“Are you going to watch the election?” Maria asked. She was cleaning up the evening dishes. “I want to see who won before I go to work.”
“Is that tonight?” The television was playing some telenovela that Maria liked to watch. Juan had been scrolling on his cell phone, ignoring it.
"Ay guau!" Maria's expression of surprise was meant to tease. "All this talk about your first election, and you don't even know what day it is?"
Juan laughed and aimed the remote at the TV, changing the channel to Univision.
It was fascinating to watch… for a while. The Univision studio had been transformed into an “Election Headquarters” complete with large screens and maps displaying the incoming election results. The anchors talked incessantly about exit polls and early results, but as the hours passed, they could only conclude that the race was still too close to call.
“I’ve got to go.” Maria placed some leftovers in her lunchpail. “If they get done before you go to bed, text me and let me know who won, OK?”
Juan promised, kissed her, and walked her to the door. Before returning to his chair, he went to the refrigerator and got a Coors Light.
Juan was intrigued by the expert analysis offered by pollsters and representatives from both parties. As the night wore on, they started calling the states in the Eastern time zone. Indiana and Kentucky both came in for Trump, followed by Vermont with a resounding win for Kamala Harris.
A little while later, an extremely tight race in Virginia was called for Harris. The anchors were going wild, speculating on the significance of that development.
Juan looked at his watch. It was still reasonably early in the evening in Arizona, but the polls were scheduled to close in a couple of hours. It was a special night, so he thought he’d treat himself to another beer before heading to bed.
Juan's cell phone rang. It was a number he recognized. It belonged to Stan Williams, "Hello?"
"Juan, we need you to come down to AZGOP headquarters." The voice on the other end sounded stressed... and dangerous.
"What, tonight?" Juan objected. "It's almost eight o'clock!"
Stan insisted, "We need you here right now."
The next morning, they were still counting votes. Juan had been up all night and was now sitting in a small lobby at the GOP headquarters watching the news on a nearby TV. They'd just announced that California was being called for Harris when breaking news interrupted the broadcast.
“Good evening. I’m Isabel Rodriguez, and Univision is bringing you a developing story from Arizona where the 2024 presidential election is taking an unexpected turn.”
Uh oh, here it comes, Juan thought. Arizona’s in the news.
Juan’s eyes widened as he set his coffee down on the table, his attention fully captured by the breaking story. The screen transitioned to a reporter standing outside what appeared to be a bustling election office.
A well-dressed man came on the screen from a remote location. "That's right, Maria. This morning, in a shocking twist to the Presidential election, multiple electors from the state of Arizona have chosen to cast their votes for Donald Trump rather than Kamala Harris, the presumptive winner. They are citing instances of election fraud as their rationale."
"What's going on?" someone in the lobby asked aloud. Juan didn't say anything, but he knew the answer. That's what he'd been doing all night. With the unexpected success of Harris' suprise election, the Arizona GOP was making a run at the American Electoral College system.
As if reading his mind, the anchor began to describe the Electoral College and its role in the US political system. “The Electoral College is a body of representatives selected by each state to formally elect the President of the United States. Its role is to translate the popular vote into electoral votes, with each state’s number of electors based on its congressional representation, combining senators and representatives.”
The anchors at the Univision Election Headquarters were visibly shaken as they tried to make sense of the unfolding situation. "Madre de Dios!" Juan sat on the edge of his seat, his mind racing with the potential implications. There was going to be a media frenzy over this, and he would be right in the middle of it.
“The electoral votes in Arizona are now up in the air, Isabel,” The well-dressed reporter tossed the question back to the anchor, “The impact of these faithless electors is unprecedented in US election history.”
Isabel brought out a string of experts that described the history of the US Electoral College. Juan had never heard about it before, and he found it to be wildly complicated. He learned there were twenty-three faithless electors in 1836, and sixty-three faithless electors in 1872. But none of them had ever been enough to swing an election. They made it sound like the Arizona inconsistencies were more of a publicity stunt than a real threat to the election.
An anchor added context, “What was initially anticipated to be a thorough and timely election might be evolving into a potential nightmare scenario for Arizona.”