property tax money that mostly the schools have that gets included in the budget. So you've got about $70 billion.

• Speaker #1

  You know, one of the later episodes we did actually kind of ties all these things together. We had Garrett Archer, who is the data guru at Channel 15. One of the things that he talked about was how we have moved between different presidential outcomes over the last decade, the way that voters have been changing. Because 10 years ago basically, maybe 12 years ago now, Arizona was about as red as a state could be. You had two Republican senators. You had a Republican governor, Republican attorney general, Republican secretary of state. And that all. changed over the course of just a few elections.

• Speaker #12

  And at this point, we see that even though we have been sliding towards sort of this purple bluish pattern over over this this 10 year period, it shows that that there is still a sizable Republican vote. in Arizona that shifts back five points in 2026. Five points is a pretty sizable number to overcome. So, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. But that's sort of the story of Arizona. You know,

• Speaker #0

  and it's really interesting, too, because what does this mean for voters on election night? We know everybody is so interested in knowing what are the vote counts looking like election night. And I know we're seeing, you know, potential introduce legislation about changing some of the election rules that we have and deadlines for dropping off early ballots, things like that, potential changes to be able to have faster results come out from Arizona. So who knows what we'll see from legislative action next year in regards to that. But I think, you know, folks are always looking to Arizona on election night because they want to know how did our electorate turn out? What did they decide? And As election officials, we always say, hey, everything is unofficial until we have the canvas. But everybody wants to go to bed on election night knowing who won. But that's just not always the case. We're going to continue to see ballots come in days after. And so things can change. And we know people want to have those results quicker. But I think when it comes down to voters, you have a lot of options here in Arizona on how you vote. But if you do want those quicker results, turn your ballot in sooner.

• Speaker #1

  And remember, you can always check on azcleanelections.gov to find out where your drop boxes are, what's up on your ballot, where your candidates are, all that good stuff.

• Speaker #0

  Well, that's it for Beyond the Ballot AZ this year. I'm Gina Roberts.

• Speaker #1

  And I'm Tom Collins. 2026 is shaping up to be a very busy year with midterm elections and major policy developments. You can expect us to be here weekly, breaking down the biggest stories and helping you make sense of it all. We'll see you in the new year.